“It’s the citizens who will make a difference here,” Allan Domb told me yesterday, when I reached out after hearing he’d, once again, introduced a bill in Council calling for term limits for those in his position. Unlike three years ago, the last time Domb gave it a try, this version stretches the allowable time in office to — count ’em — four terms, and wouldn’t even take effect until 2024.
Count me as dubious of the bill’s prospects — I’ve seen this movie before—but Domb sounds like more of a populist than he was last time he pitched the idea. Adopting term limits would require voter approval as per the Home Rule Charter, so Domb has proposed placing the measure on the ballot as a referendum in the upcoming May primary election.
“The question really is, does the city want career politicians running things, or people who cycle in for 10 to 16 years and cycle out so new blood and fresh ideas can come in?” he said. “I think the citizens deserve to be heard on that. If they let it be known they want to weigh in, Council will have no choice but to put the question on the ballot.”
Yes, we have many able public servants, but I’d wager that the city, let alone the state and country, will survive just fine without just about any of them.
Six years ago, a poll conducted for reform group Philly 3.0 found that some 70 percent of Philadelphians supported the idea of term limits for Councilmembers. After all, Philadelphia is the only big city in America where the mayor is term-limited, but the city council is not. Moreover, the legislatures of eight of the nation’s biggest 10 cities are term-limited.
“You’d have new, more diverse people coming in with fresh ideas,” said Domb. “I’m telling my colleagues, whether you’re for or against term limits, let the public decide the question. We work for them.”
When Domb last pushed term limits, he could rustle up only two co-sponsors. This time he has five: Mark Squilla, Kendra Brooks, Helen Gym, Derek Green and Jamie Gauthier. Generally, district members are the harder sell. They tend to turn their seats into fiefdoms (thanks in no small measure to the power of councilmanic prerogative, the gentlemen’s agreement that gives district members complete control over development in their neighborhoods) and rarely face serious challenge.
And let’s be real: for many members, a job that pays in excess of $130,000 a year, with a cushy expense account and a car, just might be the best one they’re ever gonna get. Why be a co-conspirator in seeing to their own obsolescence?
Right now, Domb has six votes, five shy of the magical number of 11, and he’s working it. “I have no idea where [Republican] David Oh is,” he said. “Absolutely no idea.” I ask if he’s spoken to Council President Clarke, and all I get back is a terse “no” from the normally loquacious councilmember; I hear that the two don’t often speak, especially after butting heads over the fate of streeteries a few months back.
Clarke is one of those long-running District Councilmembers — 22 years, in fact. His silence on this issue doesn’t bode well for the bill’s future, because it’s hard to get something done that will affect Council without Clarke’s imprimatur on the reform. Domb has a good-government argument to make, but those tend to fall on deaf ears with transactional pols like Clarke, who seems, at least, to value the raw acquisition and dissemination of power over quotidian policy matters.
Yes, if you’re feeling like we’ve been here before, you’re not caught in a Groundhog Day time warp. Twelve years ago, then-Councilman Wilson Goode Jr. proposed a term-limits bill, but only then-Councilmember Bill Green supported it…so it died.
Seven years ago, former mayor and governor Ed Rendell called for changing our Home Rule Charter and imposing a two-term limit for every elected Philadelphia official — Controller, District Attorney, and Council among them. “We would have a more effective and efficient city government if we did that,” he said. Crickets.
Then came Domb’s first try — which went nowhere.
Which is why Domb is right—for the result to be any different this time around, it’s going to take citizens getting off the proverbial couch, losing the Philly Shrug, and bombarding councilmembers with the demand to be heard on this issue.
Call her office and ask Maria Quiñones Sánchez — arguably the city’s most preeminent reformer — why she’s not co-sponsoring Domb’s bill? Email Clarke’s office and say you want a referendum (though you may never get a reply). Tell district members to put their constituents above their narrow self-interests.
The argument most often deployed against term limits was the one mouthed by then-Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds-Brown in 2015: “We already have term limits,” she said. “They’re called elections.”
But does that hold up? As Domb points out, when you only have between 15 and 25 percent of registered voters exercising their franchise, you end up with coronations, not elections. Not surprisingly, incumbents are usually the ones advancing the “election as term limit” argument, and they claim term limits are non-discerning; they put plenty of good legislators out to pasture before their time.
But where are these legislators who you and I can’t live without? Have you met them? Yes, we have many able public servants, but I’d wager that the city, let alone the state and country, will survive just fine without just about any of them.
The argument most often deployed against term limits was the one mouthed by then-Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds-Brown in 2015: “We already have term limits,” she said. “They’re called elections.”
You know who believed that? None other than Thomas Jefferson. He wasn’t in Philly for the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when term limits—or, as they were called then, “mandatory rotation”—were dropped from the Articles of Confederation, our first governing document.
“The … feature I dislike, and greatly dislike, is the abandonment in every instance of the necessity of rotation in office …” Jefferson wrote when he got back from France and saw what had been passed. For the rest of his life, he advocated for term limits, praising “citizen legislators” and lambasting “office-hunters” who spent too much time in office.
Tommy J. wasn’t perfect, we know now. But, for all his acting out in his private life, the dude kinda knew what made for a workable political system. He was skeptical of the vote as the sole remedy to centralized power — and that’s a good thing to remind our elected officials of now.
Recently, we’ve had one councilmember convicted of corruption, and another awaits trial. Would term limits mitigate against such bad actors? Hell if I know. But it couldn’t hurt, right? Saying, as ol’ TJ did, that there’s something inherently wrong with career politicians spending their entire adult lives on the public dole can’t be a bad thing, can it?
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of votes Councilmember Domb would need to pass his bill. The number is actually 11.
Clarification from Councilmember Domb as of Friday, February 11, 8am: “In fairness to Councilman Oh and Council President Clarke, I haven’t spoken to either of them yet about term limits. I remain hopeful we can all work together on this important issue.”
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