Suffolk County voters should say yes to term limits

Suffolk voters have a chance this year to make the county’s term limit policy clear as day. They should.

Why is this necessary? Back in 1993, Suffolk voters by nearly a 2-to-1 margin approved term limits for all county offices. The law was challenged and the Court of Appeals ruled in 2013 that the offices of district attorney, sheriff, and clerk cannot be limited by the county because those jobs are defined by the state Constitution and can only be changed by a statewide constitutional amendment. However, limits on comptroller, county executive, and members of the legislature remained in effect.

The term limits law was back in court in 2021, when Democrat Kate Browning sought a seventh, but not consecutive, term in the county legislature. Browning had served the maximum 12 years through 2017. She was allowed to run when a state appellate court panel ruled that the vague wording of Suffolk’s existing term limit law didn’t impose a lifetime limit on service. In other words, someone could leave and come back.

Browning ended up losing to Republican James Mazzarella. Yet her bid took advantage of a loophole in the law. That loophole would be closed with the approval of the new term limit ballot proposal, which sets limits for the offices of county executive, county legislator, and county comptroller at 12 years “in total.”

That’s simple, reasonable, and worthwhile.

Opponents of term limits voice the age-old argument that elected officials can always be voted out of office. And when term limits are too short — consider the previous system in California in which members of that state assembly were limited to three two-year terms — officials might not have enough time to learn the job. This can empower unelected staff or advisers. A loophole in which legislators can take a cycle off and then hop right back makes a mockery of actual limits, or actual change.

The 12-year cap should give elected officials in Suffolk enough time to gain experience and achieve their goals. The lifetime limits also should help produce turnover, preventing a totally sclerotic system. The practice has worked well in Suffolk so far. Nassau should adopt it, too. This is not an unusual concept: Other jurisdictions, including New York City and Westchester County, have versions of term limits.

These clarified term limits will not solve all of Suffolk's political problems, which include the willingness of parties to put up only token resistance in too many races and cross-endorse in others, both of which prevent voters from having any real choice on their ballots. But approving the limits would send a message to Suffolk officials that voters want them to work hard, and quickly, on behalf of the public.

Flip over your Suffolk ballots and vote yes on Proposal 2.