Ross is a politician but not cowardly or overly slick. Among other ideas, he included:
Home rule: A vestige of class warfare that cripples the city. Boston should be able to govern itself.
Term limits:Mayor Tom Menino has been fine, but 8 years should be the max for the office. Don't toss the councilors so easily. We need institutional memory as well.
Council power: There is real power for an elected official in coalescing groups to get in idea implemented.
Recession drives: It's up to the council, mayor, businesses and non-profits to step up now to keep key programs working and even expanding.
In other words, Ross seems to expect a lot of himself — and everyone else — in improving the city rather than whining.
Please share widely!
I don’t like term limits at all. They are anti-democratic. I don’t want anyone telling me I am not allowed to vote for the incumbent if I think he/she is doing a good job. But if you are going to have them for Mayor you should have the same limits for City Councilor. Except for the at-large spots, which seem to turn over fairly frequently, City Councilors can generally hold on to their jobs indefinitely. I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that there are few Councilors who would go along with term limits if it applied to them.
I think term limits are just fine. Benignly “anti-democratic”, and far less harmful than the anti-democratic institutions of the electoral college and the US Senate.
I think there is a good argument for term-limiting the President, but I just don’t buy it for anyone else.
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…but I must admit if there’s one person who tests my patience with that position it’s Mayor Menino. I don’t have a strong opinion on the merits of his tenure either way, but I get the sense that he (and maybe other big city mayors) has such a machine at their disposal, that it’s near impossible to have a level playing field due to all the favors he can call in.
but I think an exception must be made for executive positions, when they have so much power. People in those positions can often use that power to accumulate such a vast network of friends and allies — their machine — that it’s tough for anyone to mount a credible challenge. Legislative bodies, including city councils, can’t do that to nearly the same extent. None of this would be an insurmountable problem if the local media did its job, but we all know what kind of a job the local media does on local politics… so what other choice is there, really?
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p>Keep term limits for executives (so they could stay in office 8 years), but let them run after they’ve sat a term out. That gives voters the best of both worlds — if they really, really want a return to the old ways, they have that choice. It would create a multitude of machines, so no one machine has so much power as to harm democracy in the local area — making sure candidates are winning based on merit, not power. This would not only create more choices, but create a more vibrant democracy, where more people feel comfortable participating in local politics — because at least it’s not just one big time candidate and a bunch of small fries.
I see absolutely no evidence that imposing term limits on the mayor of Boston would result in us getting a better mayor. Term limit laws are usually only promoted because people want to get rid of one particular popular politician they don’t like. 90% of politicians who get elected on term limit pledges end up deciding that term limits are a mistake.
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p>Politicians who support term limits, well meaning or not, don’t get my vote.
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p>There are much better ways to address the underlying problem than forcing out an office holder who really may be the best person for the job. Any political system that takes away your best choice is severely flawed. I would much rather see people focus more on more campaign finance restrictions and severe anti-patronage restrictions.
Ross only supports term limits because he wants to be Mayor and doesn’t have the cojones to challenge Menino for it. He is very much cowardly and overly slick. Note how he doesn’t support term limits for himself. I hope he gets a good challenger next election, because he needs to be removed from office through the one legitimate means of doing so.
Term limits are the last refuge of a loser. Executive term limits make even less sense than legislative term limits. Executive positions have higher profiles, which makes them more likely to attract challengers with the potential to win, and puts them on the radar screens of more voters. Has no one ever noticed that Presidents get re-elected at a far lower rate that Senators or Representatives? In the last 50 years, 8 Presidents have run for re-election. Five have been successful. That’s 62.5%, vs. a more thyan 90% re-election rate for Congress.
Menino has been in office for a record number of terms but he has consistently had legitimate challengers. The fact that he had to work to overcome a very significant opponent last fall would suggest that term limits are not needed for mayor.
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p>Likewise, there has always been a lot of competition and turnover in the at-large City Council spots, while the other Councilors are often left unchallenged for years. That would suggest that it really is the district councilors who need term limits, if anyone.
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p>Anyway, here is my suggestion: all campaign money must be spent in the current election cycle and not just added to an ever-growing warchest. Any excess money over some small limit must be given to charity or returned to donors or perhaps added to a fund that would provide matching-funds in the next election cycle.
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While supportive of its goals, I’m somewhat squeamish about public funding because I don’t like the idea of my tax dollars going to candidates I dislike. But as a donor you run that risk anyway because your candidate this year may give money to someone you don’t like next year, or use their campaign apparatus paid for by your money on that person’s behalf. So having all of a candidate’s excess funds go to a clean elections type fund helps make the system fair to challengers without requiring taxpayers to fund any random idiot.
1) Home Rule petition needs to be removed immediately. The idea that for many of the most practical issues in governing Boston, we need to have the City Council and the Mayor support it, simply to then ask the State Reps and Senators and the Governor to sign off is anti-democratic. Boston should be able to run Boston.
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p>2) Council Power right now is a joke. The city charter creates a scenario in which the city council can veto a bill before the city, and if the Mayor can find even the most transparently flimsy excuse for saying that it has something to do with his office, he can simply ignore the vote. The clearest example of this is the city ordinance that says the Police Department needs to maintain 2500 officers. It was passed unanimously by the Council in 1979 and Mayor White ignored it. As such, despite the ordinance being on the books, every Mayor since (i.e. Flynn and Menino) and every city council has ignored the existing ordinance. If you don’t believe it, the existing ordinance is 11-1.6 and can be found at http://www.amlegal.com/boston_ma/ and this is just one of several examples.
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p>3) Term Limits should be in place for any and all executive level offices, including Mayor, Governor and President.
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p>Of these three, which is the representative from City Hall’s HR department going to attack me on first. Gee, I wonder?
If you want a reason to disregard the voters’ right to elect who we want, you need a stronger reason than your own desire for a job you can’t get because oh noes someone else is going to get re-elected, and so far the only reason that’s been presented for term limits is because Mike Ross wants to be Mayor.
Where does it say that Michael Ross wants to be Mayor, other than in your post? Answer: Nowhere.
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p>Secondly, if they follow the model of the 22nd amendment, the rule would not apply to Menino, but to whomever came after Menino, just as the 22nd amendment did not apply to Harry Truman, but to whomever came after Truman.
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p>Thirdly, I have heard Michael Ross speak on this topic before and what he is proposing is not a singular change, but a comprehensive review of the entire city charter, and issues such as home rule, balance of power and term limits are just some of the collective of changes he wants to consider. They also include how the city budget process is handled, the power of the city council to question departments like ISD and the BRA and many more.
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p>Ergo, your obsessive desire to talk about term limits and nothing but term limits (while slandering Michael Ross) demonstrates the underlying thrust of your argument. I see no difference between your reducing the entire collective of changes to “Mike Ross wants to be Mayor” than when the Right Wing nutjobs reduced the entire Health Care debate to “Obama wants to kill your grandparents”. How about staying on topic?
I don’t see any one bringing up opposition to term limits unless someone else has first suggested that we introduce them. What is obsessive about that?
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p>Personally, while I am pretty sure that Mike Ross probably does want to run for mayor at some point, I doubt that he is suggesting term limits to get rid of Menino. (I would be surprised if Menino runs again after this term, but then I didn’t really expect him to run this last time either, so what do I know).
1) My response was to Patrick Long, and my use of “obsessive” was in relation to his response to me, where in I spent 25% of my response on Home Rule, 70% on the balance of power in the city council, and 5% on a throwaway line about term limits. But what did he respond to?
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p>2) It is further unclear when he is saying, “if you want a reason”, whether the “You” he is talking about is Mike_Cote, Michael Ross, both or if it sort of morphed in the process of writing the response.
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p>3) I know it is just typos, but I still cannot figure out what he meant to say when he said, “your own desire for a job you can’t get because oh noes someone else is going to get re-elected”. I’m guessing “oh noes” is “who knows”, but that still doesn’t make the full sentence work.
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p>I am not saying that a discussion about term limits is obsessive. My use of obsessive was directed at that singular posting, responding to my post. Feel free to talk about term limits all you want.
Why should one feel obligated to match the proportion of topics in some other post when you only want to call out the one thing you disagree with? There is nothing even remotely obsessive about it. And if the point about term limits was truly a “throwaway line”, then you would not have bothered to respond as you have done.
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p>I also don’t understand how any “singular posting” can be termed “obsessive”. Don’t you need to show a repeated pattern of behavior to reasonably demonstrate obsession?
Once again, reducing the entire Health Care debate to “Obama wants to kill you parents” does not require repeated pattern of behavior to resonably demonstrate obsession. I would propose that taking the efforts of Michael Ross, who has spoken many times on this issue, including here at BMG, and reducing it to a singular personal smear, is enough.
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p>Let me give you another one. Whenever there is story about Michael Flaherty, even if it is nothing more than to say that he is celebrating a birthday, there will almost always be a post about a house in Plymouth and accusations about the Firefighters Union. Are you really suggesting that I need to research the previous postings of these people to determine that they are “obsessive”? Seriously?
If someone posted any kind of crazy claim only once that would still not be enough to call it “obsession”.
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p>I think the shot at Ross was slightly unfair, but you can’t call that obsessive unless you can show that the poster did it more than once. Of course, most of the crazy “Obama wants to kill your parent” posters do just that.
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p>Repeated or not, there is nothing “obsessive” with rationally pointing out something you disagree with.
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p>Don’t forget that your paranoid assertion that some imaginary City Hall sock puppet is going to disagree with you, doesn’t really put you in the best light to call out other people’s obsessions.
So I offer another example.
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p>President Obama is talking about BP and the oil spill. When you read the postings under the story, people post about Birth Certificates, Kenya, Reverent Wright, Communism, Concentration Camps, and so on and so on. This is not “obsessive”? I think it is and that is my “Opinion”.
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p>Seriously, I have had to put up with Menino defenders for years, and it is always the same things: 1) You must hate Menino, 2) You want Sam Yoon to be Mayor, 3) You want Boston to Fail, 4) You want Michael Flaherty to be Mayor, 5) You must hate America, 6) You want Maura Hennigan to be Mayor, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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p>Michael Ross offers a collective of reforms that are worth considering, and the response is that Michael Ross is only doing this because Michael Ross wants to be Mayor. To the greater collective known as Menino defenders or Menino Trolls, I say that it is possible that someone, somewhere, someday, will want to do the right thing for Boston and that does not automatically translate into hating Menino.
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p>Lastly, what I find curious is that the person who is, in my humble opinion, my all time favorite SP, is being obsessive about the word “obsessive”. It is like so “Ironical”.
but if you use English words in a way that doesn’t correspond to their well-established meaning you are bound to be misunderstood by others.
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p>In any case, I personally have never claimed that Michael Ross has selfish intentions in making these proposals; I just don’t like the term limit suggestion.
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p>I don’t think it is fair to say that everyone who defends Menino always imputes the motives of his detractors. It is no more valid to refute an attack on Menino by pointing out the poster supports an opponent than it is to attack me by falsely implying that I work for the City (BTW, I am still waiting for an apology on that). I don’t recall ever reading anyone accusing Menino critics of wanting “Boston to fail” or “hating America”, but I agree that would be a crazy line of argument.
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p>You are quite right that there is something ironic about engaging in a long thread on the meaning of “obsession”. The real obsession is spending too much time lurking here instead of doing real work. 😉
but they do not work for City Hall, and they have this thing called “vacation”. Fortunately, since you do not sign my paycheck, I can boldly do with my vacation whatever I want. The split infinitive is intentional.
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p>Should you be interested in why I care about getting the city charter overhauled, do you think that maybe, just maybe, my continual references back to the city ordinance on police staffing levels, might have something to do with why I may be passionate about this topic, more so than others. Connect the dots.
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about how you are waiting for an apology from me, or I would have addressed that bit earlier.
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p>I have no proof whatsoever that you work directly (or indirectly) for Menino, but this is not the first time we have crossed paths, and I live by the following:
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p>You may do with this, what you will.
of Boston voters who sent him back to City Hall last November. Like it or not, Menino is still really popular.
so that is all you see. If you are the only person seeing ducks, then perhaps you should question your own perceptions and biases rather than continuing to jump to conclusions.
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p>Anytime anyone disagrees with you regarding Menino you always assume they work for city hall. I really don’t understand why you are intent on pissing me off when the only thing I have never dissed Mike Ross and have only disagreed regarding term limits. It seems you would rather make enemies of anyone who contradicts you in any way than you would like to convince people you are right through rational argument.
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p>If you go back and read through my posts through the years I have been here, you will find absolutely no evidence that I have any special knowledge of anything going on in City hall.
Your assumption that I work for City hall and refusal to apologize despite my many protestations is discourteous and petty. Furthermore it is a sure demonstration that you are willing to invent facts in an attempt to win arguments.
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p>BTW, “HR’s Kevin” is my greyhound’s racing name. I have no idea what the HR really stands for. You would have to ask his original owner.
I think you’re the one who is a bit obsessive. So focused on promoting your boy Ross that you refuse to even respond to the substance of my posts, you accuse everyone of being a Menino puppet.
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p>I’m quick to respond to the term limits issue because it’s a very stupid Republican talking point and has been since FDR’s days. When Ross is throwing red meat to conservatives, I’m going to knock him for it.
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p>Ross doesn’t actually give any reason to support term limits, and neither do you. It’s just one of those things that not very informed voters think sounds good. Either Ross is an idiot, or he’s pandering, or this is his path to becoming Mayor. Take your pick.
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p>If you were more worried about the truth and less about slandering everyone who criticizes Mike Ross you’d realize that this is the first time I’ve posted on a topic that’s even tangentially related to Menino. My beef with Ross not the implicit criticism of Menino, it is his adoption of Republican talking points in furtherance of his own ambitions.
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p>There was no typo. It was sarcasm. But apparently you’re too busy shilling for Mike Ross to get it. Why don’t you tell us what ties you have to him?
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p>What does oh noes mean? Perhaps I am too stupid to understand this language?
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p>Further, I didn’t slander everyone, I responded to you individually. Do you speak for everyone? I choose to only speak for myself.
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p>Further, I didn’t slander you, as you slandered Michael Ross, because I know of no way in which the word “obsessive” is slander, it is a personality trait. Claiming that Michael Ross is using his position on the city council to engineer his eventual elevation to Mayor meets two of the three criteria for slander.
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p>Further, I didn’t accuse everyone of being a Menino Sock Puppet. All of my comments about Kevin’s adventures in Sock Puppetry have been stated as opinions, NOT FACTS, and have been directed at my good friend or nemisis, Kevin and no one else. Being a Menino apologist is not the same thing as being a Sock Puppet, unless I am completely mistaken.
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p>Meanwhile, back on the planet Earth, since when is term limits a republican talking point. In 1948, when the 22nd amendment was passed, Democrats still controlled congress, and it took more than just a majority vote to pass it. Now that we have had 11 presidents, there is enough data on the issue to determine the merits of term limits, without having to go all Glenn Beck on us.
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p>Did you notice what I did there. Despite your efforts to make this personal, I brought the topic back to the original point.
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p>Finally, I live in District 3 and Michael Ross represents District 8. When the student housing issue came up a few years ago, I supported his efforts both individually and as the president of my local civic association. When he announced, on BMG, that he was going to begin a review of the City Charter, I was supportive of that process then and now. When he supported the Restaurant Rejevenation Act, I was supportive of him then as well. I have testified at City Council hearings over the years, and have spoken to him privately around a dozen times or so. Is this enough to satisfy your conspiracy theory?
Except for FDR, every POTUS prior to the 22nd amendment would have been in compliance with modern law, so apparently not that many people were very interested in a third term, or those who were, like Theodore Roosevelt, didn;t get it.
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p>I would have voted for FDR all four times, so if we’re relying on Presidential data points, you’ve made my case.
Now, care to make your own? Because it really sounds like you don’thave one.
and others who felt that they are more important than the office and become dictator for life. What about Hugo Chavez, or Pinochet or the Shah of Iran?
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p>Anyone who holds the executive office (President, Governor, Mayor) for life is toying with monarchy, and that is against the American ideal as well.
With the exception of Chavez, none of the people you mention were ever elected. And Chavez, ot much worsewhile certainly not respectful of the rights of political minorities, does not belong in the same categories as the others.
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p>Chavez is not much worse than Bush II would have been if left unchecked. Was it term limits that kept Bush under control? No, he made his dictatorial aspirations known from the start. It was a Constitution providing protection for his political enemies, which is something neither Chavez nor any of the unelected dictators you mention have.
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p>To compare Menino to Pinochet brings your sanity into question. If Menino starts massacreing Floon supporters, he’ll be gone long before the next election. Even if Obama tried that, he would be declared unfit immediately and impeached post-haste.
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p>There are way too many differences between the City of Boston and post-coup Chile to use that as a basis for any rational comparison. Also, your position on home rule, which I agree with btw, contradicts your position on Mayoral term limits. The Mayor can’t be all-powerful yet simultaneously powerless in the face of the Leg and Gov. make up your mind.
When talking about “Term Limits” in the hypothetical, it is reasonable to give examples over a range of very good to very bad. We are not talking about “Term Limits” for Menino. We have never been talking about “Term Limits” for Menino. We are talking about “Term Limits” as a concept in general for President, Governor, Mayor or any conceptual executive office, as well as the rational for term limits for legistlative offices.
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p>Castro is president for life, Chavez is trying to become president for life. The discussion is whether you want ANY executive office to be Executive for Life.
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p>For you to suggest that I am comparing Menino to Pinochet on the gross abuse of human rights and life, because I use them both in a discussion about “Term Limits” is f***ing insane.
What you’re doing is setting up a straw man. Of course no one wants Pinochet to be President for life, or even Chavez. But that’s completely irrelevant to this discussion, because anyone whose term limits or lack thereof we’re discussing in the US has restrictions on their powers that none of your examples had.
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p>Pinochet didn’t become bad after spending a little too long in office. He started that way. Pinochet should have been prevented from ever holding office. What you’re making a case for is democratic elections. Ditto for the Shah. Castro was an improvement over Batista but probably worse than a new leader would be at this point, so I can’t really say he started off bad. But he could have been removed through democratic elections if those existed.
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p>Chavez is the only remotely relevant example, and his dictatorial conduct started right away. He didn’t wait. So if you’re going to use dictators as an argument for term limits, you need to find someone who, in spite of democratic elections and constitutional protections similar in extent and strength to those in the US, started off as a good leader and then became a tyrant. I’m willing to bet you can’t find those because the Bill of Rights and free elections prevent them from existing.
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p>If you wanted to use Mayor Curley as an argument for term limits, you’d still be wrong but at least on the same plane as reality.
So yay or nay: repeal the 22nd amendment? Just curious, as I have not often heard people advocate this. Guess it’s because I only hang out with uninformed closet Republicans.
Hell yes. This should be the decision of the voters at the time of any given election, not a decision forced upon us by the dead hand of the past.
Just wanted to get you on the record one way or another.
I applaud the Leg and the Gov for getting the national popular vote plan passed. Even if I agreed with his policies I would have questioned Bush’s character and integrity when he accepted the Presidency after losing the election. I think Electors have a moral duty to vote for the winner of the popular vote, regardless of who they are pledged to, if the alternative is an unelected President.
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p>I am happy to live in a state which has a strong ballot initiative process, even though it is often abused by conservatives for all the wrong things.
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p>I tend to support executive power over legislative because executives are elected by all of the voters their laws apply to, but legislators are elected by groups of people who often don’t have the best interests of the nation/state/city at heart, and geographic boundaries matter more than good policy to them. E.g. the U.S. Senate, where Senators representing less than 15% of the US population have the power to kill legislation. And even the last time the GOP was in the majority, more people had voted for Democratic Senatorial candidates in the last 6 years than for Republicans. I do, however, support the power of the judicial branch to protect individual/minority rights when they are attacked by the majority. This does not extend to the right of states to go against the federal government when it is tryign to protect individual rights.
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p>While we’re on the subject, let me kill my chances of ever being selected as President:
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p>I refuse to give money to the DNC because even after seeing the idiocy of their undemocratic nominating process in 2004 and 2008 they refuse to change it. Iowa and New Hampshire voters should be ashamed of their states’ insistence on having all the power. Iowa voters in particular should be ashamed. They picked John Kerry because Howard Dean had several years earlier made comments similar to what I’m saying now. John Kerry was an unelectable candidate with crappy policies but they were more worried about their petty grudges than about winning an election or doing the right thing.
Not amendment is 100% pure goodness. I really don’t think the 22nd amendment solved any real problem faced by the country and could be repealed without causing any harm, but given the special case of Presidential power I don’t especially mind it remaining in place.
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p>So for me term limits are borderline for the President, and no other office comes even remotely close to justifying the cost.
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p>Regarding Menino, I think he has been a good mayor, sometimes even a great mayor, and I definitely do not think that Boston would have been better off if he had not been allowed to stay in office more than 8 years. So that belief alone definitively refutes the concept of mayoral term limits.
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p>What I don’t understand is why people who propose term limits for the Mayor seem so against them for City Council members.
Any executive position (President, Governor, Mayor) has powers above and beyond that of any legislative body, so by trying to create a one-size-fits-all rule, you immediately defeat the benefit of creating a goal line in order to get things done.
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p>Take the city council. After Flaherty held onto city council president for 4 or 5 years, the disenfrancized councilors need to form a pact. They agreed to support Feeney in exchange for term limits on the president and other concessions for moving bills forward. After two years, Ross took over for Feeney. Ross is now in a position to get the things he want to accomplish done, before his time is up, but without term limits, he could just as easily be trying to create a “President for Life” situation. That is were the benefit arises. Does this mean Feeney isn’t getting things done now, or that Ross won’t in the future? No. Would there have been any real harm in Menino serving for eight year, then either running for higher office or returning to the council? No.
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p>Unfortunately, we have people thinking that Menino and only Menino can be Mayor, and the cult of personality that creates is reprehensible.
I am not aware of anyone who believes that only Menino should be mayor. I didn’t even vote for him in the last preliminary election (I went for Yoon). I see zero evidence of any “cult of personality” around Menino, and that is the first I have ever heard it being applied to him. I also don’t see what is inherently “reprehensible” about any so-called “cult of personality”. That is a word one usually reserves for much worse offenses. Once you start calling popular politicians “reprehensible” just because they are more popular than you think they deserve to be, then you don’t have any words to apply to genuine criminals. Of course, such is the nature of the internet that it invites this type of hyperbole (thus Godwin’s Law).
Then they must not exist. I know of no one who has been to the Galopogos Islands so they must not exist either.
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p>Try reading the comments to Globe and Herald articles some day and you will see hundreds of people who thing Menino should be Mayor for Life. You will also see people who think Menino should be in jail, or run out of town. I am quite sure these people don’t exist because you don’t know them either.
Fill in the blank below in HR Kevin’s words.
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p>I betcha we could find 100 or so big and small city Mayors who are as highly regarded as Tom Menino by respected community activists, who probably mount campaigns to make him change/improve/stop/initiate something 4 times a year, and still respect him as someone who knows so much, listens so well, responds so appropriately (sooner or later) and who has cared so much for so long about the city and it’s neighborhoods. I do go on sometimes …………….
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If so, I should point out for the 100th time that I have absolutely no connection with City government or any politician. Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or ignorantly repeating other peoples lies.
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p>If you are talking about someone else, perhaps you should say who you are talking about.
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p>In any case, I totally agree about Home Rule and increasing City Council power, as long as the latter does not result in deadlocked government. Giving the City Council more power would also lessen the need for term limits for Mayor (or increase the need for term limits for Councilors depending on your point of view).
…when you say you don’t work for the city or the mayor, but to be fair you do have a habit of being very quick to defend Menino.
Going out tonight, and as I do not like to post while drunk, Kevin and Patrick, I will see you here tomorrow.
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p>By the way, Marriage Equality in California, yeah!!!!!!
Make the Boston City Council Prez a separately elected position, like NYC’s Public Advocate. It’s the first in the line of succession to Mayor, which corrupts the political process by encouraging Mayors to bribe the council to install their guy as as President and then leave mid-term so their guy starts as an incumbent. Having the voters elect the Council Prez would solve that. The Mayor could still campaign for his favorite, but there wouldn’t be the same kind of backroom deals.
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p>And Mike Ross wouldn’t be council president anymore, which is a nice plus.
How about returning some of the previously elected positions, like the school board or a commercial planning board (or even the public library) to be elected positions.
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p>Right now, the entry level position in Boston for any elected official is City Council.
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p>I have been in groups where the president is elected directly, and where the president is elected by the board from its own members to be president. I see benefits to both, but right now, in an evironment where only 13% comes out to vote in off year elections, expanding the field of offices would be a plus. Finally, we agree on something, but not the Ross part.
More than one thing we agree on here. Absolutely the school board should be elected. Most other committees too.
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p>Chairs/Presidents of boards should be elected separately for the same reason I tend to trust executive power over legislative: it means you have someone who represents the interests of the whole city, not just a narrow constituency.