Council to alter term limits

The Newport Beach City Council is expected to vote unanimously at tonight’s regularly scheduled meeting in favor of an ordinance that would close a loophole on term limits.

The ordinance, which passed the seven-member council unanimously Sept. 22, is coming up for a second reading. It closes a loophole created by a 1992 ordinance that left open the possibility of a council member resigning his or her seat before their four-year term had expired, but running again for two more terms. In 1992, the then-City Council ruled that no member can hold office for more than two consecutive four-year terms. This was done through a ballot initiative where more than 80% of the voters were in favor of the law, Mayor Pro Tem Keith Curry said.

However, under the revised ordinance, members whose term limits have expired, or who have resigned before their maximum two terms have ended, must sit out for four years before they can decide to run again, said Councilman Don Webb. The rewritten ordinance allows them to potentially seek two more four-year terms after sitting out, Webb said.

John Heffernan, a former councilman, who resigned two years before his second term ended, had indicated that he would run again in the 2008 election, Webb and Curry said. Had Heffernan ran, he would have been Curry’s challenger last November.

“It never happened,” Webb said. “It was because it was unclear as to whether or not that was possible. We thought it was best to clarify the issue.”

Curry, who has been pushing for the language of the ordinance to be clarified, said he advocated this only after the election was over.

“This is the time to do it, when it doesn’t apply to anyone special, but just to clear the law up,” Curry said.

He was appointed to the council in 2006, filling the seat Heffernan vacated when he resigned. Curry ran in 2008 and won. Curry can run again in 2012, and if he wins, he could be on the council for 10 years.

The new ordinance states that being elected or appointed to a partial term does not prevent a member from serving two consecutive four-year terms.

Curry said he hasn’t decided whether to run in the 2012 elections.

With this law, Heffernan can run in the next election because his wait time would be over, Curry said. Heffernan, who supports the new ordinance, said he doesn’t plan to run.

However, Heffernan said, because the original law was established through an amendment to the city Charter and not an ordinance, “the argument might be that you should have a ballot measure again,” he said.

“We made these changes, in my opinion, to better reflect the intent of the authors of the original term-limit measure and to plug this loophole,” Curry said.

“It was not aimed at any specific person.”