Ballot proposals can be murky matters, with opaque language and obscure origins, and voters on the South Fork are faced with two puzzlers this election year.
Proposal One asks whether voters should approve an amendment to allow an Olympic sports complex in Essex County on state forest preserve land. Technically, the amendment would grant permission for the Mount Van Hoevenberg Olympic Sports Complex to be built on 1,039 acres of the Adirondacks forest preserve that is famously termed “forever wild.” But if turning wild forest over to a sports complex sounds alarming, it turns out that environmentalists support the measure — and, more to the point, this sports complex already exists, having been built back in 1970. According to the Adirondack Explorer newspaper, “Mount Van Hoevenberg features ski trails, a bobsled-luge track, hiking and more recently mountain biking opportunities, outside of the village of Lake Placid where the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics were held.” The measure is really about maintaining the integrity of the state constitution in such matters, and it will require the governor to add 2,500 acres of new forest land to Adirondack Park in exchange. This is an easy “yes” vote.
Proposal Two is more of a mess. It asks voters to approve a new Suffolk County law, the so-called Term Limit Preservation Act. Preserving term limits sounds good, right? Well, there’s a much more convoluted story here.
Untangling the fine print, the new law would actually double the term length of county legislators from two to four years. Why, you ask? It’s fallout from a recent New York State law that shifted elections to “even” years, a change that means there will be three Suffolk elections over the next four years. That is indeed inconvenient and costly, and to avoid that, proponents of the Term Limit Preservation Act want Suffolk County to move legislators from six two-year terms to three four-year terms while keeping the total cumulative ceiling at 12 years (12 years being the thing being “preserved”). Winning candidates in this current election, however, would still face another election in the “even” year of 2026, and would therefore serve only one year, facing another campaign cycle almost immediately. As Newsday reports, “the one-year term would not count toward their 12-year term limit, superseding any local or county laws that say otherwise, according to the state law.”
Huh? If you’re confused, so are we. And we think the bill’s authors were a bit addled themselves.
We believe in maintaining the two-year term for county legislators, regardless. Shorter terms keep county legislators on a tight feedback loop with voters, forcing regular check-ins on performance and holding their feet to the fire on budget and fiscal decisions. Shorter terms also lessen the advantage for incumbents and make it easier for fresh blood to enter the political fray. Then, too, the two-year terms mean that our Suffolk legislators are less tethered to the national voting cycle with all its unwholesome political polarization and ugliness.
So despite the appealing sound of “term limit preservation,” Prop Two is a “no” from us.