Wichita voters set term limits for City Council. The council could change them.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story understated Wichita’s mayor’s and city council members’ annual salaries, which are $99,816.29 and $44,362.86.

UPDATE, Tuesday, 10:50 a.m.: The Wichita City Council has tabled a term limit extension until February 2020.

Vice Mayor Jeff Blubaugh, who proposed enacting the term limit change from two to three by council vote, said it’s clear the decision will have to be made on the ballot.

Original story:

Local activists are prepared to challenge Wichita’s City Council if it decides to extend term limits on Tuesday.

Wichita’s mayor and city council members are limited to two consecutive four-year terms. Those limits were set in 1991 after the city council, joining municipalities across the country, put the question to voters.

Before then, Wichita’s mayor and city council members had no term limits.

On Tuesday, the City Council is scheduled to consider allowing incumbents to run for a third term. Three of the seven city council members are entering or serving their second terms, meaning the change would allow them to run in upcoming elections.

The council has three options:

Approve. The council can approve the extension with five votes. If it passes, voters who don’t like the change will have 60 days to gather 5,022 petition signatures so it can be placed on the ballot during a special election.

Reject. Wichita’s seven-member city council can reject the measure Tuesday with three votes against it.

Let voters decide. The council can decide Tuesday if it wants to put the question of term limits to voters during a special election that would be scheduled at a later date.

“I’m ready to lace up my shoes and knock on doors and get signatures,” said local activist Beckie Jenek.

If the ordinance passes, Jenek and others will be hitting the street to get more than 5,000 signatures in 60 days.

But she said she’s hoping the council stops the measure before it passes. To give the council a better idea of how unpopular the idea is, Jenek and another activist, Lori Lawrence, have been sharing an online petition against the term limit extension. The petition was started Sunday and had about 300 signatures on Monday afternoon.

Jenek lost last month’s Wichita City Council District 4 race against Vice Mayor Jeff Blubaugh, who is about to start his second term and has spearheaded the term limit change.

Blubaugh said the change would ensure city government remains responsive to voters. He said Wichita’s council-manager form of government gives unelected staff too much power if there’s high turnover on the council.

First elected to the Wichita City Council in 2013 in a special election to replace Michael O’Donnell, Blubaugh said council members rely heavily on city staff until they have a grasp of the largest city government in Kansas.

Under Wichita’s council-manager form of government, the city manager makes personnel decisions and handles the day-to-day operations of the city. While Wichita’s mayor is considered a full-time position with an annual salary of $99,816.29, city council members are considered part-time and receive $44,362.86 a year. They vote on key decisions and provide direction for the city manager. The city manager directs staff to carry out the will of the council.

Having term limits flips that responsibility, Blubaugh said.

And once elected officials have a good grasp of how the city is run, they have to leave their seats, he said. That makes it easy for outgoing council members to be lame ducks, he said.

“Staff can tell you whatever you want to hear. And after a certain amount of time, they know that you’re gone, and you’re leaving. I would be interested in having some term limits for staff,” Blubaugh said.

“If you look at the electeds, we’re in there working 50 or 60 hours a week on a part-time salary. We’ve all got to have second jobs out there to make ends meet,” Blubaugh said.

“So at this time, I say if somebody wants to run again, we should give them the opportunity to run again. If the voters don’t like the direction they’re going, throw them out.”

Why now?

Most larger cities in the country have term limits for their elected officials. But of Kansas’ largest cities, only Wichita and Hutchinson have term limits for city council and mayor, according to the city’s report on the term limit measure.

If Wichita passes the proposed chartered ordinance on Tuesday, it won’t become valid for 60 days. During that time, if a petition signed by 10 percent of the voters who voted in the last city election is filed with the City Clerk, the ordinance would have to be placed on the ballot for approval.

Blubaugh said he’s not against putting it on the ballot, but said it might be expensive to hold a special election.

Jenek said if extending term limits was such a high priority for the council, why wasn’t it placed on the ballot last month. She said the issue never came up during the city council race and she doesn’t know why it’s being brought up now.

“When I was out knocking on doors, term limits came up a lot,” Jenek said. “But it was people saying they’re happy we have term limits and that term limits are a good idea.

“No one was advocating for extending term limits during the campaign.”

Blubaugh said the idea of extending term limits has been brought up in the past by outgoing city council members. He and Council member Clendenin told The Eagle last week that they were leaning towards voting for the proposal. Blubaugh said he believes outgoing Mayor Jeff Longwell will support it, too.

Public hearing?

A city council voting to extend its own term limits after voters imposed them is not without precedent.

In the 1990s, New York City approved two consecutive four-year term limits for its city council and mayor. But in 2008, the council voted to extend term limits for elected officials from two to three terms.

The move was motivated in part by a desire to keep former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who argued a third term was necessary because his business acumen would help guide the city through the Great Recession.

New York’s City Council made the decision despite polls saying the vast majority of voters favored a referendum. Lawsuits challenging the council decision at the state and federal level were unsuccessful.

U.S. District Judge Charles Sifton rejected claims that the council decision nullified the results of referendums in the 1990s establishing the two-term limit and tossed out the lawsuit.

In that instance, Bloomberg gave a three-week notice before the council vote, and New York’s council held 20 hours of hearings before approving the change, according to the Associated Press.

Wichita’s City Council could vote on the change four days after it first became public at Friday’s agenda review.

Blubaugh said because Wichita’s 1991 referendum was close — passing 52-48 percent — it’s appropriate for the City Council to make the decision to amend its own term limits.

“It was a pretty marginal thing,” he said.

Jenek said because the original term limit ordinance was passed by voters, any changes to the ordinance should have to be dealt with at the ballot box. At bare minimum Wichita’s City Council should hold a forum, town hall or other community hearing dedicated to the issue before voting on it, she said.

“That would at least give the appearance of transparency to the process,” Jenek said. “It’s important because so much of the election was about transparency and ethics and corruption. And this term limit decision relates to all of those things.”

Pros and cons of term limits

Corruption, ethics, outside influence and the role of city government all became key issues in the city races last month, when Mayor Jeff Longwell was ousted by voters after The Eagle reported on his relationships with and gifts from contractors on the city’s $500 million water treatment plant contract.

Longwell is the longest serving member on the city council. He completed two terms as a city council member before being elected mayor. Blubaugh said Longwell’s defeat shows that voters respond when they’re unhappy with elected officials.

But the National League of Cities, an advocacy organization for U.S. cities and their leaders, says term limits can help curb abuses of power and inappropriate relationships before they develop.

“First, term limits may reduce potential abuses of power by incumbents who stay too long in office,” a recent report by the organization says.

With each campaign comes campaign contributions. Each time a candidate runs, the influence of a few wealthy parties could grow as they spend more money on a particular candidate over time.

On the other hand, term limits can be seen as an infringement on the democratic process, as citizens are not allowed to select a popular candidate that has hit the end of his or her term, the organization says on its website.

Besides curbing influence from campaign contributors, term limits mean more competitive elections, result in fewer career politicians and promote fresh perspectives, proponents argue.

In Wichita, Jenek worries that longer terms could lead to more disconnect between voters and their elected officials, while taking advantage of the inherent advantage of being the incumbent.

“Having longer term limits gives council members the chance to grow complacent and forget about the people who voted for them in the first place. As incumbents, they get to benefit from name recognition, fundraising and being able to take credit for the city’s accomplishments, including those that were successful because of Wichita’s city staff.”

But term limits can also result in a loss of experience, remove popular leaders and hurt continuity on large projects, according to the National League of Cities.

Blubaugh said the experienced council Wichita has, including Longwell, allows for more creative solutions to problems facing Wichitans. He and Bryan Frye are about to start their second terms. James Clendenin is halfway through his second term.

“There’s situations where we’ll be in a meeting and staff will say, ‘We’ve never done this before.’ And it’s kind of nice having some people on the council that know some of the mechanics of knowing how to get things accomplished for their district and for the taxpayer,” he said.

This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 5:01 AM.