While most of Wilmette’s current and former elected officials like the village’s official term limits, outside observers – including several with admittedly long electoral CVs – are far less sure arbitrary service ceilings are useful.
More Top Picks Best Mattress Cooling Pads Under 1000 Dollars
“People hear ‘term limits’ and they think it’s a good thing. That’s not necessarily true, because the mechanisms of government don’t change when you introduce them. From a civic engagement standpoint, people may like the idea of a term limit but in terms of seeing it ushering in new voices, it’s more a feel-good dimension,” said Jaime Dominguez, a political science lecturer at Northwestern University.
Dominguez said people think term limits help prevent political incumbents from influence by special interests. But that doesn’t normally happen in smaller communities, where the financial rewards for influencing elected officials are small, he suggested.
Laurel Harbridge, an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern, said evidence of term limits’ success is mixed, at least on the state or national level. Only 15 states have limits, she said.
She said some limits supporters say they generate candidates of varied gender, race and age, “but those seem to be tied to changes in demographics rather than term limits.”
While limits tend to reduce the power of bipartisan leaders, they also lower collegiality levels, because elected officials don’t have time to get to know each other for more than a few years, Harbridge said. And when elected officials constantly change, “you end up with staffers having more experience and influence simply because they have more institutional memory.”
Dominguez and Hardbridge admitted they know of few municipal term limit studies. Nor could representatives from professional groups like the Illinois Municipal League and the Northwest Municipal Conference shed light on the local level.
“I don’t think it’s very prevalent. It’s certainly not very talked about,” Illinois Municipal League legislative director Joe McCoy said last month. “It’s not something we track.”
A 2010 survey put out by the Northwest Municipal Conference (NWMC) found that only four of 29 communities that responded at the time – Des Plaines, Grayslake, Lake Forest and Rolling Meadows – had official limits, although Northfield officials indicated their caucus system kept candidates to two four-year terms.
Niles voters have since passed two contradictory term limit provisions, including a village board resolution that currently appears to be operative, limiting mayors to two four-year terms and trustees to three four-year terms.
Certainly, many North Shore communities seem to have left term limits out of their village codes, although Winnetka officially lists two-year terms and board members are unofficially limited to two of those terms via the village’s caucus system.
Other area mayors and village presidents unanimously dismissed the use of term maximums.
Buffalo Grove mayor Jeffrey Braiman, a trustee since 1991 and mayor since 2011, is vice president of the NWMC. He said Nov. 9, “there’s a perfectly good term limit – it’s called an election.”
Skokie mayor George Van Dusen and Lincolnwood village president Jerry Turry, who have held those positions for 15 and 10 years respectively, both after serving for years as village trustees, agreed.
Turry said some communities simply don’t have a large enough pool of willing candidates to make term limits practical. He also pointed out that electorates who might willingly vote for state or national limits appear less willing to have them in their own community.
Van Dusen called limits a local lobbying liability: “It takes a while to learn the job, and also to learn the state legislature, to get acquainted with your colleagues in other municipalities, and form associations.
“Today you need regional relations. Right now we’re faced with important decisions that can only be determined statewide, but require local input.”
All three town executives pointed to former Wilmette village president Chris Canning, saying he had been a valuable ally for municipalities in Springfield and nationally when he worked with the NWMC and the Metropolitan Mayors’ Caucus. Canning left his position in 2013 after hitting his two-term limit.
“When Wilmette and the NWMC lost Chris, we lost eight years of built up experience. He understood the state’s pension problem, and also the municipal pension aspect of that,” Van Dusen said.
“After two terms, Chris had to walk away,” Braiman agreed. “They could have had him longer, and the current mayor, who is also great, could have still been serving as a trustee.”
Even within Wilmette, some former board officials are ambivalent about term limits.
More Top Picks Best Laptop Cooling Stands For Students
Canning himself said he noticed that mayors with more longevity often had legislative connections that proved helpful to communities trying to get things done in Springfield.
Former village board president Nancy Canafax admitted that while she thought term limits work in Wilmette, “on a general level I don’t think they make a lot of sense. The best way to get rid of a bad representative is to vote against him.”