Miami commissioners are poised this week to steal an extra year in office without voter approval. If this were some authoritarian banana republic we’d call it business as usual. It shouldn’t be here.
We can debate the alleged reason for the shift, which is to hold city elections in parallel with national and state contests to get more residents to vote. That’s a perfectly legitimate issue to debate, like it or not. There are arguments both ways.
It’s not the election date switch that is the legal and ethical problem for a democratic society, however, but the undemocratic and probably illegal method.
Three of the city’s elected commissioners, aided by the mayor, who also has a horse in the race, decided that the easiest way to shift election dates is simply to take another year in office as a freebie. They include several who would otherwise be term limited from serving that extra year.
Candidates have already begun to compete for term-limited Mayor Francis Suarez’s job in November, for example. Their legitimate efforts would be tossed aside in order to give Mr. Suarez a pass and another year in office as a parting gift from the city.
Again, the question we’re asking is not about term limits or who should hold office. Those issues are fair game.
What’s not fair game is just stealing an extra year in office that the voters never knew about when they elected the five commissioners and the mayor. They voted for four years and are about to get a fifth, like it or not.
Yet three commissioners approved that theft last week and are poised to make it final this week unless one of them sees the error of his or her ways.
It is an error, according to the state attorney general and governor, twho say voters would have to change the city charter to shift election dates. It’s logical: how can commissioners (and the mayor, who has veto power) just hand themselves a free year in office with no election?
There is a fair, legitimate way to shift election dates from odd-numbered years to even-numbered: just vote to do it now for the future, not the present. Hold upcoming elections in which voters know in advance that terms will be five years instead of four for a single election. That knocks out the self-serving aspect of doing it behind voters’ backs.
There would indeed be a wait to accomplish this fairly and legally, but what is the emergency to change election dates at this moment? Other than benefitting those now in office there’s no emergency. We’ve been doing it the other way about a hundred years – why the sudden rush if not to benefit sitting commissioners or keep unwanted candidates from running for mayor?
Besides acting fairly and ethically and respecting voters’ wishes, there is a practical reason to shifting election dates properly if that’s what the city’s electors vote to do: it keeps state government hands off the city’s functions.
When the attorney general and the governor tell us in advance that a contemplated action is illegal yet the commission steams ahead, that’s a free pass for Tallahassee to start issuing orders to city hall. That would be just as dangerous as city officials stealing a year apiece in office.
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