This past Tuesday, I watched the Orange County Board of Supervisors vote to begin the process of extending their terms in office.
I had two items on my to do list for the day, watching the Board of Supervisor’s Meeting, and sitting on hold with the California Department of Motor Vehicles to get some needed information.
I don’t know which one was more painful; spending 1 hour and 52 minutes on hold with the DMV or watching the majority of the board place a deceptive, self-serving initiative on the ballot.
Claiming that the item needed to be heard “as soon as possible” to ensure that it made the low voter turn-out recall election this fall, it was slipped on as a supplemental agenda item by county counsel. The obvious reasoning behind the emergency addition was, of course, because waiting until the next regular election to place it on the ballot would keep some members of the board from being able to stay the extra 12 years.
For decades, taxpayers have watched the Sacramento bureaucracy put forward deceptive ballot titles and summaries on initiatives in hopes that the average voter will be fooled. Now the OC BOS is following suit. Calling it a “Lifetime Ban after Three Terms in Office,” they are practically begging you for a yes vote. Let’s be real, who isn’t for a lifetime ban for politicians? What they are counting on, is that you won’t read the fine print which explains that they are actually extending their own terms in office by 12 additional years. It also doesn’t really ban former supervisors from coming back. With the term limit extension component included, even former supervisors could run again for an extra 12 years.
More than anything, what makes me angry is that the actual purpose of this initiative is not front and center and clearly being stated. The Board of Supervisors action make it clear that they don’t really care if there is a lifetime ban. If they did, that would be the only subject matter in the initiative – a simple ban to keep former supervisors from returning. The lifetime ban is a red herring in the initiative that the supervisors are hoping we are all too stupid to recognize.
Supervisor Don Wagner, one of the two no votes along with Supervisor Katrina Foley, was firm in his opposition to an initiative that purposedly tries to fool the electorate, “The rules were clear when we ran. We ought to live by those rules. It is not clear to the public that the clock will be reset.”
Voters overwhelming like term limits. There has been talk about implementing term limits on members of Congress for years. If this initiative was to strictly increase term limits from the 8 years now in place for supervisors to the 12 years being proposed, it would most likely go down in flames. This is not about gutting term limits; it is extending them
If this initiative passes, the earliest date that one of the current members of the Board of Supervisors will be termed out is 2034. You read that right, that’s the earliest date. Others won’t be termed out until 2036. But those are the details we won’t see in the ballot summary.Serving in one elected office was never meant to be a lifetime pursuit. There is an arrogance to the idea that you are the only one smart enough to understand how to govern. And when elected officials start to actually believe this, it is time for them to move on.
I am going to put my faith in the voters of Orange County to make that message perfectly clear.
Carolyn Cavecche is CEO and president of the Orange County Taxpayers Association.
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June 29, 2021 at 03:30PM
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Voters must reject OC supervisors’ deceptive term limits plan - OCRegister
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