Illinois lawmakers are considering legislation that would negate term limit referendums recently approved by voters in five south suburban communities.
If approved, House Bill 5698 would nullify term limit restrictions recently adopted in Calumet City, Crestwood, Dolton, Harvey and Hazel Crest.
The Illinois House overwhelmingly approved the measure on Nov. 14 by a margin of 99 to 7, with one member voting present.
The state Senate voted 28-17 on Nov. 28 to approve the measure, but the bill needed a three-fifths majority of 36 votes to pass. Fourteen senators – including Michael Hastings, D-Tinley Park and Toi Hutchinson, D-Olympia Fields — did not vote on the bill, an unusually high number.
The Senate may vote again on the legislation during the lame-duck session on Jan. 7-8, said state Sen. Pat McGuire, D-Joliet.
“It’s striking to me that there was bipartisan support in both chambers,” said McGuire, who voted for the bill.
Crestwood Mayor Lou Presta said Friday he was unaware of the legislative proposal that would negate term limit restrictions approved by voters in his community.
“They could overrule us, I suppose,” Presta said of lawmakers.
Courts have upheld municipal term-limit referendums. A federal appellate court in 2017 sided with Calumet City in one case. State Rep. Thaddeus Jones, D-Calumet City — a former five-term alderman in that city — pursued a lawsuit challenging a referendum that rendered him ineligible to run for mayor.
The Illinois Supreme Court ruled in a 2016 case involving west suburban Broadview that state law enables voters to consider clearly worded referendum questions about imposing term limits on municipal officers.
A key legal concept at play in the proposed legislation concerns whether elected officials subject to newly enacted eligibility requirements should be “grandfathered” and allowed to run for office.
The legislation would require that all term limit referendums must be “prospective” — meaning from this point forward — as opposed to retroactive.
Ironically, the legislation would apply retroactively to all term limit referendums passed on or after Nov. 8, 2016.
“Elective office held prior to the effective date of any term limit imposed by a municipality shall not prohibit a person otherwise eligible from running for or holding elective office in that municipality,” the proposed legislation states.
State Sen. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon, said he voted against the bill because it seemed tailored to address the ineligibility of Jones to run for mayor of Calumet City.
“The reason it says 2016 and after is because it was targeting Representative Jones,” Righter told me. “If I was teaching a civics class, I would hold up this legislation and say, ‘This is a great example of what state government should not be doing.’”
Max Solomon, an attorney and community activist who petitioned for the Hazel Crest referendum, said he disagreed with his friend, Jones, on this issue.
“This would specifically benefit him,” Solomon said. “I do not support this.”
Jones did not immediately respond to a message left Friday at his district office in South Holland requesting comment on the bill.
In some towns that would be affected by the change, voters approved term limit requirements by overwhelming margins. In Crestwood, 88 percent of voters in November 2016 decided that the mayor, clerk and trustees should serve no more than three consecutive, four-year terms effective April 2017.
“I’ve got two more terms,” said Presta, who was first elected mayor in 2013 and was re-elected in 2017. That means if he wanted to run again in 2021 and 2025 and won, he could serve until 2029. His first term wouldn’t count toward Crestwood’s three-term limit because the village had no term-limit restrictions at the time.
Unlike Calumet City’s referendum, the wording of Crestwood’s question did not specify that years in office already served would apply to term-limit restrictions. Crestwood’s referendum was prospective, whereas Calumet City’s had a retroactive element to it.
In Harvey, 85 percent of voters decided in November 2016 that the mayor and aldermen should be limited to four consecutive four-year terms, effective April 2017.
In Hazel Crest, voters decided in April 2017 by a margin of 64 to 36 percent to limit the mayor, trustees and clerk to two consecutive four-year terms.
In Dolton on Nov. 6, 65 percent of voters decided to limit trustees to no more than two consecutive terms. The restrictions do not apply to the mayor or village clerk.
In Calumet City, 65 percent of voters in November 2016 decided to limit their mayor to four consecutive four-year terms, and that years served as alderman should apply toward the limit. Then in April 2017, voters decided by a margin of 74 to 26 percent that similar term limits should apply to aldermen.
Those referendum results seem like fairly strong statements from citizens in favor of term limits for their local elected officials. It seems odd that state legislators would want to interfere with the will of local voters.
“I think it’s unfair that someone can serve their community at an aldermanic level, or a park district level and then when it’s time to run for mayor to say ‘because you’ve served so long, you can’t run for mayor. You’re disqualified,’” state Sen. Napoleon Harris III, D-Harvey, reportedly told Illinois News Network in a story published Nov. 29.
Another argument in favor of the proposed legislation was that all municipalities throughout the state should adhere to one set of rules regarding local term limits, INN reported.
But Lansing, Downers Grove and other municipalities that adopted term limit requirements for elected officers prior to 2016 would not be affected by the proposed legislation.
Former Gov. Pat Quinn recently collected and submitted more than 86,000 petition signatures seeking to put a question to voters asking whether Chicago should adopt term limits for its mayor. But election officials ruled the question could not be put to voters in November because Chicago already had three other referendum questions on the Nov. 6 ballot.
House Bill 5698 was co-sponsored in the House by Jones and state Reps. Emanuel Chris Welch, D-Westchester; Grant Wehrli, R-Naperville; and Tony McCombie, R-Savanna.
Senate co-sponsors were Harris; Michael Connelly, R-Lisle; and Iris Martinez, D-Chicago.
Immediately after the Senate voted on Nov. 28, state Sen. Sam McCann, R-Plainview, filed a motion to reconsider the vote.
“A motion to reconsider can be made by a member of the prevailing side when a minimum of 25 votes are cast” on a bill in the 59-member Senate, McGuire said.
If the Senate reconsiders its vote on HB 5698, it would have to take action before the 101st session of the General Assembly convenes on Jan. 9, McGuire said.
“We’ve been known to take votes in lame duck sessions the morning of a new session,” he said. On the other hand, “It’s not unusual for (lame-duck) session dates to be canceled.”
If the reconsidered measure were to pass with a three-fifths Senate majority, Gov. Bruce Rauner would need to sign the bill in order for it to become law. Rauner leaves office on Jan. 14, when J.B. Pritzker will be inaugurated.
If voters and citizens in Calumet City, Crestwood, Dolton, Harvey and Hazel Crest want their term limit restrictions to stand, they may want to express their concerns to their state senators before Jan. 7.