State Senate President and constitutional scholar Malcolm Smith was on NY1 last night to discuss Governor Paterson’s State of the State speech, which focused partly on a call for enacting widespread ethics reforms. When asked specifically if he would support term limits which, under Paterson’s proposal, would allow state senators and assemblymen to serve a maximum of six two-year terms Smith made a shocking revelation: New York already has term limits.
We obviously consider everything the governor puts forward, but I will remind you that in ten months we’re all running for office again, so we have sort of a term-limit plan already, which is, every two years, we have to run for office. And I think the public would rather be the ones to tell us it’s time to leave than for the 212 members to make that decision …
Paterson and all those good-government groups calling for term limits are going to have egg on their faces when they hear about this.
