4‑Year Mayoral Terms Back On Agenda

Mayors might have four years instead of two before facing voters again, if a Hamden charter change goes through this year and New Haven follows suit.

The proposal to extend Hamden mayoral terms appears headed for approval to appear on the ballot this Nov. 2 as part of proposed changes to the town charter.

Throughout a highly partisan and heated charter revision process in Hamden (about other proposed changes), the prospect of increasing mayoral terms from two to four years has sparked surprisingly little controversy. At the same time, local leaders have expressed agreement that changing the frequency of mayoral elections could fundamentally alter the way Hamden governs itself.

A group of 15 volunteers known as the Charter Revision Commission (CRC) has been working since September 2020 to use public input and expert insights to draft a new and, hopefully, improved charter. On May 25, they presented the first draft of their charter to the Legislative Council. Read here, here, and here about some of the changes they proposed.

The two-versus-four-year question promises to resurface next door in New Haven as well as the city begins its own once-a-decade charter review process next year. A challenger to Mayor Justin Elicker, Karen DuBois-Walton, ended her campaign last month after hearing overwhelmingly from voters that the first-term incumbent deserves more than two years (especially during a pandemic) to try to enact an agenda before potentially getting voted out.

Other towns that have altered the term lengths of their mayor (or sometimes manager) have historically cited greater flexibility in accommodating learning curves, more time for developing nuanced policy, the chance to attract stronger candidates, and heightened immunity to political pressures as the pros of four-year terms. Greater complacency, less responsive government, decline in motivation to keep taxes in check, Connecticut’s lack of recall provisions, lower voter turnout in non-mayoral elections, and lower public vigilance as potential cons to longer terms.

At the state and federal levels, the leader of the executive branch (governor, president) usually serves a four-year term, while legislators serve two-year terms.

Two-year terms are far more common than four-year terms for municipal chief executives in Connecticut, according to statistics compiled by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities:

• Twenty municipalities with mayor-council forms of government have two-year mayoral terms, versus nine with four-year terms.

• First selectmen serve two-year terms in 85 towns with selectmen-town meeting forms of government, compared to 13 with four-year terms.

• Town managers serve two-year terms in 27 towns, four-year terms in only two.

• In municipalities with other structures, seven top government executives serve two-year terms, while five serve four-year terms.

Hamden Drafters Seek An Executive Upgrade

Hamden’s Council members would continue serving two-year terms under the package of charter changes under consideration in Hamden.

Hamden’s Charter Review Commission (CRC) has submitted its final edits to a list of 28 items that the Legislative Council had highlighted for further consideration during their first of two rounds of charter review. The idea of a four-year mayoral term was not on the Council’s catalogue of issues to return to, but the council technically reserves the right to reject any element of the charter before their Aug. 13 deadline, after which point the council will break the charter changes into ballot questions for Hamden residents to vote on on Nov. 2. At this point in the process, the Council can veto or approve any component of the 145-page document, but may not significantly alter language or propose new ideas.

Council member Brad Macdowall, who is petitioning to get on Sept. 14’s primary ballot as a Democratic mayoral candidate, said that ​“two years is too short for any elected office.”

“Look at what we’ve accomplished on the council over the past two years,” he said. ​“Aside from things that are mandated,” he asserted, such as revising and approving the mayor’s proposed budget, ​“we’ve accomplished nothing of substance.”

“People don’t just walk into a Legislative Council knowing how to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement or how to create a budget,” he said. ​“Those are things you learn on the job. There’s a massive learning curve when you come into the public sector.”

He called four-year-terms the ​“sweet spot” for mayors and councilpersons alike: ​“You’re giving them a good three years to get stuff done and giving the public a chance to get a feel for who they are and what they’ve accomplished.”

Six years, he reasoned, would be too long, because then an official is ​“able to control almost an entire decade.” He did add that he believes term limits become increasingly important as term lengths expand, in order to ensure new voices can enter the political conversation.

While many participants have reached consensus around a four-year term, Republican Councilwoman Marjorie Bonadies told the Independent that she believes the mayoral term should remain two years.

“I believe the voters are better served having a shorter window with which to voice their approval or disapproval with their current elected administration,” she asserted. ​“It’s a check on the progress or lack thereof in town affairs.” She called it an ​“oversight” on her part not to raise that issue in discussions over the charter, during which she prioritized curriculum transparency.

There are currently no restrictions regarding how long elected officials can serve in Hamden. The Legislative Council and Commission quashed plans to introduce a 12-year consecutive term limit across boards and commissions that the CRC had initially proposed. (Attorney Mednick said that under state law, municipalities may not enact term limits or recalls without enabling legislation from the General Assembly.)

CRC Vice-Chair Jackie Downing said that the concept of a four-year term gained momentum during the early stages of charter revision as a compromise between notions of stronger elected mayoral leadership and unelected town manager government.

Back in January, Downing said, many members of the public were advocating for Hamden to transition to a town managerial structure. That would have meant instituting a selection process to seek out candidates with the best credentials to act as a manager, more so than a political leader, to run government day to day.

Ultimately, the commission decided against ​“completely changing the whole town structure,” as Downing put it, over the course of less than a year. Instead, they opened up the possibility of a four-year mayoral term, an idea that was raised but never made it out of commission the last time Hamden consiered revising its charter, in 2011.

Downing argued that expanding mayoral terms to four years ​“opens up the possibility for more skilled people to become attracted to becoming mayor.”

“I may not leave a cushy finance job to go to a two-year job for a lot less money than I’d get in the corporate world and for a lot more hassle than I’d experience in the private sector,” she theorized. Moving to a job that offers four years of security, she said, makes such a transition less risky.

She added that because department heads, like the town planner or finance director, serve coterminously with and are appointed by the mayor, that same option would extend to them.

She echoed Macdowall’s analysis that two years is not a sufficient amount of time to make real progress. ​“The first nine months you’re just getting your feet wet,” she said. ​“Getting your team in place takes a long time. You have to select department heads and pass them by the Legislative Council, which can take up to six months. That’s a full quarter of your term.”

She also pointed out that mayors are stuck with the budget drafted by previous members until late spring of their first term. The last year of their term is usually spent preparing for reelection. So, the budget a mayor drafts themselves could be considered a ​“reelection budget” that aims to win favor with voters rather than prioritize important sacrifices for the town’s future wellbeing.

Council members would continue serving two-year terms under the proposed changes. Downing suggested that two-year council terms could place a check on unpopular mayors. If voters are dissatisfied with a mayor, she said, they will get the chance two years in to vote for council members who can decide whether or not to cooperate with that mayor’s ​“set direction.”

Steve Mednick, the attorney hired to advise the town’s charter revision process this year as well as back in 2011, described the four-year mayoral term, two-year council term system as ​“pro-legislative.”

He added that freeing council members from running alongside mayors each election allows (and requires) candidates to stand alone, rather than campaigning along with a larger slate that can obscure how successful their personal campaign and platform were.

That can also be useful for minority parties, he said, who often suffer from the partisan chaos that often develops ​“when you have a mayor from the dominant party running for election.”

Only eight of the mayor-council municipalities elect mayors to four-year terms rather than two years. Of those eight cities and towns, only Hartford and Middletown elect council members to staggered four-year terms. In the other six municipalities, councilpersons run every two years.

Mednick said that, through decades of helping different Connecticut municipalities rewrite their charters, he has observed that towns that are more politically, socially, and economically homogeneous tend towards managerial systems. Based on that logic, it is unsurprising that a town like Hamden, which has a diverse demographic and extremely politicized council and population, would stick with a mayoral model, which symbolizes an investment in political party representation and leadership.

Hamden’s ongoing debt crisis, however, which has grown over decades of changing town leadership, has catalyzed a fresh focus on bringing candidates with more robust professional qualifications into town offices.

Whether Hamden will achieve that through a four-year mayoral term remains to be seen. The Council will hold another charter revision workshop at 7 p.m. on Aug. 11 and conduct a final vote on either parts or the whole of the CRC’s proposed charter changes on Aug. 12. Then they will draft questions so voters can choose to approve or reject elements of that final charter in November. If the proposal is approved, the mayor elected in 2023 would be the first to hold a four-year term in Hamden.

New Haven Next?

Proponents of four-year mayoral terms have pressed the issue every decade when charter revision commissions form.

Sometimes the proposal has made the ballot — and then failed because the question was packaged on the ballot with unrelated less-popular measures (such as changing the ​“rule of three” civil-service hiring process).

In 2013, proponents advocated again for the idea, but it never made it onto the ballot: a coalition of labor-affiliated alders had just taken control of the Board of Alders and Democratic Town Committee, and were seeking to strengthen the power of the legislative branch in response to concerns about New Haven’s strong-mayor form of government. Click here to read how both sides advanced their arguments in that debate. (The commission did succeed, with voter approval, in changing the name of ​“aldermen” to ​“alders,” creating a hybrid elected-appointed school board, and requiring legislative approval of more top mayoral appointees.)

Mayor Elicker said he expects the four-year term to be part of the discussions next year about what proposed charter changes to put on the ballot.

“I have heard across the board that people think mayoral terms in New Haven should be four years. That’s been a very common theme that has come up in this recent election. It makes sense to me. It’s something that most other cities do, Elicker said.

One candidate for alder this year, Shafiq Abdussabur of Beaver Hills’ Ward 28, said the city should consider giving voters the chance to approve a switch to a four-year mayoral term, combined with term limits. ​“A four-year term would reduce the time an elected mayor often spends campaigning for a second term and provide the ability for the office to use that time to create better growth and stability in the city,” said Abdussabur, who at this point does not face an opponent in the election. ​“Let’s hear what the voters think.”