Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender says he wants city council members and the mayor to serve more than two years between elections. Mayor Allender announced at last Friday’s Black Hills Forum and Press Club that he wants city councilors to serve three-year terms and the mayor to serve a four-year term:
Stretching the terms of office would promote more continuity, political stability and efficiency in city government, Allender said.
“People recognize that the shorter terms are the right environment for unnecessary political pressure,” Allender said [Jim Holland, “Allender Seeking Longer Terms in Office for Mayor, Council Members,” Rapid City Journal, 2015.09.01].
Frequent elections do create political pressure. But pressure from citizens who expect public officials to represent them well and who will fire officials who fail to represent is not all bad. It’s why we have elections.
Frequent elections do reduce continuity, stability, and efficiency. There is obviously some functional minimum for terms of office: elections every week would be too disruptive (not to mention impossible even for us bloggers to keep up with!). Elections must also not be too infrequent: holding elections only once every fifty years would be bad for democracy, essentially installing dictators for life and causing citizen sovereignty to atrophy.
But what is the optimum term length between those extremes? If two years isn’t long enough for a new Rapid City mayor or alderperson to figure out how to manage a city of 71,000 people, wouldn’t that compel us to conclude that our state legislators also need more than two years between elections to learn the ropes of governing a state of 850,000 people?
Or take it the other direction: if we are willing to subject the United States of America to the uncertainty and rookie-tude of a House of Representatives that can turn over completely every two years, why can’t a much smaller, close-knit community like Rapid City bear turnover on a similar timeframe? And might not shorter terms encourage Congresspeople, Legislators, and city councilors alike to climb their learning curves more quickly and get things done faster? If the boss checks in to review your performance every two weeks, you’re going to have fewer weeks when you can coast, right?
Perhaps the length of terms is not as important as ensuring a balance of continuity and power. In Congress, we balance the potential swift turnover of the House with the six-year tenure of Senators. In our Legislature, every Representative and Senator faces re-election every two years, while the Governor gets a four-year term. A longer term for the Governor allows that office to provide continuity in state government, but that greater insulation from electoral pressure may contribute to the Governor’s power over the Legislature. Perhaps in Rapid City the best option would be three-year terms for everyone, with half of the council members facing re-election in 2016, the other half in 2017, and the mayor alone in 2018.
The question for the council is just how much inefficiency biannual elections introduce into city government, and just how bad that inefficiency is compared to the benefits of letting all voters have their say on each elected official’s performance every two years.
Typical Republican that hates being held accountable. What Stevey and his crew should be working on is what I read he said he was gonna do, make building permits easier to get. Wonder how that little project is going?
Predictably, the Chief – oops, Mayor – touts cost savings as a primary benefit of having less frequent elections. Granted, one year in every 4 there would be no city election if his plan becomes law. That assumes there is no concurrent primary election in that year and no school board election either. I’m calling BS on that ‘benefit.’ Furthermore, of all the government expenditures ever invented, I can think of none more worthwhile than elections.
Two year terms in U.S. House, state and local offices are to make it possible to remove a “poor performing” official in a quick amount of time. Since they spend 70% of their time fund raising anyway, two years keeps them from doing too much harm before we can move on replacement.
Actually, almost all members of the Rapid City Council are Democrats including the Mayor (who was supported by Stan Adelstein). So the plethora of governing problems and failures in Rapid City are all a direct result of Democrats’ rule. Reference Chicago, IL and NYC (among many others) for additional cities run straight into the ground by Democrats. By in large Republicans govern marginally better than Democrats, but both need to be replaced entirely by a reformist Third Party as the establishment (Democrats and Republicans has failed miserably. It would be really nice for liberals to acknowledge their huge contributions to the failures.
Really, Frank? Do you have voter registration information on these candidates, who have all run on a non-partisan ballot?
Your assertion that Republicans govern better than Democrats is baseless. On what data do you ground this assertion? I could easily counter that Republicans don’t even believe in the ability to govern well and lead us into gridlock, while Democrats, with their faith in and respect for our ability to work together through government, work harder to make government work in everyone’s best interest.
I seriously doubt Charity Doyle and Steve Laurenti are Democrats. Ritchie Nordstrom most definitely is a Democrat. Can you quantify Nordstrom’s performance against Doyle’s and Laurenti’s? Not on partisan hot button issues, please, but on objective, quality governance.
Stu Whitney, May 27, 2015, lists Allender as a Republican: http://www.argusleader.com/story/stu-whitney/2015/05/27/rapid-city-kooiker-allender-mayor-race-stu-whitney/28010243/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin=
Evidence, Frank. Evidence.