Allegheny County voters will decide this fall if county elected officials should be subject to term limits, after County Council approved a bill Tuesday that will put the question on the ballot in November.<\/p>\n
Currently only the county executive is term-limited under the home-rule charter. But on Tuesday, council voted 10-4 to allow voters to be asked<\/a> if a three-term limit should also apply to the county controller, district attorney, sheriff, treasurer, and members of council themselves. Under changes made prior to Tuesday vote, the ballot will pose three separate questions, each focused on whether to apply the limits to a different branch of county government.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that it is incumbent upon us \u2014 especially in the national environment that we’re seeing right now, and how little faith people feel with their governments \u2014 that the voters of Allegheny County deserve to decide,\u201d said Dan Grzybek, who was elected to council in 2023 and cosponsored the measure.<\/p>\n Imposing term limits must be done through a change to the charter, and amendments require a majority of voters to approve them in a ballot question.<\/p>\n Proponents cited polls showing broad popular support for term limits and mandatory retiring ages at the federal level: A 2023 survey<\/a> from the Pew Research Center found that an \u201coverwhelming majority\u201d of adults support limiting the number of terms that members of Congress can serve.<\/p>\n But the plan was met with skepticism from some row offices. Representatives for long-serving District Attorney Stephen Zappala and Sheriff Kevin Kraus, who is currently in his second term, spoke against the proposal<\/a> at a committee meeting last month.<\/p>\n The idea also received pushback from council members.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have elections for a reason,\u201d said councilor Bob Palmosina. \u201cIf [the voters] like what [elected officials] are doing and they’re doing a good job, they should stay and they should run again. If the voters do not think they’re doing a good job \u2014 including myself \u2014 vote me out.\u201d<\/p>\n The proposal originated as a ballot initiative meant to clarify term limits for the county executive, who is currently limited to three consecutive four-year terms. And the first of the three questions on the November ballot will address that question, essentially asking voters if they want to delete the word \u201cconsecutive,\u201d and simply bar a county executive from ever serving more than a dozen years.<\/p>\n The second question on the ballot will ask whether voters want to apply the three-term limit to the row offices, while the third will allow them to weigh in on apply the limit to county council.<\/p>\n The feelings of council members were once on display prior to the vote.<\/p>\n \u201cYou tell me what is broke about county government that you need to fix,\u201d said member Nick Futules, a longtime council member.<\/p>\n But Suzanne Filiaggi, a cosponsor of the bill, noted that council considered similar ballot questions in previous<\/a> years<\/a> without sending them to the voters. She said her constituents have been asking to have their say on the matter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not making the decision,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are giving the decision and the power to the voters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Allegheny County voters will decide this fall if county elected officials should be subject to term limits, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-166037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-pittsburgh","9":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","10":"tag-pittsburgh-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}