The LA Weekly broke the story last week – Steve Martin, a former council member in West Hollywood who served between 1994 and 2003 - and who ran again in 2007 and 2011, as spokesperson for WeHoTermLimits.com, declared that a group of West Hollywood residents stands ready to put a ballot initiative limiting council terms to three terms, or a total of twelve years.

Steve Martin served nine on the WeHo City Council before being voted out of office. He has since run for office twice more, but wants to prevent council members from serving more than 12 years.

"It's very hard for a grassroots activist to raise over $100,000 and beat an incumbent," Mr. Martin told the Weekly.

The group holds out hope that the city council itself will put forward the measure, but barring that, they say they are ready to collect the needed signatures and qualify the initiative for the 2013 March election on their own.

They would need between 3-4,000 valid signatures from the 22,000 registered voters in the city to qualify.

The text of their proposed initiative is: No person shall serve more than a total of three terms as a West Hollywood City Council member. For purposes of this section, any portion of a term, whether elected or appointed, shall be counted as a full term. The terms may be served consecutively or non-consecutively. This ordinance shall become effective upon the date of adoption.

Recent efforts to enact term limits came to naught.

In 2007, activist Phil Hoskins tried to gain support for the idea, saying, “In general I think term limits are not a good solution. Ordinarily, the most effective term limit is the voter's power at the ballot box. But in a city which has no real campaign, where he or she with the most money for a campaign usually wins, some means must be found to limit the time any person can serve on the Council.”

During his run for council that same year, activist Ed Buck said in WeHo News, “After 22 years of cityhood, the council is arrogant and out of touch. We need a new team that will listen to you, the residents of West Hollywood. Consider the words of Sal Guarriello himself: ‘Every eight years a city Council member should step down and view government from the outside........Eight years is enough for anyone." That's from his ballot statement in support of term limits in 1997.’”

The initiative Mr. Buck speaks of, a Sal Guarriello-generated term limit proposition, was aimed directly at John Heilman, with whom he had been fighting since his election in 1991.

That year, he tried to recall because of the council's decision to boot his wife Rita from an at-large position on the Planning Commission, fearing too much power being concentrated in one household.

Lauren Meister made two tries for council, but failed. She, too, is behind changing the rules to make it easier to get on council. Photo by MichaelPolesPhotography.com.

According to Mr. Martin, an angry Guarriello complained at the time, "we share a bed not a brain,” but his effort fell short and never made the ballot.

John Heilman, who has served continuously since the city’s founding in 1984, is generally thought of as the target of these term limit proposals, but Abbe Land and now Jeffrey Prang have come into the scopes of those who seek easier turn over at the city’s helm.

According to Mr. Martin, “Beverly Hills has a tradition were Council members limit themselves to two terms. Indeed, Beverly Hills Mayor Nancy Krasne got a boost in her bid for City Council when she ran against a two term incumbent seeking a third term. Apparently Beverly Hills folks have an aversion to entrenched politicians.

“More importantly Beverly Hills Council members tend to mentor future leaders. They have their own school board which served as a potential stepping stone to City Council,” he said.

Another recent council candidate, Lauren Meister, who ran in 2003 and again in 2009, warned against personalizing the effort.

“First, this effort is a team effort… what we all have in common is the feeling that without term limits, we will not see change or "new blood" on City Council.

“Second, I think why this initiative will be successful is that even people who don't necessarily believe in term limits support this effort because they are tired of the same people getting re-elected term after term.

"They believe that the incumbents, who have been in power for 10, 15, 20+ years, are taking advantage of their position -- and although incumbents claim that "elections are term limits," that is not the case," she said.

Council member John D'Amico made one successful try for council and feels the amount of work and smarts brought to bear by the candidates needs enhancement. Photo by WeHo News.

“How many times have you heard about someone wanting to run for Council, but then didn't because they were convinced by an incumbent "not to run this time," — "it's not the right time," — "run next time," or, they were "demonized" because they dared to run? 

"There is no real "mentorship" in West Hollywood, only puppetry. That's why we need term limits.”

She also cited the incumbents’ ability to raise money from development interests and their desire to keep voter turn-out low to favor their voting blocs as a reason to fix limits on their terms.

Both of those assertions got punctured when WeHo News talked to recently elected John D’Amico, who out-polled not only the weak appointed incumbent, a political naïf Lindsey Horvath, but Mr. Heilman and Ms. Land.

Additionally, he raised plenty of money to run a credible campaign.

He said, “I raised almost $80,000 and put in $30,000 of my own money, but the contributions came from a large coalition making small contributions that felt that someone new had to be elected.”

For that reason, he says, “I am not in favor of term limits. If you can do the work to build a coalition of people to support and vote for you, you can get elected.”

He says that making it easier for people to run the government is counterintuitive. “It’s not supposed to be easy; turning over the reins of government is supposed to be hard and you have to prove that you have a coalition of people behind you.”

That said, he has no disagreement with holding a vote on the issue, but he said, “if people want to elect someone new to office, they should spend two-and-a-half years working on changing who is in office, not on working to change the rules for getting there.”

No other council members chose to make statements on the subject.