Westchester Voters to Decide on Four-Year Terms for County Legislators

When it comes to ballot initiatives in 2024, most voters are likely to be aware of the statewide Proposition 1.

It is unclear how many Westchester County votes are familiar with another proposition on the back of their ballot that, if approved, would increase the length of terms for the Board of Legislators from two to four years.

For Westchester County legislators the decision to put that question up for a vote carried none of the controversy that other items on this year’s ballot have generated. The Board of Legislators unanimously approved putting the question to the public, and it has received little fanfare.

For co-sponsoring Legislator Margaret Cunzio (C-Mount Pleasant), who joined with Ben Boykin (D-White Plains) to get the question on the ballot, the longer terms would put a stop to the perpetual need for a lawmaker to campaign for office.

“This would actually enable legislators to legislate,” Cunzio said. “It would also save money for the elections because you’re not having them every two years, and honestly you can get more done with that.”

If approved, the longer terms would go into effect with the November 2025 election.

Cunzio and Board Chair Vedat Gashi (D-Yorktown) said the key factor they are stressing to voters has been making sure it is understood a change would not affect term limits. In 2011, the Board of Legislators instituted 12-year limits for its members.

The only change would be a maximum of three four-year terms instead of six two-year terms.

“The big thing is that the term limits still stand,” Cunzio mentioned. “I never would have supported this if the term limits went away.”

The perpetual need to run for office has become counterproductive, Gashi added.

“It’s kind of absurd, and I think what’s happening is we’re in an environment where you’re constantly campaigning,” Gashi said. “There are certainly cost savings and time and effort savings, but what you hear repeatedly is that people would rather us do the work we were elected to do rather than having to constantly campaign. I think four years would give us that opportunity.”

Legislator Erika Pierce (D-Katonah) said she supported four-year terms because if a legislator would serve 12 years, they would be running for office in six of those years. Add in changes to state election law that has pushed up petitioning to get on the ballot starting in late February or early March in an election year, and a lawmaker is now campaigning for most of the year.

Furthermore, there are issues that arise, such as water quality in parts of her district in northeastern Westchester, that are complicated and last for multiple election cycles, Pierce said.

“There are issues that take a much longer period of time to solve, to get through,” she said.

Also, for counties that have legislatures, Westchester has become an outlier. Most of their colleagues around the state serve three- or four-year terms, Pierce added.

Gsahi said the two challenges lawmakers have faced in getting the word out about the proposition is some constituents believing that term limits would be discontinued, which is not the case.

But the county is also competing for the public’s attention in a year where there is a Presidential election, congressional and U.S. Senate seats are up for grabs as well as the state legislature contests, he said.

Currently complicating the matter is the court challenge that is seeking to overturn the state’s law that switched local and county elections to even-numbered years. If the law holds, it would require that four-year terms become three-year terms in the 2025 elections, to get on an even-year cycle. Therefore, the seats decided next November for the Board of Legislators would expire in 2028.

However, if the state law is overturned, the terms for the Board of Legislators’ seats that up next year would last through 2029.

If the county proposition fails and the state law is upheld, the public would then be deciding on Board of Legislature seats in three of the next four years. That would occur because two-year terms would become one-year terms under the state law, before getting on even-year cycles starting in 2026.

Gashi said there is no doubt in his mind that four-year terms are the preference.

“It’s good governance, so I think that’s why it got the support of the Republican, the Conservative and all the Democrats,” Gashi said.