Forty minutes before a committee meeting where the legislature planned to discuss whether to take legal action regarding County Executive Ryan McMahon’s mistakenly signed term limit bill, McMahon put out a statement establishing what he called a “path forward.”
“The people of Onondaga County deserve better than confusion, division and costly litigation. They deserve a process that restores confidence and lets voters decide on this issue the right way,” said McMahon in the statement.
In McMahon’s proposal, the legislature would approve two new laws, putting both the three-year term limits and the previously rejected four-term limits on the ballot at the same time. They would be on separate ballot lines, and voters would vote yes or no to each separately. If neither achieved a majority of votes, there would be no term limits. If only one did, that law would go into effect. If both won majorities, the item with more votes in favor would become law.
A similar idea was discussed when the legislature was debating between two term limits laws at the beginning of the month. A vote on four four-year term limits previously came to the legislature and failed to achieve the required number of votes to pass. One legislator, Dan Romeo, voted for both laws, aiming to allow voters to choose.
McMahon said he discussed the proposal with both Chairwoman Nicole Watts and Minority Leader Brian May.
Legislature spokeswoman Ruthnie Angrand said that any discussions have been “casual presentations of ideas,” and any statement that this specifically had been discussed would not be accurate.
Angrand had not seen the proposal until Central Current sent it to her.
Neither Watts nor May said they had gotten any formal communication about the proposal, although May said just about every possibility had been discussed in some capacity. Maybe they had talked about it “among a bunch of other possibilities,” May said.
With the deadline to bring resolutions to the Board of Elections looming, McMahon’s proposal would bump the debate back a year until 2027. The legislature will face reelection this year, while McMahon is up for reelection in 2027.
County attorneys framed the proposal as a path forward which would sidestep potential looming legal costs. County Attorney Bob Durr said that it was a “reasonable compromise,” and that should it pass, litigation would not be necessary.
Dustin Czarny, an Onondaga County elections commissioner, was not sent the proposal by the county executive’s office. When Central Current sent it to him, he said that based on the quick research he was able to do, he found the proposal “legally dubious at best.”
His concern was centered on what happened if both laws passed. Czarny said he talked to experts from the Democratic side of the New York State Board of Elections, and they weren’t sure that there was precedent for putting two competing resolutions next to each other on the ballot. Czarny was not sure that it would be possible to simply choose to put the law with more votes in place if both passed.
“I think if this were put on the ballot in 2027, if both came back with a yes in 2027, then we may be in court in 2027 to try to determine which one has the validity of law,” Czarny said.
Durr, the county attorney McMahon has said is responsible for the original goof, said it had not yet been researched enough to be called legally dubious.
“It hasn’t been challenged. I think there’s some basis for it at this point,” Durr said.
Durr said that there was precedent in other jurisdictions in New York, but could not immediately name an example. The proposal was reviewed by the county law department, Durr said.
Multiple-choice referendums are explicitly not allowed, said Czarny. Referendums can only be decided by a majority, not a plurality.
Despite his concerns, Czarny said that if the legislature clerks gave him two competing items to put on the ballot, he would.
While Durr said that McMahon’s proposal would make potential litigation unnecessary, Czarny disagreed.
“Whether the legislature moves forward is separate from what I have to do,” Czarny said. “I’m not waiting for them to make a decision. I believe my decision is separate from them.”
If Czarny were to decide to bring a lawsuit, it would be based on the fact that he does not believe the board of elections has the legal right to refuse to put on the ballot a signed law brought to them before the legal deadline by the legislature clerks.
He said that if the legislature tried to rescind the law, he would take that into consideration. But he was not sure of how that could be done.
Asked what the difference was between a potential rescission from the legislature and McMahon’s attempted rescission of his signature on the approved law, Czarny said he would have to look into that. They might have to vote on it, he said.
“Unfortunately, the debate over term limits has become more about the process than the policy itself,” said McMahon in his statement. “Through that confusion it has become easy to lose sight of where I have consistently stood.”
McMahon said that he has always been willing to compromise on term limits, and that his concerns are not related to the prospect of term limits themselves but rather the process used to attempt to pass them, which he said should be decided through “meaningful public discussion, bipartisan collaboration and community involvement.”
In the red
At the Ways and Means committee, Comptroller Marty Masterpole explained that the county was significantly over budget outside counsel for the county law department.
Masterpole’s visit was added to the Ways and Means agenda after Central Current asked Angrand about the county law department having almost $1 million in encumbrances for outside counsel.
Legislators expressed confusion about why they had not known that the county had gone over budget in encumbrances. Generally, said Masterpole, this kind of thing would be sorted out through end of year transfers. That way, the county could use under-budget accounts to balance over-budget accounts.
Chief Financial Officer Kristi Smiley clarified that while most costs over $7,500 come through the legislature, there are parameters. For example, the county cannot decide to not pay payroll if it goes over budget.
“There are only certain accounts that we would ever run into the red,” said Smiley.
She also explained that encumbrances are for anticipated costs, and that the timing on them was uncertain. It was possible, she said, that expected litigation might occur in 2027, making calculating the year’s expenses from its encumbrances complicated.
Smiley said that the county had been able to cover its overages with savings from other accounts in years past, and that raising the budget would risk overtaxing residents.
“With the year-end clean up, all of those costs are either encumbered or expensed already,” said Legislator Dan Romeo. “So there really isn’t a choice, right?”
Smiley said that there was a very select number of items with that year-end authority because there was a statutory requirement regarding things like payroll, for example.
The presentation was somewhat contentious. Minority Leader Brian May questioned why Masterpole would give the presentation, saying that it “smacks as political as hell” and that similar presentations had not been given in years past.
“We have a budget that exploded here, in this budget line. We know why it’s sensitive right now,” Masterpole said. “Everybody’s talking about how much an outside legal action could cost.”
Ways and Means Chair Mo Brown said he called Masterpole in as they considered legal action. He was not comfortable going over budget, but that seemed to be what was happening, he said.
Smiley and Masterpole both confirmed that the Legislature could go over its outside counsel budget for litigation. It would be more complicated if they went over for other reasons.
“That’s where things get a little sticky,” said Smiley, explaining that outside of litigation, the legislature could use county-provided counsel instead of outside counsel, making the expense more difficult to defend.
As the Ways and Means committee entered executive session to discuss whether or not to sue, representatives from the county attorney’s office had to leave.
Not only were they adverse, explained Durr, but they would also potentially be witnesses in any litigation.
Legislators did not answer reporters’ questions about whether they were planning to pursue litigation.
Best interest
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Leaders across the political spectrum want to see term limits. May pointed out that every legislator had voted for term limits in some capacity.
The legislature does not need a referendum to pass term limits. They could pass a local law that established term limits without going to the ballot. But lawmakers in both parties have insisted they want it to be up to the people. The previous legislature, then run by a Republican majority, sent term limits on their own positions to the ballot in 2025.
“We know what the voters want,” May said. Now, they were trying to build consensus on next steps, he said.
Democratic leaders pointed out that there were separate questions around term limits, which they said they are determined to see pass, and the question of whether the board of elections could block a signed law. Allowing one elections commissioner to block a law was a “dangerous precedent” to set, said Brown.
The legislators are balancing these questions and the potential financial costs of suing the county.
“Every dollar matters,” said Watts, as she spoke about people with disabilities in her community who might be losing SNAP benefits. “However, I think it’s also important for us to recognize that we are not a democracy if we’re not a democracy.”
She said she did not want to be hyperbolic, but she was concerned.
“These are the little moments that can make history into the future,” Watts said. She said that every taxpayer dollar spent needed to go to the best interests of the county, and what they needed to determine now was what those interests would be.
