The Richardson City Council directed the City Manager to draft a City Charter amendment that would require a council member who announces their candidacy for another office to immediately resign from the City Council. The amendment, if passed by voters in May, would apply retroactively, meaning that Council Member Dan Barrios, who is running for Congress, would automatically be removed from office.
Can they do this? Setting aside the retroactive nature of the amendment, they can. ("A home-rule city with two-year terms may provide in its charter that a mayor or council member who becomes a candidate for another office automatically vacates the current office." — Attorney General Opinion No. GA-02 17.)
In 1951, the nation passed the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, limiting a president to two elected terms. They thus ensured that Franklin Roosevelt would be the only person to be elected to the office more than twice. Technically, that last sentence isn't entirely accurate. The 22nd Amendment carved out an exception for the then current president Harry Truman. ("But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress...")
What was their thinking? Many legislators argued it would be unfair to change eligibility rules mid-presidency. Retroactive disqualification was viewed as setting a dangerous precedent that could be used as a partisan weapon to target political foes, undermining any legitimacy it might have as a principled, structural reform.
Those arguments apply in Richardson's case as well. Instead of making this election about principle, it's already being recast as a way of removing a single person from office, Councilmember Dan Barrios. Whatever goal some might have had to remove partisan distractions from Monday night Richardson City Council meetings, we are immediately seeing just the opposite, an immediately intensified partisan circus.
I urge the council to reconsider. Put aside this personal retroactive punishment of Barrios for not choosing to resign voluntarily. It's divisive. It makes the other council members look vindictive. Instead, the council should recommend a principled amendment to enact reform that's forward looking. We can live with a temporary, messy situation that we will find ourselves in regardless. Take the high road here.
"Write for those unborn,
not the rival of this year.
Charter looks forward."
—h/t ChatGPT
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