From Philly.com

The entrenched City Council member would become an endangered species under a term-limits bill that Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. said he will introduce today.

Goode’s bill would limit members to three consecutive four-year terms. Currently, members can seek reelection as many times as they want.

“What this means, in the end,” Goode said, “is creating more opportunities for people to serve.”

If voters approved the measure in November – it requires a change by referendum to the City Charter – current Council members could have up to two more consecutive four-year terms.

Goode said he had considered a proposal to expand terms to six years with a two-term limit. He said he was open to amending the bill after public hearings.

The charter change would also allow Council to expand or even eliminate term limits in the future simply by passing an ordinance, without a referendum.

The bill is sure to meet resistance from Goode’s 16 colleagues, 13 of whom are in their third term – or well beyond it.

President Anna C. Verna has been on Council since 1976, Majority Leader Marian B. Tasco since 1988, and Minority Leader Brian J. O’Neill and Councilwoman Joan L. Krajewski since 1980.

Goode is in his third term.

His proposal would not limit a person to three terms. After 12 years, a member could take off a term before coming back and seeking election for three more terms.

Philadelphia has a two-term limit for the mayor’s office. Mayor Frank Rizzo and his supporters tried to change the charter in 1978 to allow him to run for a third term, but voters soundly rejected the move.

As for convincing his colleagues, Goode noted that he had introduced a campaign-finance-reform bill in September 2003 with only one cosponsor, Blondell Reynolds Brown. Three months later, he was able to override a veto by Mayor John F. Street with 12 votes.

Goode said no Council members were aware that he was introducing the bill today. He discussed it only on condition that news of it not be released before this morning.

The bill recognizes “the new independent politics” that brought nonvoters to the polls in 2008, Goode said.

“The issue is simply whether we are representing the people who vote, or who don’t vote, particularly in light of the fact that those people came out to vote for a first-year senator and elected him president of the United States,” Goode said. “That’s the new independent politics.”

Chicago is alone among the nation’s top 10 cities without a term limit of some kind, according to U.S. Term Limits, a nonprofit in Fairfax, Va., that advocates for federal, state, and local term limits.

Support will have to come from the public, said Ray Wotring, spokesman for U.S. Term Limits.

“It’s kind of one of those things – everybody but politicians and lobbyists and special interests,” he said, “love the issue.”