[Scott Graham]
The First District Court of Appeal has termed out S.F. Supervisor Michaela Alioto-Pier.
Barring last-minute intervention by the California Supreme Court, Alioto-Pier will not be allowed to seek re-election election to her District 2 seat this November. The First District reversed Superior Court Judge Peter Busch on Tuesday afternoon, ruling that because Alioto-Pier has served one full term plus three-quarters of another, she is termed out under the S.F. charter.
Alioto-Pier has argued that because she was appointed to part of her first term and elected to the rest, it did not count as a full term for purposes of San Francisco's term limits law. Both City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Roger Arntz, director of the city's elections department, disagreed with that interpretation. So did the First District.
"Twenty years ago the voters of San Francisco imposed term limits on their supervisors, so that 'no person elected or appointed' could serve 'more than two successive four-year terms,' " Justice James Richman wrote, "and a person appointed to complete more than two years 'would be deemed to have served one full term,' with his or her service rounded up." Although voters have amended the language on several occasions, "nothing changed the rounding up provision."
Justices J. Anthony Kline and James Lambden concurred in Arntz v. Superior Court, A129173.
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