The town of Rocky Mount is asking for term limits for Christmas. But lawmakers in Richmond don’t seem inclined to make that holiday wish come true.
For the third time since 2023, Rocky Mount’s leadership is seeking to implement term limits for its mayor and council via a revised town charter. Should the proposed charter receive majority approval in the General Assembly, Rocky Mount would become the first town in the commonwealth with such term limits.
Spearheading this drive is Rocky Mount Mayor Holland Perdue, who campaigned heavily on the issue. Every year since he took office in January 2023, he has unsuccessfully sent a request to Richmond for a new town charter with a provision limiting a person from being elected to the same office for no more than three consecutive terms.
This year will be no different.
“We’re bringing it back, you know, we’re going to make them at least talk about it again,” said Perdue. “We feel like Rocky Mount knows what Rocky Mount wants. So we’re asking Richmond just to give us that thumbs up that we can allow term limits in Rocky Mount, because the people have spoken.”
A public hearing on the new charter will take place during a town council meeting on Monday. The seven-person body will then vote on whether to once again send the document back to Richmond.
The General Assembly is well aware of the town’s continued desire to introduce term limits.
In late October, Rocky Mount sent its two state representatives a list of legislative priorities in preparation for the upcoming General Assembly session. The “passage of the Town’s Charter” was designated as one of “the highest priorities for the Town of Rocky Mount.”
Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, says Rocky Mount’s leadership needs to rethink its priorities.
“I want to be clear, that of all the needs of the town of Rocky Mount and other towns that I serve and cities that I serve, this should be lower on the priority list compared to what other needs they have from the Virginia General Assembly,” Stanley said. “My concern may be that this is a personal political position, rather than what’s better or what’s good or what’s best for the town of Rocky Mount.”
The General Assembly is only in session for 60 days at the start of 2026. During this limited time, Stanley says he’d rather focus on economic development, emergency management plans and education issues.
“I would think this is a little lower on the priority list during these very critical times. … I don’t see this as a major issue,” he said.
“There are much more important things that we can do than this, especially to serve the citizens,” Stanley continued. “It’s incumbent on all of us when we’re elected, whether at the local level or the state level, to keep our eye on what matters most to the people that we serve, not what is a great political talking point or a part of our own personal political agenda.”
Attorney general’s opinion says term limits are unconstitutional, although Richmond’s mayor has them
Rocky Mount’s attempt to implement term limits faces more than Stanley’s personal opposition; its main obstacle is the Constitution of Virginia.
Stanley’s counterpart, Del. Will Davis, R-Franklin County, carried the bill on Rocky Mount’s behalf the first time the town submitted a new charter in 2023. The measure died in committee after lawyers advised state legislators of a 30-year-old legal opinion.
In May 1991, then-Attorney General Mary Sue Terry responded to an inquiry from Del. Linda Rollins, R-Leesburg, about the constitutionality of limiting members of a county board of supervisors to two terms. The state constitution dictates very few qualifications for someone to hold public office, only that the candidate must have resided in the state for a year and be eligible to vote. The only exceptions to this primarily involve restrictions based on a person’s geographical residence.
Therefore, Terry concluded that term limits would not be consistent with the constitution as “limiting the number of terms of office of members of boards of supervisors does not fall within any of those exceptions.” She added that it would require a constitutional amendment in order to permit term limits.
An attorney general’s opinion does not hold the same legal authority as a law or court ruling. However, as John Dinan, chair of Wake Forest University’s politics department, pointed out, these opinions are still “entitled to significant consideration.”
“Certainly, the Virginia Supreme Court is not bound by the reasoning in an attorney general opinion, if the question were to ever go before the state supreme court,” Dinan said in an email. “But it is understandable that the General Assembly would rely on this 1991 attorney general opinion in concluding that legislators lack the power to approve an amendment to a local government charter that would impose term limits on local officials.”
Much to Perdue’s chagrin, the General Assembly has relied on this opinion to repeatedly dismiss Rocky Mount’s revised charter.
“They take the position that it’s unconstitutional, and we disagree,” said the mayor.
After receiving the first rejection in 2023, Perdue obtained his own legal opinion from Rocky Mount’s town attorney, John Boitnott, attaching it to his second request the following year.
Boitnott’s letter cites another section of the state constitution that grants the General Assembly the special power to approve charters “which includes term limits,” wrote the attorney.
Namely, Boitnott’s — and Rocky Mount’s — case rests on the fact that the commonwealth’s capital city has mayoral term limits.
Adopted in 2004 and reenacted in 2019, the city of Richmond’s charter states that “anyone eligible to serve on city council may serve as mayor, except no one may be elected mayor for three consecutive full terms,” similar language to what Rocky Mount’s mayor seeks to add to the proposed town charter.
It’s unclear how Richmond’s charter managed to secure General Assembly approval on two separate occasions. Richmond city attorney Laura Drewry could not be reached for comment for this article.
Alex Keena, an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, was also unsure of the details surrounding the city’s mayoral term limits, but pointed out that 2004 was also the year that Richmond transitioned to an elected-mayor system. Instead of internally selecting a mayor among city council members, the capital shifted to allowing voters to directly vote on mayoral candidates, a controversial reform process that may have incorporated term limits.
“The takeaway is that the General Assembly was an important player in determining whether [Richmond] would move forward with these reforms,” Keena wrote in an email. “It had consistently blocked efforts to change city government, until it was clear the 2004 measure had overwhelming support among the public and was seen as a solution to the city’s myriad of problems.”
Regardless, the provision paves the way for Rocky Mount to follow in Richmond’s footsteps, at least in the eyes of town officials.
“We knew that the city of Richmond has term limits for their mayor, and so our assumption was that if a locality in Virginia had term limits, then that must mean that that the General Assembly is OK with that,” said Rocky Mount Town Manager Robert Wood. “So we thought that ours would also be approved, because it wouldn’t make sense that one locality could have it but not another, right?”
That argument may not be enough to convince the ultimate decision-makers, however.
“The town of Rocky Mount is not the city of Richmond and we should be happy about that,” said Stanley. “And quite frankly, I don’t think we should compare our style of government at the local level here in Southside Virginia to the type of government, Democrat-run government, in the city of Richmond or any other area of Virginia.”
The situation reminds him of an aphorism his father frequently said: “Just because other people are doing it doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for us.”
A debate over the town’s priorities
The issue of term limits has long been a highly debated topic in the U.S. political sphere, from the local to federal level.
While presidential term limits didn’t officially come into effect until 1951, the notion that there should be a cap on presidents’ tenure in the Oval Office has been prevalent since America’s founding. George Washington famously refused to run for a third term, despite his overwhelming popularity, in order to establish the precedent for a peaceful, democratic transfer of power.
The 22nd Amendment only sets a consecutive two-term limit on the executive. Legislators in Congress face no such restrictions, and judicial appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court are lifelong.
As for the states, 37 have implemented varying degrees of gubernatorial term limits, including Virginia, where the governor can only remain in office for one consecutive term. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only 16 states have term limits on their legislatures, and the National League of Cities identifies only a small percentage, roughly 15%, of localities across the country that impose restrictions on mayors and council members.
So why does the town of Rocky Mount want term limits?
The mayor — along with many other advocates — believes term limits prevent stagnation and corruption among elected officials and allow for “fresh ideas.”
“I think when you limit the amount of time people can spend in a certain office, I would hope it would make them work harder to get all their goals accomplished while they’re there,” Perdue said.
The town’s proposal, which wouldn’t go into effect until Jan. 1, 2027, if passed, isn’t overly restrictive in Perdue’s opinion. The provision states a person may only hold the office of council member or mayor for three consecutive four-year terms, meaning an official could technically serve as a council member for 12 years, then mayor for another 12.
“If you give me 12 years to do something and I can’t get what I need done in 12 years, I have not done my job effectively,” Perdue said.
On the other hand, opponents of the policy worry that term limits would potentially remove qualified, popular officials from office and reduce electoral accountability.
Stanley, on his fourth term in the state Senate, agreed, saying the length of an elected official’s tenure should be left to the discretion of the voters.
The senator is scheduled to meet with Rocky Mount’s governing body in the next couple of weeks to discuss the town’s priorities, legislative requests and, most certainly, term limits. He’s prepared to emphasize the need to bring “greater economic development opportunities” to the area rather than worry “about how many terms a man or woman has served on the town council.”
Should Rocky Mount’s proposal fail to pass the General Assembly for a third time, Stanley suggested elected officials can always self-limit.