There is an ultra-wealthy politician who has not received the credit he deserves for his role in the deal struck for mayoral control of New York City’s public schools: Ronald Lauder. Mr. Lauder, a cosmetics tycoon, ran against Rudolph Giuliani for the Republican mayoral line in 1989, and then on the Conservative line in the general election. He lost miserably, even after spending upward of $13 million. He had his revenge in 1993, when he was the guiding force behind the term limits initiative, which passed with 59% approval, and withstood attempts by the City Council to somehow evade the voters’ lawfully imposed will.

This accomplishment set the stage for the sort of badly needed, previously inconceivable changes, such as school reform, that now appear to be within the city’s grasp. It seems unlikely that State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver or the Assembly Democrats at large would have been willing to consider, let alone vote for, mayoral control of the schools without a guarantee that Mayor Giuliani — towards whom many Democrats, especially those in the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus, expressed a powerful animosity — would not benefit from these changes. While we have a different view of Mr. Giuliani, it does seem to us often healthy to have new voices and perspectives in city government.

We bring this up neither to praise term limits per se nor to bury them, but to admire the power that New York City voters have wielded with initiative and referendum, which respectively allow the citizens to force the legislature to take an up or down vote on a given bill, and to decide the issue themselves. Governor Pataki has proposed a change to the state’s constitution that would give citizens referendum and initiative on both a statewide and local level. The change would have to be approved by two separate elected legislatures and thereafter by a majority of the state’s citizens.

Some have accused Mr. Pataki of supporting this change to curry favor with the Independence Party, but we are less concerned with his short term political motives than his will and wherewithal to see the proposal through. New York State at present has an incumbency problem, in which the voices of Messrs. Pataki and Silver, and that of State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, are the only three that finally matter. Any proposal that holds promise of breaking this Albany triangle is needed by the citizens of the state. Perhaps the voters could even choose to limit how long these three men could sit in office, and help bring a breath of fresh air into state government, such as New York City voters have already accomplished. Remember the speaker of the California Assembly, Willie Brown? The state didn’t fall apart over term limits. At the least, offering voters a direct means of creating law might go a long way toward motivating our state government to reform.