Island select boards are being asked to weigh in on a bill that would place term limits on the Steamship Authority board of governors. 

A citizens’ action group made up of both Vineyarders and residents of Falmouth that’s focused on the ferry service went to both Oak Bluffs and West Tisbury this week seeking support on the bill, filed by Falmouth state Sen. Dylan Fernandes in February.

Beth O’Connor, a member of the Steamship Authority Citizens’ Action Group’s steering committee, spoke at the Oak Bluffs select board meeting on Tuesday to ask the board to send a letter to the state legislature to back the bill, which is entitled An Act Improving Oversight and Operations of the Steamship Authority.

If passed, the act would allow members of the Steamship board to serve three, three-year terms. Members are appointed by the Steamship port communities and there are currently no limits on the number of years members can serve. Dukes County, Falmouth, New Bedford, Nantucket and Barnstable each get a member on the board.

According to Ms. O’Connor, the Dukes County Commission and the Falmouth select board, which pick their communities’ respective members, have both agreed to send letters of support. 

“Term limits is good governance,” she said. “They can bring fresh blood and maybe some people who wouldn’t think otherwise that they could have those seats. It’s really important to include everybody in the process.”

Christine Todd, the chair of the county commission and an Oak Bluffs resident, agreed with Ms. O’Connor.

“We felt that it was basically good business practice to give people an opportunity…that would allow them to get their feet wet, set their own personal and collective goals or at least get things well underway,” Ms. Todd said, adding that the commissioners voted unanimously to support the idea.

Oak Bluffs select board chair Dion Alley said that he struggled with the idea of taking away control from the port communities that appoint members to the board.

“I have a hard time when you start taking away what the towns want to do around the service like this,” he said. “I always go back to what problem are we trying to solve? If we’re trying to solve something from New Bedford or Nantucket, this is Oak Bluffs. We worry about Oak Bluffs and the Island.”

Ms. O’Connor said that since the Steamship Authority serves all of the towns and affects daily lives, it is a problem that they need to address.

Jim Malkin and Joe Sollitto were both in attendance. Mr. Malkin serves on the Steamship Authority Board as the Vineyard representative and is currently in his second term. He told the select board that if he is reappointed for a third, he will consider stepping down afterwards.

“You gain knowledge, you use legacy knowledge, you help move things forward,” he said. “But that’s my personal preference. In terms of this…I always am loathe to have someone take away powers from an appointed or an elected board.”

Mr. Sollitto is the Oak Bluffs appointed member of the port council, an advisory board for the Steamship Authority. He said that he believes that term limits take the responsibility out of the county commission’s hands.

“The county commissioners, I think, are abrogating the responsibility by giving this up,” he said. “You need some sort of institutional knowledge.”

He added that all county commissioners come on the ballot in the same year, and if people are displeased with the Steamship appointments, they can vote for different commissioners. Mr. Sollitto said that picking board members is the responsibility of each port community.

“There’s a group of people that think that maybe the person from Nantucket has been there too long, and maybe the person from New Bedford has been there too long,” he said. “That’s not up for us to decide that. That’s up for the voters of New Bedford and it’s up to the voters of Nantucket.”

Oak Bluffs Select board members Mark Leonard and Sean DeBettencourt both said they were against term limits.

“I think as a general rule of thumb, term limits is more of a cudgel than I would generally want to use in a democratic process,” Mr. DeBettencourt said.

Emma Green-Beach, another member of the select board, was generally in favor of term limits, but she said she could go either way in this situation and would not go against a majority board.

The select board did not decide on whether to send a letter of support and no vote was held. 

The West Tisbury select board voted 2-0 Wednesday to send a letter of support of the term limits, after about 15 minutes of discussion.

Select board member Jeffrey (Skipper) Manter abstained from the vote, voicing concerns about constant changeover and saying that the current process of appointing SSA board members allows for democratic participation.  

“If [the local appointing authorities] don’t want somebody to serve, they can certainly change that,” Mr. Manter said. “People have an opportunity to influence the appointing of people...you’re taking away a piece of the process that is presently being used.”

Katrina Liu contributed to this article.