Photo by afagen.

Sometime in the future, members of the D.C. Council may only serve two consecutive terms, but they’ll get paid a lot more for their troubles.

As part of a broader package of ethics reforms, Councilmember Vincent Orange (D-At Large) today previewed legislation that he’ll introduce this week that would impose term limits on most elected officials and boost the pay of councilmembers, who would be expected to serve on a full-time basis.

In a press conference in which he claimed he was offering a “new deal for the District of Columbia,” Orange presented the case that “new blood” was needed in the ranks of the D.C. Council. As a means to fight what he termed “entrenched incumbency,” Orange’s proposal would limit the mayor, council chair, councilmembers, State Board of Education and Attorney General to two consecutive four-year terms. The legislation would not apply retroactively, though, sparing councilmembers Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), David Catania (I-At Large) and Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), all of whom are serving or have served more than two consecutive terms.

Orange was quick to admit to one seeming contradiction — in 2001, then serving as Ward 5 councilmember, he voted to repeal a 1994 initiative through which 62 percent of D.C. residents voted to impose a two-term limit on elected officials.

On the question of full-time employment and pay, Orange argued that councilmembers should be more highly compensated to account for the part-time jobs they’d be forced to give up. Currently, councilmembers take in over $120,000 yearly, but can hold other jobs; Evans, Cheh, Catania and Michael Brown (I-At Large) maintain outside employment that brings them additional income; in Cheh’s case, over $280,000 in 2010.

Under Orange’s proposal, those outside jobs would go by the wayside, but councilmembers would make $170,000 a year. The pay raise would make local legislators the highest-paid of their municipal colleagues throughout the country, and buck the trend of furloughs and streamlined government in an era of tight municipal finances.

Orange also said he’d be introducing legislation to create a D.C. jobs czar, impose a moratorium on strip clubs in Ward 5 and request that the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics take religious holidays into account when scheduling elections. (The 2010 April 26 Special Election coincided with the last day of Passover.)

According to Orange, Brown informed him that he was hoping to take all ethics-related proposals and funnel them through the Committee on Government Operations, chaired by Councilmember Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4). Bowser has said she expects to hold a hearing on the various proposals in October.