Mayor of Boston is prohibited from serving consecutive terms in office.

Signed by Gov. Samuel McCall, the law is aimed at curtailing the power of James Michael Curley, who during his first week as mayor in 1914 declared “Here’s the way I figure it. The population of Boston is about 740,000 and there are 14,700 people on the payrolls.” Curley then calculated that each city worker had an average of five family members and friends, as did each of the 6,000 contractors, vendors, lawyers and others who did business with the city, for a total of 103,500 people with “a personal interest in the payroll or expenditure of the city. Deduct this number from 740,000 and you have left 636,500 people who are only interested in the honest and efficient conduct of the city. No man need fear for his political future with the confidence of the 636,500. And in my administration I propose to give a square deal to both the 103,500 and the 636,500.” The law remains in effect until 1938.*