Term-limited Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson is unabashedly throwing his weight behind top aide Mary Lou Berger in the 2012 race for Aaronson’s south-county District 5 seat. But Commissioner Karen Marcus says she hasn’t decided whether she’ll support anyone for the north-county District 1 seat she’s represented since 1984.

“I’ll talk to some of my residents and see what they want my role to be,” Marcus said today.

Marcus denied a rumor she’s trying to persuade Riviera Beach Councilwoman Dawn Pardo to run.

“I haven’t even talked to Dawn,” said Marcus. Referring to Boca Raton conservative activist Jack Furnari‘s recent blog post that mentioned the Marcus-Pardo rumor, Marcus said, “That’s people in the south county that think they know what’s going on up here. But they really don’t know.”

Pardo hasn’t returned calls to comment on whether she’s interested in running.

In a case Palm Beach County has been watching closely, the Fourth District Court of Appeals today reversed a Broward County judge’s ruling and upheld that county’s voter-approved term limits law for county commissioners.

Palm Beach County’s term limits law has not been challenged. But the 4th DCA has jurisdiction over Palm Beach County, so a ruling overturning Broward term limits would have also overturned Palm Beach County’s limits.

It’s likely today’s ruling will be appealed to the Florida Supreme Court by foes of term limits.

Palm Beach County Commissioners Karen Marcus (elected in 1984) and Burt Aaronson (elected in 1992) both face term limits in 2012. Marcus has said she’d consider running for an eighth term and Aaronson said he’d definitely run for a sixth term if term limits were overturned.

Even if the courts throw out Palm Beach County’s term limits law for county commissioners, local GOP Chairman Sid Dinerstein says his party’s longest-serving local official, Commissioner Karen Marcus, shouldn’t run again in 2012 because voters overwhelmingly supported term limits in a 2002 referendum.

Marcus, who’s in her seventh term, opposes term limits but says she hasn’t decided whether she’d run in 2012 if she’s allowed.

Read about it in this week’s Politics column.

More than 70 percent of county voters approved a two-term limit for commissioners in a 2002 referendum. No one has challenged the Palm Beach County law, but a challenge to a similar term limits law in Broward County could lead to Palm Beach County’s law being thrown out, as the Politics column reported back in November.

More than 70 percent of Palm Beach County voters approved term limits for county commissioners in 2002. No one has challenged the law in court. But a Broward County decision has called Palm Beach County’s law into question.

If Palm Beach County’s law gets tossed, seven-term incumbent Karen Marcus and five-termer Burt Aaronson could run for reelection in 2012. So far, neither one is ruling it out.

Read about it in this week’s Politics column.

A majority of Palm Beach County school board members likes the idea of bringing the $2.7 billion school district under the eye of a proposed county ethics watchdog — but not if county commissioners have the final say on filling the position.

After watching five local elected officials go to prison on federal corruption charges since 2006, county commissioners this summer endorsed the concept of an independent inspector general’s office with subpoena power to monitor public officials and government contracts.

But who would hire and fire and approve the budget of the inspector general remains an open question.

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