Tag: Michigan

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Michigan Voters: Alert!

Michigan, elections, term limits, democracy

Michigan voters: Beware of a petition by the group Voters for Transparency and Term Limits, a nontransparent group working deceitfully against term limits.

Currently, Michigan state senators are limited to two four-year terms; state representatives to three two-year terms. The VTTL people want to bloat maximum tenure in a legislative seat to twelve years, which they call a “reduction” because the twelve years would nominally cap total service in both chambers.

A now-familiar gambit. The old, stock propaganda against term limits just doesn’t cut it anymore: arguments about how “term limits give lobbyist ginormous power, and, uh, we already have term limits and they’re called elections” are a nonstarter these days. Term limits are too popular and have been too effective.

So enemies of term limits now pretend that they’re the best friends term limits ever had. Indeed, they wish to strengthen term limits . . . we’re just not supposed to notice that by “reducing” the two-chamber overall limit by two years generally politicians will stay longer in office.

With 110 House seats and only 38 Senators, it is merely mathematics that few politicians successfully switch chambers to serve the current 14 year maximum. But, rest assured, this amendment means virtually every politician will stay in the same legislative seat for 12 years. 

Greg Schmid, author of the definitive commentary on this hoax, predicts that VTTL will pretend to conduct a petition drive for a while, then invite incumbent politicians in the Michigan legislature to refer the measure to the ballot, skipping the initiative’s expense and hard work.

If you see the petition, don’t sign. If the amendment gets to ballot, vote No.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
term limits

Legislators Turned Lobbyists Turned Altruists

Michigan, term limits,

Legislative bosses, the state’s most powerful special interests and a fake grassroots organization teamed up a month ago to figure out how best to attack Michigan’s popular term limits law. 

Now comes a lawsuit demanding that a federal court overturn these 27-year-old voter-enacted limits.

“I’m just sitting here watching five former legislators, who are now lobbyists, sitting in the conference [room] of another lobbyist in Lansing talking about how the courts should rescue them from the voters,” Patrick Anderson, author of the 1992 term limits law, told MIRS.* 

Self-serving? Not at ALL. “When you take the most experienced people out of government,” asserted John Bursch, the legislator-lobbyists’ attorney, “it shifts the balance of power to career bureaucrats and to lobbyists.”

So, clearly, these kind, meek, caring lobbyists are altruistically rejecting more power and influence for themselves and, instead, working selflessly for the greater good. No wonder everyone loves lobbyists.

In pursuing the legal approach, Bursch did acknowledge, “We think it would be very difficult to put anything on the ballot that would be successful.”

Their legal rationale is as implausible as their putative public-spiritedness. The lawsuit contends that term limits deny legislators the opportunity to gain law-making competence while also listing all the wonderful legislation these legislators-turned-lobbyists once passed . . . when working under term limits. 

It’s not a legal argument, either way, but which is it?

“I’m having trouble,” offered Rina Baker with Don’t Touch Term Limits, “remembering a single moment when I wished any of the plaintiffs were still in office.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Unfortunately, this capitol insider publication is behind a paywall, so no link is available.

Michigan, term limits,

from photo by Beth LeBlanc/The Detroit News

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
term limits

Politicians Not Voters

Michigan, term limits, Voters not Politicians,

“Breakthrough coalition working on expanding term limits,” hollers the Lansing City Post headline. 

“Michigan’s legislative leaders,” the capital-based paper informs, “are working on a term limits expansion deal for state lawmakers . . . . The conceptual plan, which won’t be finalized until December, would be that lawmakers could serve a combined 20 years in both the House and Senate before they would be broomed from office.”

Yes, you heard that correctly: the legislative bosses want a new term limits law allowing politicians to serve 20 years in a single seat. 

Twenty years is no term-limit. It’s a cushy retirement plan.

In unsurprising bipartisanship, Michigan’s NPR affiliate reports that, “Senate Democratic Leader Jim Ananich (D-Flint) says lawmakers from his party could get on board.” The Democrat added, “[W]e’re not big supporters of term limits in the first place.” 

The other big news is that the scheming is no longer confined to politicians and their cronies over at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce — the business lobby that for three decades has curried favor with lawmakers by conspiring to undo the state’s voter-enacted term limits. Now, also plotting behind closed doors with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield is the progressive, union-funded Voters Not Politicians group. 

“He and the speaker have found a willing partner in VNP,” a spokesperson for Shirkey acknowledged.

Unlike the unpopular Chamber and politicians, Voters Not Politicians sports a shred of grassroots credibility, having led a successful 2018 ballot initiative on redistricting. 

But that shred will last only until Michiganders find out that Voters Not Politicians has sadly morphed into Politicians Not Voters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Michigan, term limits, Voters not Politicians,
https://soundcloud.com/user-865498944/politicians-not-voters
This episode on SoundCloud.
Video version up on YouTube. Subscribe, hit that bell!

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts


Categories
Accountability local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies term limits

Renewed Interest in Self-Service

Michigan, term limits, scam, reform

“Michigan’s strictest-in-the-nation term limits law will force nearly 70 percent of state senators out of office in 2019 and more than 20 percent of representatives,” reports the Detroit News, “a mass turnover that is fueling renewed interest in reform.”

What?!! Could term limitation laws actually make our poor underpaid and overworked politicians vacate their powerful perches . . . even when they don’t want to?

Heaven forbid!

Who could have foreseen this strange turn of events, whereby limits on the number of terms politicians can stay in office would mandate that politicians, having reached that limit, would be summarily cast out?*

Of course, that “renewed interest in reform” comes not from citizens, but politicians.

Oh, and powerful lobbyists and special interests.

The paper continues: “Term limits remain popular with the voting public, but critics say Michigan rules have thrust inexperienced legislators into complex policy issues they may be ill-equipped to address.”

Rich Studley, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce’s head-honcho, argues that “experience really matters.” His lobbying outfit, “an influential business group with significant financial resources,” is working to organize a ballot measure to weaken the limits it has long opposed.

“Any reform plan is unlikely to extend or repeal term limits,” explains the News, “but may instead allow legislators to serve longer in the House or Senate.”

Come again? If legislators could serve “longer” than currently allowed, that would clearly “extend” the limits.

I smell a scam swirling around Lansing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The “mass turnover” consists of 26 of 38 senators termed-out and 24 of 110 in the House. Yet, there were 25 senators and 34 representatives termed-out in 2010, and the state survived.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Of Wolves and Politicians

Should Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) create a wolf-hunting season? That question will be on the statewide ballot this November.

Twice.

Twice? Yes, voters will decide two separate referendums: Proposal 1 and Proposal 2. And yet, voters may not actually determine with either vote whether there will be a wolf hunt.

What’s going on has less to do with killing wolves than it does with politicians butchering democratic checks to their power.

Until 2012, wolves were a federally protected endangered species. Now some say the estimated 650 wolves in Michigan have become a nuisance.

It has long been legal to shoot wolves threatening livestock or people, so that’s not at issue.

What is at issue? Last year’s legislation, which gave the DNR power to establish a wolf-hunting season. Animal protection activists objected, gathering more than 250,000 signatures to put the law to a statewide vote.

Okay, let the people decide, right?

Wrong. Legislators intent on not permitting citizen control passed a brand new law to have it their way — the people be damned. So tenacious citizens signed more petitions to put this second statute to a referendum.

Hence the two referendums on the ballot.

Legislators still weren’t finished, though. They passed a third bill, this time slapping an unrelated appropriation in it, thus blocking a referendum. That law faces a legal challenge.

This seems a choice between the government regulating wildlife matters with or without any popular check on that power. By voting NO on both Proposals 1 and 2, Michiganders can tell the wannabe dictators in Lansing that their democracy-hunting season is over.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Grand Rapids’ Grand Alliance

Two incredible activists in Grand Rapids, Michigan, have achieved the impossible. Through their hard work in gathering over 10,000 voter signatures on a petition, Rina Baker and Bonnie Burke have united big business and big labor in perfect harmony.

Union bosses and the bigs of biz are now funding a united campaign.

Their ubiquitous mailers speak against the “hijacking of our local democratic process” and sinister forces trying to “change our city charter, erode local control and silence your voice,” warning Grand Rapids residents: “Don’t let your vote be shredded.”

Shredded votes? What specific issue are they talking about?

Well, this well-funded business/labor campaign has purposely left out two words that, if uttered, would obliterate their entire effort.

Those two little words? Term limits.

The law that Rina Baker and Bonnie Burke have petitioned onto the ballot, for a public vote? An eight-year limit for mayor and council members.

Nothing brings powerful special interests together like fear of term limits.

The president of the United States is limited to eight years, but Andy Johnston, the Chamber of Commerce’s vice president of government affairs, argues that, “Particularly at the local level, it takes time to learn the ins and outs of city government.”

“In politics you develop relationships with different people,” explains Kent-Ionia Labor Council President Sean Egan. “When you continually replace good politicians for the sake of having new people, you lose the wisdom and experience and you end up with policy created by other groups.”

You mean policy supported by folks “other” than big business and big labor?

Oh, my!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.