I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Ave Maria, the Catholic city in Florida founded by Michigan native and Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan, continues to garner scrutiny in the press. The Naples Daily News has a three-part expose looking at the structure of the town’s government, including links to the founding documents of incorporation, that calls the city’s government structure undemocratic and possibly unconstitutional.
The founders, former Domino’s Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan and local landowner and county namesake Barron Collier Cos., wrote and lobbied for a state law that established Ave Maria’s government. In June 2004, it became law over Ave Maria, the 11,000 acres of former farm fields that center on a university in the Catholic tradition.
But Monaghan’s team and Barron Collier Cos. crafted the law’s language to give them a substantial benefit.
What resulted was a government unlike any democracy residents such as Delaney had ever experienced.
The law gives Monaghan and Barron Collier Cos. more power than any Florida developer in at least 24 years, power perhaps not seen since the days of the early 20th century land boom. The law makes landowners, not registered voters, the ultimate authority in Ave Maria. The law ensures Monaghan and Barron Collier Cos., as the largest landowners, can control Ave Maria’s government forever.
Specifically, the article says that the legal documents that govern Ave Maria established a governing board that is controlled by the two primary landowners — Monaghan and Barron Collier. The five seats on that board are currently controlled entirely by the private partnership of Monaghan and Barron Collier. In time, residents will have their own representatives on the board, but only for two of the seats; three of the five seats are chosen by the executive committee that is controlled solely by the two main landowners.
Representatives of Monaghan and Barron Collier say that they will voluntarily cede control of the board to the residents at some unspecified point in the future, but the paper cites internal memos from the private partnership that indicate that both landowners believe they could continue to control the town “in perpetuity.” The question of whether this is constitutional remains up in the air and is likely to be litigated at some point in the future.
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