Detroit ‘council by district’ ruling appealed

DETROIT — A group fighting to have city council members elected by districts filed an emergency appeal Monday after a judge ruled on Friday that the language of an amendment to eliminate at-large-only was “insufficient.”

(Creative Commons photo by ifmuth via Flickr)

Election lawyer Mary Ellen Gurewitz filed the appeal with a request to expedite the decision on Monday morning in the Michigan Court of Appeals on behalf of Detroiters for Council by Districts, the organization that worked to put the language on the ballot.

Gurewitz said she filed the appeal because the judge did not make a decision based on the case at hand, which was to determine whether the city clerk should withhold a proposal from the November ballot due because of legal issues with the city charter. “He got caught up looking at the proposed amendment,” Gurewitz told Michigan Messenger in an interview, noting that “the attorney general intervened on our behalf, the governor intervened on our behalf” and “the city clerk’s lawyer sided with them” as well.

The referendum, titled Proposal D, which was slated to be printed on the Nov. 3 general election ballot, has hit opposition from the Detroit City Council and the city’s Law and Research departments as well. Last week, city council members voted to send a letter to Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Attorney General Mike Cox asking whether a ballot proposal that would mandate district-based council representation was in accordance with state law.

The governor replied with a letter asking the council to step out of the issue saying they had no legal authority under state law to question such a proposal.

Granholm’s office responded citing the Michigan Home Rule City Act:

When an initiatory petition proposing a charter amendment is signed by a sufficient number of city voters exercising their home rule authority the [Home Rule city Act] expresses a clear public policy preference for submission of the proposed amendment to city voters and includes no apparent mechanism for the Governor, the Attorney General or city officials to deter placement of the proposal on the ballot. Accordingly, the issues raised in your letter are best resolved by the voters not by Lawyers in Lansing.

Gurewitz does not know if the appeals court will decide to grant her request to expedite a ruling in the case before the deadline to print the ballot comes this week. “Time is running very short, the ballot has to be printed,” Gurewitz said. The city charter mandates that a ballot be printed 45 days before an election, but Gurewitz thinks it may get stretched a few days beyond the absolute deadline.

Until then, Gurewitz will be pressuring city council members to draft proposal language at Cox’s request, a job they were supposed to do last week when they decided to send the legal questions to Cox and Granholm instead.

Gurewitz said she will also press City Clerk Janice Winfrey to place the proposal on the ballot. “In light of the position [Winfrey’s] attorney and the attorney general and the governor all took she can go ahead and put this on the ballot,” Gurewitz said.

Despite the controversy among city officials, Gurewitz said she believes the amendment proposal will end up on the ballot. “I’m always optimistic about my ability to persuade people about my position,” she said.

But if the appeals courts upholds the judge’s ruling that the amendment language is insufficient, the future of the ballot intuitive to have council members elected by districts is unclear. Gurewitz doesn’t know what to do next if her appeal is denied. “I’m not sure if there are any other avenues to pursue.”