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.
A state court of appeals panel has ruled that the Reform Michigan Government Now! referendum that was slated to be on the November ballot is unconstitutional and must be removed.
The appeals court panel concluded that the reform referendum contains so many different and distinct provisions — cutting salaries of both judges and legislators, cutting the number of legislators and the number of judges, changing the way redistricting was done, removing judicial jurisdiction over redistricting, changing the absentee voting rules, forbidding former legislators from acting as lobbyists and more — that it was a “general revision” of the state constitution, something that can only be accomplished through a constitutional convention rather than a single referendum.
Article 7 of the Michigan Constitution provides the means by which the constitution may be amended and Section 2 of that article specifies citizen-initiated referendums as one way of doing so.
But Section 3 of Article 7 makes a distinction between amendments and general revisions to the constitution, which require a constitutional convention in order to accomplish.
Because this referendum includes so many major changes to multiple articles and sections of the state constitution, most of which are unrelated to the other provisions of the amendment, the court concluded that this is a general revision and requires a convention be called rather than a referendum.
Backers of the proposal vow to appeal immediately to the Michigan Supreme Court, but their chances of winning there are slim. And despite the outrage expressed by backers of the proposal, the appeals court ruling is, in my view, a correct one as a matter of law.
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