August 25, 2014
Lansing—
The state increasingly is embroiled in a debate about whether
controversial issues such as wolf hunting and mandatory union dues
payments should be decided by elected officials reflecting their
constituents’ wishes or directly by the people at the voting booth.
Democratic
politicians and some advocacy groups argue citizen voices are being
silenced by Republican legislative maneuvering, approval of laws that
pre-empt statewide votes and, in one case, re-enactment — with some
changes — of a law voters rejected.
The
controversy has swirled for more than two years around issues ranging
from state-appointed emergency managers to the minimum wage. It’s
likely to surface again this week when the House meets for a rare
summer session. The chamber may vote to uphold Michigan’s wolf hunt in
the Upper Peninsula by passing a petition-initiated proposal from
pro-hunting groups.
While
House Speaker Jase Bolger, R-Marshall, hasn’t said a vote will occur
when the House assembles Wednesday, Democrats are bracing for what they
describe as another GOP assault on the rights of voters to decide such
issues. “The constitution guarantees the
people the right to create or modify laws on their own through ballot
initiatives,” said Robert McCann, press secretary to Senate Democratic
Leader Gretchen Whitmer of East Lansing. “And
while, yes, the Constitution also may technically allow the Republicans
to undermine them as they are, it’s hard to justify that it was the
intent of the drafters of our Constitution to allow that,” McCann said.
But
Lansing attorney Richard McLellan, who often is involved in such
issues, said state constitutional provisions allowing citizens to
petition for new laws don’t mean every proposal has to go to the ballot.
The
framers, McLellan said, just “wanted people to have the right to start
the (law-making) process. I get a little irritated with these Democrats
who’d do exactly the same things for the same reasons” if they had the
legislative majority.
Wolf hunting in focus
Wolf hunting is the latest focal point of the
running dispute between the Republican legislative majority and the
Democratic minority over the ethics of state constitutional initiative
and referendum provisions.
Michigan’s
Constitution gives registered voters the right to petition for a new law
through an initiative or seek, through a referendum, a statewide vote
that could affirm or reject a law passed by the Legislature.
Democrats
are joined by labor unions and groups such as Planned Parenthood and
Keep Michigan Wolves Protected in blasting the GOP for using those
provisions to its advantage.
In one case,
the Republican majority included a $1 million appropriation in a
right-to-work law it hastily passed in December 2012, presumably making
it immune to a referendum. The right-to-work law prohibits mandatory
union dues.
Under the state constitution, laws that appropriate funds usually cannot be overturned by voters.
McCann
charged that Republicans “didn’t want the people of Michigan to be able
to weigh in” by voting on the right-to-work issue. “That, in and of
itself, is offensive,” he said.
But
McLellan argued that the GOP majority and groups circulating petitions
are using constitutional tools just as they’re intended to be used. Some
just aren’t happy with the outcomes, he said.
And
should the House pre-empt two Nov. 4 anti-wolf-hunting ballot
propositions by passing the initiative on Wednesday, McLellan predicted,
hunting opponents “will be back next year with a (proposed)
constitutional amendment, banning wolf hunting, that’s not subject to a
referendum.”
The initiative would affirm
that the Natural Resources Commission will continue deciding which
animals will be hunted as game. House passage of the measure — which the
Senate approved earlier this month — would make it law.
The commission already approved one wolf hunt, in which hunters killed just over half a 43-wolf quota last fall.
More
important for the pro-wolf-hunt GOP legislative majority, House action
also presumably would thwart two anti-wolf-hunting November ballot
proposals backed by a group called Keep Michigan Wolves Protected.
Lobbying encouraged
That’s why leader Jill Fritz on the wolf protection group’s website urged people to lobby legislators before they act: “Michiganders
who care about wildlife and their right to vote should tell their
legislators to vote ‘no’ on the opposition’s initiative. “Michigan’s recent wolf hunt was based on a pack of lies. Politicians and bureaucrats cannot be trusted, but voters can.”
Lawmakers twice have approved laws to allow wolf hunts.
And
Keep Michigan Wolves Protected, with financial backing from the Humane
Society of the United States, twice responded by collecting enough
petition signatures for referendums on those laws.
Then
a group called Citizens for Professional Wildlife Management — Michigan
United Conservation Clubs and other groups that favor hunting —
collected enough signatures to petition for the proposed law now up for a
House vote.
The constitution says
lawmakers can pass such a citizen-initiated proposal into law within 40
days after the petition signatures are authenticated or let it go to a
statewide vote, which would put it on the Nov. 4 ballot.
Most
experts agree that Keep Wolves Protected’s two proposals, calling for
referendums on the first two Legislature-passed wolf hunting laws, will
become moot if the House finalizes the pro-hunting measure.
Vote uncertain
Bolger’s spokesman Ari Adler said the House
speaker still is deciding whether to have the House vote on the wolf
hunt proposal or let it go to the ballot.
Either
way, Adler said, Bolger believes the Legislature “has followed all
constitutional and legal guidelines related to citizen initiatives
placed before it, as did those who have spearheaded the initiatives
through their constitutional right to do so.”
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