From left to right, speakers at Wednesday’s press conference were: Richard Mack of Miller Cohen in Detroit; Dave Fredericks, from Montague; and Kym Spring of Grand Rapids.
By Cynthia Price
Legal News
Local residents joined an attorney working with the Sugar Law Center for a press conference in Grand Rapids Wednesday to announce they will sue over the broadened powers given to Emergency Financial Managers by the Local Government and School District Accountability Act, usually known as Act 4 or PA 4.
The Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice has filed suit in the Ingham County Circuit Court, indicating that Act 4 violates the Michigan Constitution because it 1) overrides home rule, a long-held principle in Michigan, because Emergency Managers (EMs) can repeal local ordinances and break contractual agreements; 2) eliminates citizen input into local government, since the right to petition for redress is absent; 3) violates the separation of powers by giving authority to the governor to decide matters and perform duties that are constitutionally given to the legislature; and 4) essentially allows unfunded mandates, for example, the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for EM salaries and staff. (Detroit Public Schools is forced to pay around $33,000 a month for the manager forced upon it.)
Attorney Richard Mack of Miller Cohen, who is working with the Sugar Law Center, said that there are vast differences in Act 4 versus the previous statute, PA 72, in particular as to the much broader powers given to the EMs, and in granting the governor full authority to determine whether an entity is in fiscal emergency. According to Grand Rapids citizen plaintiff Kym Spring, the latter affords plenty of room for abuse based on the potentially partisan nature of the determinations.
However, Mack himself said he had engaged in a suit over PA 72, representing a city attorney in Pontiac whose contract was illegally broken by an EM decision, so concerns over EMs are not entirely new.
Mack also said that, while understanding that increased municipal and school fiscal crises demand new approaches, the “Draconian” measures granted to EMs in Act 4 is like “finding out someone’s leg is broken and immediately rushing to amputate it. You first try to figure out how to heal it.”
A very important concern for citizens, about 20 of whom gathered in support, is that under Act 4 far-reaching actions may be taken by a person they have not elected. This appears to them to be a violation of their most elementary rights.
The Sugar Law Center, according to its president Bill Goodman, will also ask for an injunction pending the decision about constitutionality.
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