TAKING THE INITIATIVE, ANN ARBOR

The second winning medical marijuana ballot initiative in Michigan in 2004 occurred just three months later in the November general election in the city of Ann Arbor. It own by a blow-out margin of 74%.

The origins of this initiative had nothing to do with Detroit's Proposal M. The idea was the creation of some Ann Arbor Libertarian Party activists who, many months prior, produced legal work and gathered the necessary signatures to put the issue on the ballot.

Unfortunately (and here come yet another cautionary tale), acting upon erroneous advice from the Ann Arbor City Clerk's office, the initiative leaders missed the required signature filing deadline - by one day. Litigating the fact that the missed deadline was the direct result of information provided by the very person in charge of election in the city, the reformers were coldly informed in no uncertain terms by the Court that "a deadline is a dealine." Misinformation emanating from City officials, is no defense.

So, like Detroit #1, for Ann Arbor reformers it was back to the drawing board. A whole new petition drive was needed to obtain ballot status.

By coincidence, the new signature drive began in 2003, at just about the same time the DCCC launched its second attempt to put medical marijuana on the ballot in Detroit.

From a legal perspective, the City of Ann Arbor has a unique position in the annals of marijuana reform in the State of Michigan, and possibly the entire USA.

The City Council and voters of the home to the University of Michigan (and a good deal of 60's era, radical counter-culture), amended its Charter in the early 1970's to make marijuana use - for any purpose - a $5.00 fine, ordering its police to enforce city, rather then state, law.

Alarmed by what seemed to be a growing threat to State sovereignty by local municipalities, the Michigan Legislature amended the "Home Rule Cities Act" to prohibit any Michigan city from setting a penalty for a crime below that mandated by State law, or in any way restricting the power of local police from enforcing State law should they choose to do so. Ann Arbor and East Lansing, were, however, "grandfathered" under the new statute, leaving their local marijuana laws intact. But from this point on, no other Michigan city could ever emulate the Ann Arbor/East Lansing example.

As the War on Drugs escalated in the 1980's, a new, more conservative, East Lansing City Council re-declared war on marijuana and repealed its liberal law. Ann Arbor did not follow suit, though it did increase the fine to $25.00.

Because of Ann Arbor's unique legal status in Michigan, the Ann Arbor medical marijuana reformers had to create their own, unique, legal model, using language and methodology from a bygone era. The goal of the initiative was to eliminate all penalties for use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, including the $25.00 fine.

In Michigan, as well as virtually every state in the USA whose cities have a ballot initiative process for citizens to change the law, there are two ways of getting the job done. You can change the city ordinances or you can change the City Charter.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each method.

Amending an ordinance via initiative is simply a routine changing of the law. Amending the Charter is a change in the basic document from which all laws emanate and derive their legality. (A Charter is to a city what a Constitution is to a state or country.)

In Ann Arbor reformers had to amend the City Charter, not just the ordinance book, because the original 1970's law was a Charter amendment.

Changing the fundamental document from which all law emanates is, it should come as no surprise, a more onerous process. The bar to success is higher. The hoops to jump through are more numerous and complex. And the political elite is likely to fight you with even greater vigor should you go this route. The reason this is so is because a constitution or charter can only be changed by a vote of the people. Therefore, the only way to undo such a change, is by another vote of the people. A law/ordinance, even if changed by the initiative process, can in most cases be undone by a simple vote of the legislature/council.

In Detroit, for instance, "Proposal M" merely changed city ordinance. The City Charter explicitly permits the City Council to reverse an initiative vote of the people any time after the new law has been in effect for one year (though, for obvious reasons, most politicians are disinclined to do so). In some municipalities, the initiative change can be reversed immediately. In other places there is NO formal language in the Charter as to how or when an initiative can be reversed by the Council. The whole thing varies widely from city to city, and these facts should be carefully analyzed by reformers for the optimal approach to reform.

In Michigan, the state's home rule legislation is very specific and uniform with respect to changing a city charter - a petition proposing to amend a city charter must be signed by 5% of the registered voters of any home rule municipality.

For this reason, some cities have been known to deliberately inflate their registered voter numbers in order to set the highest possible hurdle to citizen inspired ballot initiatives. In Detroit for instance, which has a population of about 900.000, the City Clerk's office claims there are over 600,000 registered voters in Detroit. This meant DCCC would have had to secure over 30,000 valid signatures (which meant a gross of at least 40,000 signatures to make up for persons who sign despite being unregistered or otherwise unqualified).

On the other hand, for a Detroit ordinance change, the rule is that the number of signatures required to put a proposal on the ballot is equal to 3% of the vote cast for mayor in the last elections, i.e., a little over 6,000 good signatures.

In Ann Arbor, with a population of about 125,000, over 5,000 good signatures were required to amend the Charter - not an easy task given the fact that the population of Ann Arbor is 1/8 the size of Detroit.

After the first attempt failed due to the missed deadline, the momentum no longer existed to get the measure to the ballot through volunteer efforts alone. At least 8,000 signatures were needed to be certain of an adequate count by the due date required by law.

Fortunately, a seasoned political reformer, possessing adequate, personal financial resources, stepped up to the plate.

Charles (Chuck) Ream, who cut his political teeth opposing the Viet Nam War, and now an elected trustee of Scio (Ann Arbor) Township, was a lifelong advocate of marijuana reform. However, until he retired with a fully-vested teacher's pension, this was not the kind of issue he felt comfortable taking on. Now freed from the danger of retaliation, Chuck offered to pay the customary $1.00 per signature to get the job done.

Several Mi-NORML members were interested in working, as were a couple independent, professional signature gatherers from Detroit who had worked for "Proposal M" in that city. When the MPP was approached for help, they concluded the effort was credible, and stepped up with some additional funding to complete the drive.

Once the financing was in place, the project took on a life of its own. And certain members of the Ann Arbor political elite were not at all pleased. These officials included the City Attorney, the Prosecutor, and the Chief of Police - one of whom verbally abused and attempted to intimidate a Mi-NORML signature gatherer, saying in so many words that the issue would "never be on the ballot no matter how many signatures were collected or what the law said."

Nonetheless, Chuck and his team pressed on. And when the signature drive was complete, marijuana reformers from all across the state showed up to formally present the petitions to the Ann Arbor City Clerk.

Unfortunately for some angry, resentful politicians, the legal language of what was ultimately designated "Proposal C" was just too carefully crafted, the amount of signatures fare more than adequate. And there would be no "day late" filing this time around.

Assertions from the office of Governor Jennifer Granholm and Attorney General Mike Cox that Proposal C was "illegal" were to no avail. The Ann Arbor City Conucil had only two choices - pass the measure into law themselves or send it to the voters on the November election ballot. When the "moment of truth" arrived, the City Council voted 7-4 to place the measure on the ballot. (The four "no" votes, incidentally, were not from councilpersons wishing to pass the measure into law immediately; they were legally-impotent, protest votes from members who hated the initiative itself.)

The Ann Arbor News attacked Proposal C on it's editorial pages, insinuating that the measure wan an illegal, useless, unncecessary and cynical gesture - besmirching the world class reputation of Ann Arbor and taking the community back to the bad old days of the 1960's and 70's.

Calvina Fay, from the Drug Free America Foundation denounced Proposal C on a local radio news-talk show as a "hoax" to legalize marijuana by exploiting the suffering of sick people and tricking voters into believing an "untested drug," i.e., not approved by the FDA, was really "safe."

Local CADCA reformers demanded and received a community debate on the issue. Their main attack line was the always-reliable argument that we need to "protect children" from the scourge of marijuana. And the almost as frequent, red-herring complaint that Proposal C was the creation of "outsiders" who had no real stake in the community. The debate was televised on the local public access TV channel.

Chuck and his team fought back hard.

A public forum was set up by Proposal C advocates at a popular Unitarian-Universalist Church that drew medical marijuana patients from across the state who told their stories to sympathetic member of the press, public, and any elected official who cared to show up. No member of the opposition bothered to appear.

The weekend before the vote a blast of powerful "Yes on C" radio ads, targeted at senior citizens who listen to mainstream, conservative radio stations, hit the airwaves, reminding them that their medical rights were at stake.

During the wee hours of the morning on election day (around 4 a.m.), volunteer reformers from Mi-NORML planted hundreds of maize and blue (the school colors of the University of Michigan) "Proposal C" yard signs all over Ann Arbor boulevards, medians, polling places and assorted parcels of public property.

Money from MPP, Chuck's personal bank account, and some small donations, amounted to around $10,000 - sufficient to get the job done, including signature gathering.

In the final analysis, Chuck and his team made no mistakes. They stayed the message. They did not take their enemies' bait. The quality of their campaign, crafted specifically to appeal to the caring, "liberal" nature of the Ann Arbor community, led to one of the biggest wins for medical marijuana in the USA: a resounding 74% margin of victory at the polls!

The City Attorney and the Chief of Police, in a fit of rage and venom, publicly vilified the election results and proclaimed their rightful authority to enforce State law anytime they wanted. However, the overwhelming victory margin, coupled with the assistance of the powerful Michigan ACLU (whose legal director, Mike Steinberg, was an Ann Arbor resident), and other, more rational community leaders working behind the scenes, injected some sanity into the post-election climate.

To make a long story short, the negative political rhetoric ended, and no one with a medical need for marijuana has since been arrested or charged for using their medicine in the City of Ann Arbor.

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