TAKING THE INITIATIVE, SPLITTING THE FINEST OF LEGAL HAIRS

The Detroit City Clerk's office, after canvassing the signatures within the ten day timeframe set by law, sent a cryptic letter to the City Council and DCCC saying that DCCC had submitted more than sufficient number of valid signatures as required by the Charter, but noting that "some legal" issues existed," which would be addressed in a separate report.

This kind of message should have gotten serious attention. However, in our naiveté and denial, we simply assumed the Council would either adopt our ordinance within the thirty days or else send the issue to the ballot as required by the charter. We simply awaited notice that one or the other had been done.

No further communication was forthcoming. After the thirty days had elapsed with no action, we pressed the Council and City Clerk for an answer.

Finally, on February 26th, DCCC was advised in writing by the Clerk, that the issue would not be on the ballot for three reasons:

1. The petition form did not conform to state law in the manner it was constructed.
2. The petition was moot in any case because the initiative power did not extend any measure which will have an impact upon the city budget.
3. The petition violated the City Charter prohibition on interference with the administrative responsibilities of the executive branch since, under Detroit's "strong mayor" form of government, the City Council (nor by extension citizens acting in their place) does not have the proper authority to "prioritize" anything. Only the Mayor has that power.

Unfortunately, what our attorney did not realize is that another part of the city charter contained a provision which said in essence that in any dispute over the interpretation of the charter, state law prevails.

In order to keep the measure off the ballot, the city administration decided to "dispute" the way we constructed our petition - knowing full well that petition form requirements for a statewide ballot initiative were different from those specified in the City Charter. Specifically, statewide petitions must print the full text of the law to be amended on the form itself. The City Charter, which we scrupulously followed, did not include such a requirement.

When the wheels of justice finally ground to a halt in Wayne County Circuit Court, DCCC lost on two of the three counts.

In addition to the fact that our petition form was not constructed to also meet state ballot initiative petition standards, the inclusion of the word "budgetary" in our proposed ordinance (i.e., that enforcement of anti-marijuana ordinances against medical users would also be the lowest budgetary priority of the city), was fatal.

We ultimately prevailed only on count #3, the court ruling that voters DO have the right to set city priorities with respect to medical use of marijuana.

At that point MPP provided a small grant and we appealed the decision to the Michigan Court of Appeals - which upheld the Circuit Court ruling.

The consensus was that a further appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court would be futile. It was time to cut our losses.

The moral of this sad tale is that in the State of Michigan, and undoubtedly in every state that provides for a ballot initiative process, local "home rule" municipalities like Detroit are also governed at a higher, statewide regulatory sphere.

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