response 1 of 19:

Nov 5 20:23 UTC 2000

I would be interested, if time permits, in more commentary
on Court of Appeals, WCC, and proposals 2 and A. 

response 3 of 19:

Nov 6 06:46 UTC 2000

Re 2.  I'm speaking of Washtenaw County here.  Every Michigan county has
its own sheriff.

Ron Schebil has been the Washtenaw County sheriff for quite a few years. 
He is popular in the community and is likely to be re-elected.  However,
the endorsement of his opponent, Dan Minzey, by the sheriff deputies
reveals something of a problem or split within the department.

response 5 of 19:

Nov 6 07:01 UTC 2000

Re 4.  Note my exact wording.  I did not say he was intransigent.

response 7 of 19:

Nov 6 14:44 UTC 2000

Re 6.  Most of this happened before I was appointed to the board, though
I was present for several of the meetings.

The Washtenaw County Sheriff's Department has a number of different
functions.  Perhaps the most important is the jail.  Having a jail is NOT
optional -- the county is required to provide it, and required to meet
certain standards.  It is generally agreed by all parties that there are
problems with funding, staffing, and maintaining the jail, and there is no
dispute that the county needs to allocate more funds to the jail.

Another function of the sheriff's department is road patrol, or "police
services", including answering emergency calls and so on.  Cities and some
townships and villages have their own police departments; the sheriff's
department covers the remaining territory.  This is an *optional* service
which (unlike the jail) the county is not required by law to provide.

Some townships have a contract with the county for police services, under
which they pay the county for this.  Others, generally the smaller and
more rural ones, do not.  All of the townships and cities pay county
taxes, but the areas with their own police departments do not get any
police services from the county.

When the issue of deciding what to charge townships for police services
contracts, it became clear that there were major inequities in the
allocation of these costs.  Townships without contracts (i.e., without
paying extra) were getting in some cases as much or more service per
capita as townships with contracts.  The contracts themselves had been
negotiated at various times under various terms and (as I understand it)
were not consistent with one another.  And, of course, cities like Ann
Arbor and Ypsilanti were being double-taxed for police services.

Northwestern University did a study for the county on how better to
allocate these costs.  Following the study, there was an intensive series
of meetings and negotiations, and various options were discussed.

Part of the goal was to reallocate county general fund money from road
patrol to the jail.  Another part of the goal was to create as much
consistency as possible in the treatment of the different jurisdictions.

It was agreed to have a certain amount of the county tax revenue, equal to
1/2 mill, be set aside exclusively for road patrol.  This was a compromise
between the cities, which would have preferred zero mills, and the
townships, which would have preferred a larger number.  Again, all
jurisdictions would be paying this 1/2 mill whether they received any
police services from the county or not.

What was somewhat of a bone of contention was how to allocate these funds: 
to general road patrol across all the townships, or to subsidize those
townships which entered into contracts with the county, or some
combination of those.  The competing claimants were the rural townships on
the one hand, most of which didn't have contracts, and Ypsilanti Township
on the other, which already had a big contract on very favorable terms. 

Sheriff Schebil, though he supported the process, took the public position
that none of these options was acceptable.  Rather than lend his
considerable prestige to reaching a consensus solution, which might have
cost him some support either in the rural townships or in Ypsilanti
Township or both, he insisted that both had to be fully funded.  That was
not a fiscally realistic option.

Without a compromise backed by the sheriff, the county board had to make
the decision politically.  Given the number of reps that Ypsi Township has
on the board, it should be no surprise that Ypsilanti Township won and the
rural townships lost.  This is what Ann Arbor News was grumbling about
when they editorialized against the result.

Me, I would have preferred a compromise, but I didn't take office until
the day after that vote was taken.

response 9 of 19:

Nov 6 17:56 UTC 2000

Re 5: I noted your exact wording.  I see an "unwillingness to abandon a public
position of <x>" as almost identical to "refusing to compromise or abandon
an extreme position."  In this case, the final quotation just happens to be
the definition of <x> in the first quotation.  ;)

Like you, I wanted a compromise.  If he could have helped forge one but
didn't, well, it's time to rethink my vote.

response 11 of 19:

Nov 6 18:35 UTC 2000

The rules for political calls may be different from telemarketing
calls in several respects.  We've received several recorded political
messages on our home phone, but I believe recorded calls are a no-no
for telemarketers.

response 13 of 19:

Nov 6 23:32 UTC 2000

        It seems political workers are tolerated doing a whole lot of 
illegal stuff--including putting flyers into my mailbox.

response 15 of 19:

Nov 7 02:10 UTC 2000

Re 12.  Again, Proposal 2 *does* support majority rule, since any local
law is approved by a majority of the city council or local voters.

The Legislature ROUTINELY has to reach a two-thirds majority in order
for a bill to have "immediate effect".  In theory, a one-third minority
could prevent a law from going into effect immediately.  In real life,
it means that bipartisan consensus is reached on those items.  A one
third vote is unlikely unless the minority party is united.

response 17 of 19:

Nov 7 04:13 UTC 2000

Aside from some very basic principles, the U.S. Constitution does not
dictate how states should be organized.  And indeed, every state is
different.  One of the innovations in state/local relations came about
in the Progressive Era at the turn of the century: "home rule", the
concept that cities should run their own affairs.  Before "home rule",
state legislatures dictated every aspect of municipal organization and
affairs.  Because legislatures were indifferent to local concerns and
often corrupt, this was a bad system.  It is still the system in some
backward states like Alabama.

States with relatively strong home rule have a variety of ways of
protecting local communities from the whims of the legislature, VERY
OFTEN with explicit rules and guarantees in the state constitution.
Note, too, that the state constitution, and all of those rules, such
as the rule which would be created if Prop 2 is adopted, were all
enacted by majority vote.

In recent years, Michigan has been backing away from home rule toward
a system more dominated by the legislature.  Again, all the civics
textbooks and experience with governmental structure would suggest
that a return to the bad old days of casual legislative medding is
not a good thing.

The Legislature has to deal with the two-thirds requirement for
immediate effect every single day it votes on anything.  All it takes
is for the parties to agree, and (contrary to what you might think)
they usually do on most things.  Since giving immediate effect is
such a routine action, I would suspect that overriding local votes
with a two-thirds vote would be a routine action, too.  That is why
Proposal 2 is more modest and symbolic than the opponents would like
you to think.

Finally, all the special interests -- the people with lobbyists in Lansing
-- are absolutely united against Prop. 2.  The Chamber of Commerce, the
police unions, the automobile dealers, the casinos, the list goes on and
on.  These are the people who, by their well-funded political action
committees and corps of lobbyists in Lansing, essentially run the
Legislature -- all the more so since term limits have erased institutional
memory and seniority among the legislators themselves.  The interests
don't want to see an institution they control lose any power, even
slightly or symbolically, and they are absolutely vicious on this issue.

response 19 of 19:

Nov 7 21:31 UTC 2000

Re 10: I kinda figgered that was the word you were pivoting on.  Me, too, in
the end.