Election Revolution?

The historic contest between Democratic vice president Kamala Harris and Republican former president Donald Trump at the top of the November 5 ballot is expected to draw huge numbers of voters on Election Day. But with no city council seats contested, the most impactful items locally are proposals near the end of the packed ballot—particularly Ann Arbor proposals A, to create a city-owned “sustainable energy utility,” and C and D, which would make city elections nonpartisan and provide public funding for council and mayoral candidates.

According to the ballot language, proposal A would authorize the city to “supply, generate, transmit, distribute, and store electricity, heat, cooling, light, and power (all from renewable sources)” and “provide energy-related services.” This might include “individual or networked rooftop solar panels, heat pumps, geothermal systems, or batteries to customers to supplement existing utility services.” 

Mayor Christopher Taylor is all-in. An SEU, he says, would give residents “the opportunity to enjoy 100 percent renewable, reliable energy without themselves paying up-front capital costs.” In an email, he adds that he expects it would cost “between $1M–$2M to get up and running, which, once we have confirmed demand, will take approximately 2 years. After that, we do not expect the SEU to require material City expenditures. It will pay for itself, supported by the rates paid by the community members who choose to participate.”

Sustainability and innovations director Missy Stults adds that it would help advance many of the city’s goals, including “improved reliability, increased resilience of our energy system, lower energy costs, and our climate goals.” For instance, an SEU could assess homes for things like solar potential, then, for those who are interested, “the city would install those systems.” Residents would pay for the power as it’s produced. 

“Our modeling shows that it is, per unit of energy, cheaper from the SEU than what you’re getting from the incumbent utility,” Stults says—“sixteen cents [per kilowatt-hour] for solar—and today, DTE customers are paying nineteen cents.”

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Proposal C would create nonpartisan elections by removing candidates’ political affiliations from the ballot. There’s no provision for primary elections, so anyone who gathers enough nominating signatures would go straight into the general election. It was placed on the ballot by a petition circulated by the Coalition for Ann Arbor’s Future. Its website, a2nonpartisan.com, calls partisan elections in municipalities “a relic of the past.”

The same circulators gathered signatures for Proposal D. It would designate 0.3 percent of the city budget to a “Fair Elections Fund” that would match small campaign contributions nine-to-one to a maximum of $40,000. To receive the match, however, candidates would have to “voluntarily agree to receive contributions in lower amounts and only from natural persons”—not companies, unions, or political action committees.

“The problem we have in Ann Arbor is that we don’t have voters,” says John Godfrey, lifelong Democrat, recently retired Rackham assistant dean, and one of the organizers of the coalition. “What we have is an August primary that has extraordinarily low turnout. … For city council races going back to 2014, the number of votes that’ve gone to winners of all of those races have been about just over 11 percent of registered voters.” 

Proposal D “would be a really innovative, progressive step for this city,” Godfrey continues. “We would be the first city in Michigan to introduce small-donor financing, citizen-led financing, for campaigns.”

As he sees it, “the influence of PAC money and special interest donations really deformed local politics. And our city elections should be largely funded by the people who live here”—for example, by council action restricting matches to donations from city residents. 

In September, the Michigan attorney general’s office issued a statement saying that Prop D’s funding requirement would be “contrary to the requirements of state law.” But county clerk Larry Kestenbaum says that’s just an opinion and doesn’t remove it from the ballot. If the proposal passes, city council can decide whether or not to implement it.

Mayor Taylor and the entire council have already lined up against both proposals. But Godfrey believes they’d be “foolish” to refuse to implement them if they pass, predicting a legal challenge “they would lose in quick order.”

Asked how Props C and D would impact local elections, Godfrey replies, “I don’t know. I’m not a forecaster.” But others suspect they’re designed to curb the electoral success of Taylor and his supporters. 

Godfrey forcefully rejects any suggestions that the ballot proposals are favored by any council faction. But former council members were very active in the petition drive, and public funding would offset the Taylorites’ fundraising advantage; they often outspent their opponents candidates two-to-one. 

Taylor emails that he opposes Prop C because if it passes, “Mayor and Council would be selected in down-ballot, school board–style, free-for-alls—where voters don’t know the candidates or their values and there is a high likelihood of City officials elected without majority support.” In a phone interview, he adds that he believes the proposal is “supported by local conservatives and Republicans” who are animated by cultural bias: “We have now the most diverse council in city history. You’re talking to the one straight white male on city council. To my eyes, it’s no coincidence that upon the election of such a council, folks are making efforts to change the rules.”

Former council member Jack Eaton, who lost to Taylor in 2018’s Democratic primary, emails that he is “not actively involved in the campaign to adopt Proposals C and D,” but does “support both proposals and will vote yes on them.”

“I am amused that the Mayor resorts to unfounded personal attacks to mischaracterize the proponents of Proposals C and D,” Eaton writes. “The Mayor explained that he [previously] opposed nonpartisan Council elections because he did not want the local Democratic Party to have that much influence over who would be elected to Council. The Mayor’s big-money supporters want to deprive the Democratic Party [of] the opportunity to influence Council races? That seems conservative to me.”

Taylor says Prop D would cost “the city in the neighborhood of half a million dollars” per campaign, which “would require us to either decrease services or raise taxes.” Those themes were echoed in September in mass emails from two newly formed groups: Democrats for Ann Arbor advocated keeping party labels, while Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility raised the specter of Prop D funding “fringe, extremist political campaigns with no safeguards or regulations.” (The coalition responded online that “Voters have abundant resources to inform themselves about candidates.”)

“I’m a bit mystified by this vigorous intervention because neither of these reforms would put the mayor or the council at a disadvantage at all,” Godfrey says. “There is every likelihood that with their experience and their strength as politicians that they’d succeed quite well.” 

Godfrey says the coalition is “very optimistic” the proposals will win the 60 percent needed for approval. “Many people see these as really good for Ann Arbor and really good for democracy.”

Asked if he thinks the proposals will pass, Taylor says, “I don’t know.” But he reaffirms his belief that “the party label is important—I believe Ann Arbor is a Democratic town.” 

Related: No Parties?

The city’s Proposal B would renew a 1.1-mill tax for park maintenance and capital improvements. Washtenaw County has three millage renewals of its own on the ballot, along with a proposed new one, for senior services.

Proposal 4, the mental health and public safety millage, is a one-mill levy that pays for expanded mental health and addiction services, subsidizes the cost of sheriff’s deputies who provide police services under contract, and pays for programs to minimize mentally ill people’s contact with the criminal justice system. Though a coalition of community groups lobbied county commissioners to separate the mental health and policing funding, they returned it to the ballot as it originally passed in 2017. 

The millage was the brainchild of outgoing sheriff Jerry Clayton, whose department gets 38 percent of the funds for contract policing costs and expanded mental health services. He says it’s been “a resounding success.” 

“It has been absolutely a tremendous success,” echoes Washtenaw Community Mental Health executive director Trish Cortes, whose department gets another 38 percent. (The rest is rebated to Ann Arbor and other communities that pay for their own police forces.)

“That’s not to say that we don’t have more work to do,” Cortes continues. “But we have definitely built an infrastructure with our community partners and at CMH that has really allowed us to expand our reach into the community.”

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“I wholeheartedly support it,” says Ann Arbor county commissioner Andy LaBarre. “It’s critical for really, really vital mental health service expansion. It is also critical to maintain contract policing for a huge swath of the county.”

 “I think it speaks volumes about the values our community holds,” says Ann Arbor county commissioner Katie Scott, “and I think it allows our sheriff office, and some local municipalities who choose to, to do really progressive things with policing.”

Alyshia Dyer won August’s Democratic primary for sheriff and is unopposed in November. She acknowledges that she was “very vocal about the problems that I saw in how the sheriff’s office was spending the millage money … and really felt that we needed more transparency. But, that being said, I heavily support it.”

 Dyer says the millage already “has done a lot of great things.” Her goal will be “to make sure that money is spent on front-end prevention, mental health housing—things that are gonna really help with public safety.” 

LaBarre and Scott say that as of September, they aren’t aware of any organized opposition, though Scott expects that some people will be opposed “just for the fact that public safety is involved.”

“I think the voters will support renewal because they supported it so heartily last time, and now they’ve seen the programs coming out of it,” she says.

The other county renewals are uncontroversial: Proposal 1 is a .2-mill renewal and Headlee override for the county’s emergency communications system. Proposal 2 would renew and restore a .1-mill tax for veterans relief. 

Proposal 3 would approve a new millage for senior services. As one of just nine Michigan counties without a millage, says commission chair Justin Hodge, Washtenaw “has struggled with making sure that we provide enough resources to senior services.” But with competition from other millages and no clear plan, “the timing never seemed right.” 

Ypsilanti Meals on Wheels CEO Barbara Niess-May suspects a recent “increase in advocacy” finally got things moving. Last year, Hodge says, the commission “allocated several hundred thousand dollars for senior services and then directed county administration to develop an outline for what a senior service millage would look like.”

In consultation with the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, they came up with the plan that’s on the ballot: .5 mill that would “support, expand, and improve essential services for older adults,” including transportation, health and wellness programs, social and recreational opportunities, and support to help people stay in their homes.