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Initiative & Referendum

As John said yesterday, Michigan joins California, New York and Pennsylvania as the only states with full-time legislatures. John also highlighted the work of the Detroit Free Press’ Henry Woloson, who is advocating scaling Michigan’s legislature back to part-time. Woloson isn’t alone—with the passage of a ballot initiative crafted by a father-son pair of attorneys, a part-time Michigan legislature could be a reality. 

Allan and Gregory Schmid are in the process of collecting the nearly 372,000 signatures they need to place an initiative on the November ballot that will limit Michigan's legislative session to no more than half of a year and cut members salaries in half. The aim is to return the body to a group of citizen-legislators who live in their districts instead of representatives who live distantly in the capital.

With salaries of $79,650, Michigan has one of the highest paid legislatures; under the proposed amendment, that salary would be slashed to $40,000 and members would be docked for being absent. The state's governor would also be required to submit a balanced budget on time.

The Schmids are no strangers to Michigan's I&R process; Allan wrote initiatives to cap property taxes that were passed in the 1970s, as well as legislative term limits that were passed in 1992. His son Greg is heading this initiative to allow citizens to take even further control of their state legislature, and he has also written an amendment that would require all tax hikes be brought to a vote.

Civil service was never intended to be a full-time job; indeed, most of the founders never imagined that government would busy itself with so much of the people’s business that legislating required all of the legislator's time. Term limits are one tool to contain this problem; let’s hope this initiative is Michigan's next tool.

Paul Jacob's co-defendant Rick Carpenter as well as AFP-OK director Stuart Jolly spoke at the event in Oklahoma City two weeks ago. Check it out here!

A few dozen people joined Paul Jacob, Rick Carpenter, State Senator Randy Brogdon, State Rep. Mike Reynolds, Kim Wright, Charlie Meadows, Stuart Jolly on the OK City Courthouse steps to rally for the unhindered right to the citizen initiative process.

I'm in Oklahoma City, OK today to cover the SECOND arraignment of Paul Jacob and the Oklahoma 3.

It's a beautiful day outside, but it's going to be anything inside the courtroom, where the Oklahoma Attorney General's dream of crushing the citizen initiative process takes another step forward...unless we, the people can stop him.

Check out today's press release, including Paul's latest statement on this assault on our First Amendment rights:

"I have committed no crime," said Paul Jacob, president of Citizens in Charge. "What is my actual offense but that of daring to help Oklahoma voters hold an election to decide an issue?"

I'll have video and images from today's press conference online tomorrow, so check back soon, and be sure to visit two websites for the whole scoop of what's going on: FreePaulJacob.com and FreetheOK3.com.