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A weekly show from the folks at East Lansing Info breaking down all the news and happenings in East Lansing, Michigan.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of East Lansing Insider. I'm your host, Anna Liz Nichols, deputy editor at East Lansing Info, and we are in the midst of election season here in East Lansing. Statewide voters are deciding who will end up on the November ballot in Michigan's gubernatorial race for governor and other statewide offices and also federal offices, house seats, and a senate seat. I'm joined by our managing editor, Lucas Day, to talk about the election and some of the big things happening in this cycle. But on a more local level, East Lansing voters will be deciding on four tax proposals, as well as some some amendments to the city charter.
Anna Liz Nichols:Charter. So, Lucas, can we talk for a minute about some of the tax proposals? When we were when we were originally giving some information to readers about the tax proposal, I know that you talked to Potter Park Zoo personally. What was. What are they looking for in that, tax millage, and and what would that mean for the zoo?
Lucas Day:So the millage is extremely important for the zoo because it provides about 70% of the zoo's operating funds. So your operating funds are, like, what it takes to run the zoo's day to day. Like, they've got some other big projects that are coming in, and, those are grant funded. So they're not they probably hinge on the millage because the millage, like, allows them to operate normally, but they're not funded through the millage. That's one of the things that they made clear to me that I thought was kind of interesting.
Lucas Day:So the actual cost is a six year renewal for about half a mill, which is 50¢ for every thousand dollars of, taxable value. So that's $50 if your house is worth $200,000. So so the actual proposal is, for half a mill for six years, which is 50¢ for every thousand dollars of taxable value. So if your house is worth about $200,000, you'll be charged $50 more for it and, you know, so on and so forth. It goes up based on the value or down based on the value.
Lucas Day:The millage got a lot of support. It was approved by 73% of voters last time I was on the ballot in 2020. And so I'm wondering if it sees the same level of support. I'm I think that that I actually covered that one as a student. I think that was, like, a February ballot it was on.
Lucas Day:So it didn't, you know, it was a different election. I think it was a presidential primary action, so maybe the turnout will be similar. But I we I mean, we've seen millages failing, so I think that everyone's a little bit nervous. I I could tell from the zoo director that it was, you know, something that she thought about. Because if the millage doesn't pass, like, the zoo's future becomes murky .
Lucas Day:Like, you can't just replace the $5,000,000 that the zoo gets from this millage by, you know, raising the price of entry or something like that. The property actually reverts back to the city of Lansing if it if it fails. Right now, the zoo is controlled by Ingham County. And, you know, I asked Andy Shore's office, Lansing mayor Andy Shore, like, did you guys plan for this at all? And they they don't have the $5,000,000 set aside.
Lucas Day:So, I think murky is the best way to describe the future of the zoo. You probably gotta cut costs. I don't know if that means, you know, exhibits. I don't know if that means privatizing in some some form. It didn't seem like they knew either when I talked to them.
Lucas Day:But, yeah, I I think that's a key takeaway is that the future of the zoo becomes pretty cloudy if this doesn't pass.
Anna Liz Nichols:You know, a lot of that's kind of interesting because the the next millage we're gonna talk about is the trails millage. These are all, by the way, countywide millages. It's going to affect not just East Lansing. It'll affect all of Ingham County from you know, Lansing is, like, the top of Ingham County. The bottom of Ingham County is Stockbridge.
Anna Liz Nichols:But, similarly, the trails millage, which is to fund repairs and improvements to the countywide trail system, also passed by a similar margin in 2020 when it was renewed 75%, which was up from 55% of voters the the first time it was on the ballot in 2014. I would be curious how the, Potter Park millage has fared throughout the the renewal years, because I feel like from 55% to 75% is a big jump. Also, the the amount is this is very or the same as Potter Park. It's a it's a 0.5 mil for the next six years, same as Potter Park, 50¢ for every thousand dollars of talk taxable value, and it would raise more than $5,000,000 annually for parks and trails projects across Ingham County. Mind you, for East Lansing voters, it's only one project this year.
Anna Liz Nichols:We've had a couple projects, happen, throughout the years for East Lansing. The this project continues to concern the Northern Tier Trail, which runs, like, along Abbott Road pretty much over to campus. Other projects that have happened throughout the county include adding bath things like bathrooms, new trails, repairing old trails, repairing pedestrian bridges, boat launches, all sorts of things. It's generally well received in in East Lansing. Also throughout the years, more than $3,300,000 from the money collected from the Millage countywide has been put into East Lansing parks And trails.
Lucas Day:And the another one that we're gonna get is and this one's returning again after it failed, a a couple of years ago. And so in 2024, this the the this is a tax on tax increase on hotels and short term living spaces. So if you stay in the county for under thirty days, there's been a tax in place, but they're trying to increase it from 5% to 8%. The state legislature let them do that a few years ago, but the county has to put it on the ballot to be approved by voters. This failed with about 59% of people against it in 2024, which kinda goes into one of my theories that people hate taxes, but they love millages.
Lucas Day:Like, we see millages, you know, we usually pass in the area, but I think the taxes tend to face a little bit, you know, more of a more of a resistance even though millages are taxes.
Anna Liz Nichols:Yeah. To be so clear, a millage is a tax. This is property tax.
Lucas Day:Yeah. It's just the the word's different. But, yeah, almost 60% of people voted against us in 2024. It's not a charge that goes directly to residents. It's, increasing an existing tax that is peep if someone stays at a hotel for less than thirty days, that rates can go from 5% to 8%.
Lucas Day:This this is supposed to bring in $3,800,000, in the first year, and then it would be distributed. Most of it would go to the Lansing convention, visitors bureau or choose Lansing as most people know it. And then some to the, the fair board, Greater Lansing Arts Council, and county administrative expenses. So it's it's supposed to increase fairgrounds, like or improve fairgrounds and, like, public spaces is is how it's laid out in the ballot. But the the point that was stressed to us is that it's a tax on visitors, not people that live here.
Anna Liz Nichols:The other tax proposal is the transportation services for elderly and disabled persons. It's a slightly bigger millage. It's point six mills as opposed to these half half mills that we've been talking about. So it's 60 per thousand dollars of taxable value on property owners. If it's renewed, this is, again, a renewal.
Anna Liz Nichols:It would provide over $6,000,000 in its first year. This is to basically help, disabled and older persons with mobility issues, stay in their houses, be able to get to appointment, basically, to keep people in their homes and kinda participatory in our city.
Lucas Day:So, yeah, as we mentioned, those are all county proposals. So the entire Ingham County will be voting on those. Locally, in East Lansing, there's three there's three amendments that you the city charter that are on the ballot. These came out of a a commission that the city assembled a couple years ago that spent about six months, eight months reviewing the city charter. It came back with a bunch of different recommendations.
Anna Liz Nichols:Yeah. I believe over 20. Right?
Lucas Day:Yeah. There's a bunch of them, and they're gonna be spread out over several ballots. Like, over the next few years, you're going to be getting, like, a few charter amendments every every ballot. There is some debate about whether or not that's the right way to do it. Some people's like, no.
Lucas Day:Just put them all in one. But there's some concerns about, like, voter fatigue and people knowing what they're voting about, so they're gonna spread them out. And these were deemed by the city council who took advice from the city attorney as, like, the most pressing. And so I mean, it's three different charter amendments, but two of them are very similar. So, the first one that kinda stands alone is it it changes the regulations around the city manager position, which is pretty relevant right now because we don't have a, you know, long term city manager.
Lucas Day:We've got an interim city manager right now. So the next person I'm assuming will work under these rules. If this is approved, it's it's it's gonna be a few months before you get somebody else. But this would require that the next city manager lives within twenty five miles of East Lansing. And it also spells out, like, a succession a succession plan if they're in a spose.
Lucas Day:So we we saw through Foyas that, like, Robert Bellman, the the former city manager who lived in Saginaw, you know, if he was gonna be away for the weekend and it was a big weekend, he'd be, appointing an acting city manager kind of if he was going away for the weekend just in case something happened. There'd be somebody in the city to address it. And, this amendment would build build in a succession plan into the city planning where you've got a deputy city manager, who just takes over. If the city manager isn't there, probably. It could be, we've we've had times in the city where the deputy city manager is a current department head.
Lucas Day:I think Tom Fairnberg Fair Fairnberg, the old, planning director was the isn't it? It was a deputy city manager at one time. But, like, right now, we don't have one as far as I know. Like, we just don't have somebody that filled that role after Tom Tom left a few years ago. So it's not something that it's seen as a whole for succession planning.
Lucas Day:There's also a proposal that, a couple of years ago, Bellman wrote into a the budget proposal asking for a new employee to be hired as deputy city manager. So, I I mean, it it it depends on how the city government wants to structure it. You know, that's not really spelled out in the amendment. But, yeah, it would require that there's a deputy city manager or and an acting city manager if they're both unable to go because right now, that's kind of something that's done. You know?
Lucas Day:It it looked like it was done at the council's request. So I could so sometimes if you don't have these things written down, they fall through. The next one is it was it's really similar to a proposal that the city tried a few years ago that people voted against. I think and it's going to push back the swearing end date of the new city council members as one part of it and then the election of the mayor and the mayor pro tem as as the other. So those are separate questions, but they really mean something pretty similar.
Lucas Day:Right now, how the process works is you vote in the city council, then they come in the next at their next meeting, and they vote amongst themselves on a mayor and a mayor pro tem. Now a few years back, the there's changes to the state or to the to some state regulations. Now it takes longer to certify elections. So the clerk has told me that it's impossible to do because you've gotta give, like, a week for overseas ballots to come in. So you can't certify an election by the Tuesday following the election, which right now is what the city charter says they were supposed to do.
Lucas Day:So you're supposed to elect these people, then swear them in the following Tuesday. They're supposed to vote in the mayor mayor pro tem. Now that's not the process that's been followed the last few years. They've waited a couple weeks because they've needed to wait for that canvassing process to play out. So they're not even following the city charter right now, because state law trumps local local law.
Lucas Day:The last time a similar proposal came, it stipulated that this would be done at at, like, the first meeting of January, so there would be a lame duck period. Now that's what you're asked in 2023. This and people voted against it, I think, largely because they didn't like that lame duck period. They were concerned what these guys were gonna do if they're in there for two months, they didn't have, you that know, accountability mechanism of an election coming up. This eliminates that.
Lucas Day:This says the first Tuesday after the election is certified. So it it brings the city charter into compliance with state law, and it gets rid of that lame duck period that I think scared people off in 2023.
Anna Liz Nichols:One thing on East Lansing's radar for this primary election and mind you, we're talking about a primary election. We're not talking about, you know, our November election. Generally, a significantly smaller number of people vote in primaries. Generally, there's not Michigan's not a stranger to a crowded primary field, but there's not always a lot of focus on primaries. However, this summer in late June, the Trump administration sent letters to three Democratic strongholds in Michigan asserting that they had violated federal election laws.
Anna Liz Nichols:Things, asserting specific to East Lansing that in previous elections, there had been long lines and that people had not been able to access or were not directed to have provisional ballots. All all claims that our city clerk refuted and gave an excellent gave a reply to, but the crux of the letter from the Department of Justice, that was where the letter came from specific to the Trump administration, there was the assertion that come primary day, come August 4, the Department of Justice would be sending election monitors. And there have been questions of what that means, who exactly might come to Michigan, why you can't ignore the fact that the three locations that were chosen for for this visit were three of Michigan's strongest Democratic strongholds. East Lansing specifically plays backdrop to one of the most competitive congressional races in the country, Michigan's 7th Congressional District. It has flip flopped in recent years, and we'll talk a little bit about that.
Anna Liz Nichols:But the partisan divide in congress is is has been narrowing in recent years. So, you know, a random race in Michigan could mean a a partisan flip on a federal level. So, on a previous episode of East Lansing Insider, Lucas did an interview with, previous city clerk for East Lansing, Marie Wicks, to talk about this letter, to talk about this back and forth. Lucas, what were some of the key takeaways, that Marie gave you about this kind of, you know, debacle? It's gotten quite a bit of attention.
Lucas Day:Yeah. So Marie made a lot of the same points that, the current court clerk Emily Gordon made in her written response to DOJ. And some of these that you you knew right as soon as you read the letter that, a lot of the DOJ's assertions just didn't makes make a ton of sense. So it's not, like, unusual for federal election watchers to be sent out, but my understanding is usually it's done at places that, like, have had issues with elections. Like, this came from the civil rights division.
Lucas Day:So, like, if there's voter suppression or something like that, it would make sense. But what we saw in 2024 and what I, you know, I could see with my own eyes as I covered it is that the Lions were significantly shorter than they've been at other major elections. Like, when Marie was running the running that election with, Amy Gordon, actually, Emily's sister, they used the WKR station Michigan State. They really pushed, early voting, you know, took a unique approach to get more students registered early and then speed up the process, during election day. And then there were some changes to state law that allowed for that too.
Lucas Day:And they really cut down the length of lines on election day. So when when I saw their long lines with one of the assertions, I just didn't think that made much sense. And what Marie explained to me is that the provisional ballots piece of this doesn't really make sense too because a provisional ballot is something that you can't like if you're not registered to vote, and, you can come in later and, you know, show your proof of residency ID, whatever, and get, you know, registered in that provisional ballot account. But East Lansing and in Michigan, as a whole, provisional ballot ballots are extremely rare because we've got election day at registration. So you don't have to cast provisional ballot.
Lucas Day:You can just come into, you you know, the clerk's office or satellite clerk's office, and you can just register and vote then. So so a lot of the the the assertions the I I guess the concern here is that the assertions don't make sense about why they're sending people to these cities. They don't match up to why election monitors federal election monitors have been sent in the past. And, you know, there's just concern, I think, around this federal government because they haven't been telling the truth about, what happened in the twenty twenty election. Now having said all of that, this could be nothing.
Lucas Day:Like, they they could send usually, when election monitors come, whether they're federal or otherwise, like, they're not allowed to touch the voting machines. They're not allowed to talk to the voters. They're not allowed to stand in the room. They're allowed to watch. So the I I this could this could end up being nothing.
Lucas Day:That's something that that's a point Marie made. That's a point that council member Mark Meadows made when I talked to him. You know, obviously, if something different happens and if it keeps people from voting at this election, it's it's a concern. But there's laws about, like, sending, you know, ICE agents is one of the concerns I've seen online. It's like there's there's laws about sending those people to polling places.
Lucas Day:Like, they're not allowed to be in there. And so what might end up happening is is, you know, some people standing in the back of the room and you don't even notice them. I think what grabbed our attention is the reasoning that the DOJ gave for sending these election monitors didn't make sense, and it was targeted at, you know, three cities that are have a, you know, pretty left leaning, voter base.
Anna Liz Nichols:Those being?
Lucas Day:Lansing, East Lansing, and Detroit.
Anna Liz Nichols:Like you said, it can't be stated enough that these claims from the DOJ really don't hold water in Michigan and and kind of display a misunderstanding of our state law. Mind you, they're fairly new changes. In 2018, Michigan voters by large margins approved a series of election law changes. That was also the year we legalized recreational marijuana.
Lucas Day:That was my first election. That was the first time I voted.
Anna Liz Nichols:Yes. The actually, 2018 was a big election year. It was, it was recreational marijuana in Michigan. It was we created an a a system for redistricting that is citizen led. It's, supposed to limit gerrymandering, which kinda leads us into why the congressional district in in East Lansing is is so competitive, but I'll I digress.
Anna Liz Nichols:But in terms of what was addressed in the DOJ's letter that our city clerk, you know, addressed was in twenty eighteen, Michigan voters, again, by large margins, approved same day voter registration. No no reason absentee voting. So you can, absentee voting isn't simply just for, say, overseas people who are are in the military deployed. It's it can be anyone. Anyone can vote by mail, and if they're a qualified voter, as well as if you decide, you know, it's it's election day and I actually would like to participate in my democratic process, you can come at 7PM and and come to register to vote and vote same day in person.
Anna Liz Nichols:Mind you, East Lansing, home to Michigan State University, this this change came in 2018. By the time it was time to vote in 2020 and 2022, our election system was really testing, you know, what that looks like. And in in East Lansing, it was a lot of first time voters and, you know, students here's the thing. Absentee voting and same day voter registration is widely used in Michigan, mostly the the mail in voting, the absentee voting. But it was it was a lot of students making a same day decision about voting, so the lines were locked.
Anna Liz Nichols:By the time it was 2024, our election systems had been able to adjust to same day voter registration. We, statewide had a better grasp of of how to prepare for this. One of the claims in the DOJ's letter is that that the qualified voter file was not used as the official voter registration list. Provisional ballots, what they talked what the DOJ talked about in their letter, permits individuals who cannot immediately confirm that they are on the registered voter list to receive a ballot that can later be confirmed. You can register to vote on election day.
Anna Liz Nichols:But, again, our our city clerk said in in her rebuttal that, say, somebody wants one, doesn't wanna reregister or register, they have the ability to get a a provisional ballot in East Lansing.
Lucas Day:Yeah. They've got it. They just don't use them very often because they don't need to.
Anna Liz Nichols:Yeah. You can register on election day. So there's a question if, you know, the Trump administration knows election law in Michigan.
Lucas Day:That was another point that Marie made is that all these states have different laws, and it could just be a misunderstanding of the law that was bringing them here. I I think the overarching point is that, like, you know, maybe if we had long lines again in '24 or even if they wanted to get them shorter, I think the longest lines of the day were about an hour. And, again, that's because students wait until election day to vote, and they're funneled to a couple of different locations where that's allowed. You're not allowed to, you know, register at regular precincts. So there's just a couple of different spots you can go.
Lucas Day:Maybe if they're sending people, it'd be like, well, maybe you guys can do this better, then I'll cut down on the lines. It it would make sense, but those weren't the reasons given. And the the lines issue, like, there was the triumph of vSAN since election covering in '24. It wasn't even the results, That was the story. It was, that they'd figured out a solution to this problem that had been seen as kind of a systemic thing for a couple of years ago, and it wasn't real real clear if there was gonna be an answer to it.
Lucas Day:So that that's that's the concern. And, I mean, having said all of this, if they're here to monitor long lines, there's not gonna be any lines because the students aren't here. I probably should have said that earlier.
Anna Liz Nichols:Students aren't here. School does not start for, like, another more than a month, and people, by and large, use absentee voting. This isn't to say no one's gonna show up to the polls come August 4. Also, we have early voting. There's that's the thing with all the changes because 2018 wasn't the only time Michigan election law, by virtue of an a a state constitutional amendment, changed.
Anna Liz Nichols:We have had a series of state constitutional law changes in recent years. So Michigan election law, to give credit, has changed a lot in recent years. So have the processes to address some of those concerns along lines, the ability to quickly process absentee ballots. And that includes expanded early vote. Like, we have days of early voting opportunities.
Anna Liz Nichols:And then mind you, we made a lot of these changes in 2018, then we had the pandemic. Michigan election processes had to learn really quickly how to allow more people to vote absentee, and people liked it. We vote absentee in Michigan.
Lucas Day:Yeah. More than 70% of East Lansing, I'm guessing that's usually around the number, will have voted absentee in this election. So most people that are listening to this have already voted.
Anna Liz Nichols:Yeah. So we're telling you things that you already know. But to share a little bit about one of the elections that is a front runner in East Lansing is East Lansing is is in the 7th Congressional District. It's a highly contentious district. It has put it's a it's like I said, we had we had new redistricting laws, so it's not a there is not a historical precedence for partisan makeup of the 7th Congressional District as it, you know, is has been drawn out today.
Anna Liz Nichols:In 2022, current state senator Alyssa Slotkin, sir, won her, election against current state rep for the 7th Congressional District, Tom Barrett. She won it by around 20000 votes. The next election in 2024, Tom Barrett, current, you know, state representative, beat out his democratic challenger, Curtis Hertel, by about the same number of votes. I think it was slightly less, but it was it was a fairly tight margin. And so come this year, Tom Barrett will be running for his seat again as the incumbent, and he will come against his democratic challenger.
Anna Liz Nichols:And it's not a guaranteed seat. It's flipped in the past very recently.
Lucas Day:Yeah. That's gonna be an interesting race. For you said specifically because one of the candidates is, he's from here. Yes. But Will Lawrence is running in the race, and he's he he he cofounded the Sunrise Movement, and, he's been working to rent this too damn high.
Lucas Day:He graduated from from East Lansing High School, I think, about fifteen years ago.
Anna Liz Nichols:Yeah. His prom date from East Lansing High School is sending campaign texts. That was one anecdote from from recent history is there was a question. Is this really coming? It was, hey.
Anna Liz Nichols:I'm I was Will Lawrence's prom date in East Lansing. You should vote for him. And there was a question of, like, what is this? And I according to Will Lawrence, that was really his prom date, and and she's, advocating for him to now take this, key office to represent Michigan on a federal level.
Lucas Day:Yeah. And I I mean, if you drive around, like, East Lansing, I think part of this is because Will's from here. I think that another part of it is just that he's kind of occupied this progressive lane, progressive voter lane that maybe people get excited about and more likely to put up signs and canvas for and things like that. But if you drive around East Lansing, it looks like he's about to put up, like, Saddam Hussein numbers because his signs are everywhere, and he's got you know, I've they have three canvassers at my house. They've all been from him.
Lucas Day:But I was talking with the League of Women Voters, one of the representatives a few months back, and they're like, you know, this is really a pretty diverse district if you actually look at, like, what fits into it. You know, there's rural area. You got Lansing and East Lansing that, you know, maybe they vote more similar, but you've got rural areas. Like, it's a pretty big district. It encompasses a few different counties.
Lucas Day:So, you know, just looking at what you see in East Lansing, it it's not gonna tell you the whole story. This is expected to be a pretty competitive race. Like, I've seen different people different pundits saying different things about it. It's it's tightly washed because as you mentioned, it is a a swing district that is, kind of seem like it's a bellwether in the in the in the national, picture. And, yeah, I mean, it's something that people are gonna be watching locally, nationally, and I'm really curious how these outlying districts, how these outlying districts vote.
Lucas Day:I see that Will's been become pretty active going to, like, local township meetings, and city council meetings in the rural districts to talk about data centers, which are one of the biggest wedge issues, I think, that we have right now. And they're a unique one, you know, because they're they just popped up a few years ago. I don't know if that's a campaign strategy, or I don't know if, you know, he really just is going to, you know, speak against, data centers. But when I started seeing those videos of him showing up, I I just wondered if that was a way to diversify the places that the votes are coming in from. Because, you you know, I'm from rural Northern Michigan.
Lucas Day:Like, not being able to control where those things are put in, and I know there's all sorts of people that will argue that's an illegitimate fear, but people are afraid of it. They're afraid that they're gonna have this new loud thing put outside of their house that, you know, burns through resources and, devalues their their housing or their property values. So I mean, I I am curious to see district to district what the vote looks like between, Lawrence and then Bridget Brink and Matt who have both, you know, ran pretty active campaigns. Like, I I've seen a lot from them. They've gotten some endorsements from the locals from some of the local officials.
Lucas Day:Yeah. That's one that's one of the other things that I thought was interesting was Mark Meadows, I think, endorsed Bridget Brink. I've seen different people locally, with. So it's you've you've seen a diversity of opinions, but you might not see it looking at the science.