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Lies, Damned Lies, and Charter AmendmentsBy Kevin Rex Heine, Section News
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy" (Matthew 5:7, ESV). The counterpoint to that beatitude, which Jesus makes in Matthew 18:21-35 and Matthew 25:31-46, is that those who have no interest in showing mercy in this life should expect to receive none at The Judgment.
Apparently, some members of the Kentwood City Commission didn't get that memo.
Proposal 10-2, which was overwhelmingly approved 3-to-1 by Michigan voters last year, read:
The proposed constitutional amendment would:
Make a person ineligible for election or appointment to any state or local elective office or to hold a position in public employment in this state that is policy-making or has discretionary authority over public assets, if:
And that is actually a great idea. Someone who has violated the public trust (either as an elected official or as a state employee) by committing a felony related to the official capacity of that office or position of employment should not be allowed to serve again until a reasonable amount of time has passed after adjudication. As an example, it should be a minimum of 20 years before either Kwame Kilpatrick or Monica Conyers should ever be allowed to appear on a ballot again in this state. But Kentwood City Commissioner Frank Cummings doesn't think that goes far enough. He has proposed an amendment to the city charter that reads as follows:
See, in Michigan, any convicted felon, upon release from prison, receives back both his/her driver's license and voter registration as part of the release out-processing. It's pretty straightforward logic, really: you've done your time and paid your debt to society, so you may have these two basic privileges back. Even Proposal 10-2, in which the disqualifying felony is directly related to the felon's official capacity and duties, includes a sunset clause, because the proposal's sponsor realized that people need to be given a chance to prove they've cleaned up their act and amended their ways. So why does Frank Cummings (R-at large) propose an amendment that disqualifies any individual without a sunset clause or even the requirement that the disqualifying felony be related to a person's official city duties? Here's where I need to give you some inside scoop on Kentwood City politics. Frank Cummings is indeed a Republican on paper, but he's a big-government, central-planning Republican (we have a name for those people). Specifically, Commissioner Cummings hasn't yet seen the tax abatement - a.k.a. "targeted business tax break" - that he didn't like. Cummings seems to be perfectly okay with a policy of attracting businesses to Kentwood by sticking everyone else with their tax bill. Since November 2009, however, Cummings has had a committed public opponent to his particular habit, that being Ray VerWys (R-Ward 2). Ray is a Republican of the tea party mold, who honestly holds that the government governs best which governs least. He despises tax favors of any sort and generally holds that the city government's job is to keep the community safe and attractive to those who live here now and to those who may consider moving to the area. He believes that local government's responsibility with regard to business is that it should welcome new businesses to the community, and not harass or make it difficult for existing ones to thrive. Cummings doesn't like VerWys very much, and he wants him off the commission in the worst way. And because of a dark spot in VerWys' past, Cummings believes that his proposed charter amendment will do the trick. See, about a dozen years ago (around the time that most people his age would've been graduating from college) Ray VerWys received two felony convictions of embezzlement from two separate employers. Given what he did, I wouldn't exactly call it dumb kid stuff; but since he's also served his sentence and made good on restitution, I wouldn't exactly consider it an automatic disqualifier ten years later either. Just so you know, VerWys' conviction was an issue in his campaign to unseat Frank Raha in 2009. He didn't hide it from the Ward 2 voters, and it did make the Grand Rapids Press at least twice during October 2009, so the voters couldn't say that they didn't know. Evidently the voters were willing to be forgiving, because they ousted incumbent Raha (who'd made a point of highlighting his Lansing connections during the campaign) in favor of VerWys. But Cummings isn't interested in being as forgiving as the Ward 2 voters were, and seems to view himself as perfectly qualified to cast stones, especially when those stones are being cast at someone who calls him out every time on his targeted business tax breaks. So he takes a liberty with last year's constitutional amendment in an effort to see to it that the voice of conscience is silenced. The City Commission meeting at which the proposed amendment will be voted on is this coming Tuesday, June 7th. My sense of the commission is that they are going to amend the proposal to include a sunset clause of somewhere between 7 to 10 years. (Evidently a majority of the commissioners are more interested in mercy than Cummings is.) I intend to be at the meeting, and I encourage others to do the same.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Charter Amendments | 11 comments (11 topical, 0 hidden)
Lies, Damned Lies, and Charter Amendments | 11 comments (11 topical, 0 hidden)
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