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Unconstitutional: Great Lakes Water Authority Lease Violates Michigan Constitution
by 10x25MM • • 8 Comments
--- Absence of Enabling Legislation Clearly Violates Article III, Section 6 --- 40 Year Lease Period Clearly Violates Article VII, Section 30
Friday, the Great Lakes Water Authority board approved a 40 year duration lease of Detroit Water & Sewerage Department’s assets and operations outside of the city of Detroit. This approval passed by a 5 to 1 vote with only Macomb County’s representative on the GLWA board opposed. The terms of the lease subordinate the DW&SD to the GLWA, a new intergovernmental authority created out of the ashes of the City of Detroit’s bankruptcy by a Memorandum of Understanding.
This deal was constructed as a lease to evade the 1963 Michigan Constitution‘s requirement, under Article VII, Section 25, for a vote of Detroit’s electors to approve the sale of any public utility. However, by constructing the deal as a lease, the City of Detroit is essentially granting a lease franchise covering the DW&SD’s water and sewerage operations to GLWA. The 40 year term of this lease franchise clearly exceeds the 30 year maximum permitted by Article VII, Section 30 of our 1963 Constitution:
Merriam-Webster defines a ‘franchise’ as “ the right to sell a company’s goods or services in a particular area; also, a business that is given such a right”. Exactly the nature of the GLWA lease agreement with the City of Detroit. Should you doubt that the City of Detroit constitutes a ‘company’, Merriam-Webster defines a ‘company’ as “ an association of persons for carrying on a commercial or industrial enterprise”. Exactly what DW&SD has been doing for over 100 years.
State Representative Kurt Heise (R-20th) from Plymouth has challenged the establishment of GLWA under the 1963 Michigan Constitution’s Article VII, Section 28:
Taken together with the 1963 Michigan Constitution’s Article III, Section 5:
it establishes our Legislature’s authority over intergovernmental units. But these two sections do not unambiguously grant the Michigan legislature exclusive authority over intergovernmental units, so there is probably legal wiggle room here. Contrary to Representative Heise’s contention, a good lawyer could make a case that the U.S. Bankruptcy Court could establish the GLWA under Article VII, Section 28 and Article III, Section 5.
However…..
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$ 3 Gas Across Michigan: Warming You Up For A Gas Tax Ratchet?
by 10x25MM • • 1 Comment
House Road Funding Package Puts Gas Tax Increases on Autopilot --- Tax on B5 Diesel for Heavy Trucks Cut 20%
Southfield, MI Gas Prices 12 June 2015
Michiganders woke up this morning to discover that regular unleaded gasoline prices are now $ 3 per gallon, a $ .25 increase, or more, from yesterday. Refinery problems, summer driving season, and SE MI’s special fuel blend are blamed in the press, but really this price shock is an intended consequence the Federal Reserve’s zero interest policy and their determination to boost stock prices. Oil derivatives are cheaper than dirt when there is no cost to money.
Wall Street wasn’t happy early this year when plunging oil prices drove down stock averages. So someone is furiously selling off Treasury paper and buying oil & gasoline futures contracts. Treasury interest rates have been rising in lockstep with oil & gas prices, on the same days, even the same hours. Officially, no one knows who is behind these trades, but the Federal Reserve is sitting on $ 4 trillion in Treasury paper and is fighting any effort to audit their holdings. A coincidence? Not likely.
Your government extracting more money from your wallet.
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We’ll show you!
by KG One • • 4 Comments
You’d better not mess with Detroit! Or, you’ll get what’s coming to you!
The latest shakedown of Taxpayers in Southeastern Michigan took an interesting turn this morning.
Not because of its inaccessible meeting location at Waterworks Park in Detroit.
But, because of something that wasn’t expected during the meeting.
{Oh, you’re gonna love this…}
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$uper $oakers and Suckers
by Corinthian Scales • • 0 Comments
Yep. Y’alls is getting the government you deserve – good and hard.
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Let Them Buy Their OWN Damned Insurance.
by Jason • • 4 Comments
We finally have a chance to tell Obama where to shove the atrocity known as the ACA, but ...
The play is set.
State Senator Jim Marleau is simply a two faced Obama sycophant. He operates under the Republican banner, but he has presented himself as a wimpy cradle-to-grave patriarchal potlicker. On the upcoming decision in the Supreme Court he doesn’t represent the stated GOP view that Obamacare is bad, but rather wonders aloud (sympathetically) what all the leeches in Michigan will do if their precious health care entitlements go away. And then he suggests something must be done!
“He could have done it that way to begin with, but he wasn’t really excited about that,” said state Sen. Jim Marleau, R-Lake Orion.
“I think he’d have to. Our back is up against the wall, and we’ve got a lot of people in this state who are using it. That’s the thing. What do you do with those people?”
Let them find their own insurance without fear of penalties you imbecile!
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Southeastern Michigan Water Fight
by 10x25MM • • 3 Comments
Last Act of the Detroit Bankruptcy Stumbles Behind a Wall of Secrecy
The final Detroit bankruptcy plan established a 14 June deadline to reach an agreement transferring operating control of the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department’s (DW&SD) assets outside of Detroit to the newly created Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA). The State of Michigan, Detroit, Wayne County, Oakland County and Macomb County all signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) creating the GLWA late last year, subject to a 200-day due diligence period. Under the MoU, the City of Detroit would receive a $ 50 million annual lease payment from the GLWA while retaining full control of DW&SD assets and operations within the city. Erstwhile DW&SD customers outside Detroit were promised a 4% cap on annual water and sewerage increases for a 10 year period, which have been running above 10% per annum, in residential bills, in most Southeastern Michigan communities.
In point of fact, what has actually been occurring are secret negotiations over future tax increases across Southeastern Michigan. Water rates have become a surrogate form of incremental taxation. These negotiations will set tax fee increment rates for decades into the future. For taxpayers ratepayers who haven’t even been born yet. How are these negotiations going?
No one who knows is talking. Why?
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Kids, it Looks Like You’re Walking
by Corinthian Scales • • 0 Comments
Read: http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?2015-HB-4672
Thank you, Sam, come again.
It’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever pay a $500 fine to those in government for smoking a legal product in a personal vehicle.
But, hey, you know what? All those liberal Republicans and their barking moonbat Progressive Left Democrat counterparts just love children to death.
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A Dead Man Walking: Wayne County
by 10x25MM • • 13 Comments
Your Least Loss is Your First Loss
Wayne County Executive Warren Evans told the assembled self very important persons at the Mackinac Policy Conference last Friday that he now believes that his county government can avoid bankruptcy. “He is now comfortable with the options” was the report. Little did he know that, on the very same day, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Lita Popke gave the County 48 hours to pay its retirees $ 49 million dollars to restore their 2010 ’13th check’ retirement benefit. Wayne County told the court flat out that it doesn’t have the money.
The Wayne County Commission voted yesterday to tap most of the last remaining funds in the County’s much abused Delinquent Tax Revolving Fund, however Warren Evan’s subsequent veto threat all but assures that this summer’s county property taxes will increase 1.23 mils to pay this judgement. This property tax increase will not even require a vote of affirmation under the Headlee Amendments to the Michigan Constitution, because it is pursuant to a court order.
’13th checks’ are a devious method of looting pension funds which began in the 1980’s, in Michigan. When some Michigan public pension funds earned more than their targeted rate of return in a year, say 8%, the ‘surplus’ earnings got doled out to retirees in the form of a 13th check. These 13th checks could amount to far more than the pension fund’s actually surplus. Retirees never had to give back their prior 13th check payments when the pension funds dialed up a big loss, so the 13th check was an opportunistic form of looting – not an equitable form of risk & gain sharing. This practice has occurred in state pension plans, county pension plans, and city pension plans across Michigan. The particular problem in Wayne County is that Robert Ficano stripped his pension funds of the 13th check payment funds in 2010 to make his books look better. Worst of all, Wayne County’s pension funds are only about 44% funded and their OPEB’s (retiree medical care, etc.) are essentially unfunded.
Wayne County’s accounting is nebulous, to be charitable. A read of their 2014 CAFR (22 MB document, it took a lot of lipstick to make this dead pig look good!) shows that the County is carrying forward an unassigned deficit of $ 82.8 million, and only got it down to this awful level by diverting $ 91.7 million from their dwindling Delinquent Tax Revolving Fund to their General Fund in 2014. Then, depending upon whom in Wayne County government you are talking to, Wayne County is still losing another $ 4 – $ 5 million each month.
This amounts to something over $ 50 million per year.
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How about this for Plan “B”.
by KG One • • 6 Comments
Or, the “Right Michigan Solution for Fixing Michigan Roads”.
A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Soon enough, you’ve got the makings of a pretty good framework to work within.
If you’re really a Conservative, that is.
If not…well click below for more.
{Continued below the fold}
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