According to the 12/22/09 Oakland Press, the Michigan Department of State found that Troy Mayor Louise Schilling and City Council members Mary Kerwin, Maureen McGinnis and Dane Slater were not in violation of the state’s Campaign Finance Act in approving a contested election brochure.
Read the complete story at: http://bit.ly/65YAbG
Dave, Michigan campaign finance law is notoriously weak, and we have little good law on taxpayer-funded lobbying, so this is not a surprise. The Sec. State can't invent law.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, this violates the spirit of the parts of the law and violates good conscious. The ballot wording itself is so lopsided that if I were a resident I'd consider a court challenge.
Still, if you want to defeat this, you must run a fact-based campaign with some alternatives.
PS - Check out http://www.mitransparency.com - a new project of mine. Please feel free to update the site on local Troy politics - its there to be used as much or little by local folks all around the state as they want. I hope it turns into a great multi-community tool.
ReplyDeletehttp://mitransparency.com/index.php/Troy is the Troy page, and you can create sub-pages if necessary (on literally any topic related to Michigan politics, is my hope). Chet