Snyder recall campaign announces formal partnership with nonprofit Michigan Forward

By Ryan J. Stanton/Ann Arbor.com 

Leaders of the nonprofit group Michigan Forward and the Committee to Recall Rick Snyder announced today they're officially joining forces as they continue to push for the recallof the first-term Republican governor and try to repeal of one of his most controversial laws.

The recall committee has an estimated 5,000-plus volunteers, many of whom have informally carried petitions for both the recall and repeal campaigns.

They'll now be working in full cooperation with Michigan Forward, which says it has thousands of volunteers of its own who have been working across the state to build support for the repeal of Public Act 4, Michigan's emergency manager law.

“It makes sense for these two forces to team up and forge a strong relationship that we believe will serve the citizens of Michigan well," the committee's leadership team said in a statement.

Michigan Forward wants to place the repeal question on the November 2012 ballot. It will take nearly 162,000 signatures to make that happen.

“The passage of Public Act 4 is one of the most egregious pieces of legislation crafted in Michigan's history," Brandon Jessup, chairman of Michigan Forward and Stand Up for Democracy, said in a written statement. "Having CRRS partnering with us to repeal this legislation turns this from a campaign to a movement.”

The Committee to Recall Rick Snyder says it has distributed more than 240,000 petitions in an effort to recall Snyder and has assisted in the recall campaigns of numerous state lawmakers.

The committee needs to collect about 807,000 valid signatures by Aug. 5 to put the question of recalling Snyder to voters in November. However, it appears the group may not collect enough signatures in time, but it could still make the February 2012 ballot.

Jan BenDor, Washtenaw County captain for the Snyder recall campaign, said she's glad to see the campaign more formally collaborating with Michigan Forward now.

"We're excited about it because that group has a long view of what our state needs and rebuilding democracy is one of the linchpins," she said. "Up until now, the joint collaboration has been primarily informal by the circulators on the ground, so we're much more structured now."

BenDor said the group has plans for ramped-up petition signing events in more visible places, including the sides of roads throughout the state.

"It's going to be very difficult to make the November ballot. I think everybody realizes that," BenDor said, acknowledging the recall campaign got off to a slow start. "I've been fully prepared all along to really aim at the February election and I think personally it's a better one. It just happens to coincide with the Republican presidential primary."

Jessup said the repeal campaign has distributed 70,000 petitions to volunteers across Michigan during the first full month of operations.

Michigan Forward calls P.A. 4 a "naked power grab by the Legislature in Lansing." The group complains the law gives state-appointment emergency managers the ability to go into a school district or municipality and seize and sell public assets, strip elected officials of their duties, and dissolve or merge cities, townships and school districts without a popular vote.

The group also complains emergency managers now can break binding contracts and eliminate collective bargaining rights at will, shut down vital public services without a public hearing, and outsource public services and enter into contracts without legislative oversight.

Snyder and other Republican supporters argue the law is needed to allow earlier intervention by the state before local governments in financial trouble reach a crisis level.

Sara Wurfel, a spokeswoman for the governor, told AnnArbor.com last week that Snyder still stands behind his decisions to reform state government.

"With our high unemployment rate, budget deficit and the only state in the union to lose population in the last decade, the governor knew full well the path ahead wasn’t going to be easy or popular," she said. "He remains fully committed to making the tough decisions that ensure Michigan turns the corner and sees brighter, stronger days for all." 

Motor City Liberal Comment:Hey Sara either your guy is recall or not maybe you should still work on that resume because if he's not recalled your guy won't get a second term when he's on the ballot.

Campaign to recall Gov. Snyder to kick off Saturday with rally

BY DAWSON BELL

Opponents of Gov. Rick Snyder and his agenda will gather at the state Capitol again Saturday to kick off a long-shot recall campaign and to rally opposition to the governor’s budget proposals.

The back-to-back events run from 1:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., and will bring together a range of anti-Snyder groups, including teacher and other public sector unions.

But the rally will begin with the semi-official launch of the campaign to recall Snyder, a herculean task that will require organizers to collect the signatures of more than a million registered voters in just 90 days.

Tim Kramer, an organizer of the ad hoc recall committee, said Friday the group will rely heavily on grassroots activists, social networks andvolunteers to collect the signatures.

“We’re swamped with people who want to get involved,” Kramer said, while saying the campaign lacks funding or formal support from the same union and activist organizations that will join them at the Capitol.

Kramer said the recall committee had raised only a few thousand dollars so far and spent most of it printing petitions.

The recall kickoff will be followed by a rally organized by the Michigan Education Association and a group called We Are the People, liberal activists opposed to Snyder’s business and income tax overhaul, budget plan and other measures they regard as an assault on organized labor.

Weekday rallies promoted by the same groups have drawn several thousand people to the Capitol lawn on multiple occasions earlier this year.

For information on the Snyder recall campaign, go to:www.firericksnyder.org

Snyder Recall Moves Forward

By Laura Weber

A petition to recall Governor Rick Snyder was approved today by the Washtenaw County Election Commission.

The approval is the first step to getting the question on the ballot. Recall supporters would need to collect about 800,000 valid signatures in order to put the question before voters.

The petition language was approved by a 2-to-1 vote.

"Although we're disappointed, we respect their decision," says Attorney John Pirich, who represents the governor.

This meeting was held solely to approve the language of the petition, which states, among other things, that Governor Snyder "approved and signed various laws that take authority and funds from local governments."

"I think anyone who would read the language would see that not only is it not clear, in our opinion, but it's also very misleading in regard to events that have not occurred or events that are just completely inaccurate," Pirich says.

It's not an easy fight for the petition supporters, either. Tim Kramer of Michigan Citizens United says he knows they have a lot of work to do in the next few months.

"I think it's going to be pretty tough (to collect enough valid signatures), to be honest with you," he says. 

Kramer is most concerned with a new law Snyder signed this year that grants broad powers to emergency financial managers that step in and take control of struggling schools and local governments.

"That's a dictatorship, in my opinion," Kramer says. "You can't have that. You can't go in and remove the mayor of a city, just because you don't agree-basically he can do it because he doesn't agree with them, you know?"

Citizens Group Files Petition To Recall Power-Hungry Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder

By Zaid Jilani

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has been raising the ire of Michiganders across his state recently as he has rammed through his radical agenda. This agenda first consisted ofadvocating for and passing giant corporate tax cuts, continued with stripping many of the state’s public workers of collective bargaining rights with a Wisconsin-style law, then included proposing taxing seniors’ retirement income, and topped off with a possibly unconstitutional power grab that essentially gives him unlimited power to restructure city contracts.

This power grab — which essentially amounts to a form of financial martial law — has begun to manifest itself as Snyder has deployed “emergency financial managers” to cities across the state to unilaterally restructure those city’s financial agreements with their workforce. In Detroit, Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb announced thatevery single teacher in the city would be laid off, with few signs of how many will be re-hired once school starts in the fall. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow covered this unprecedented power grab on her show last night. Watch it:

Now, one group of Michigan citizens that is standing up to Snyder and his radical remaking of his state is filing a petition to recall the governor. The group, called Michigan Citizens United, says the group is opposed to the new financial manager law and opposes Snyder’s tax cuts for businesses and tax increases on working people:

A group called Michigan Citizens United filed a petition seeking the recall of Gov. Rick Snyder with the Washtenaw County clerk’s office this morning. [...]

[Michigan Citizens United spokesman] Kramer said the group opposes the emergency manager law, among other policies of the governor. “We don’t like the tax decrease on corporations or the tax increase on Michigan families,” he said.

A Facebook page set up around the recall effort this week has already garnered 12,000 “Likes.” The group has set up a countdown clock to July 1 — the date that Snyder can legally face a recall election — on a website called FireRickSnyder.org

Michigan’s Constitution Allows Governor Snyder To Be Recalled In July

By Ian Millhiser

Yesterday, thousands of Main Street Movement protesters marched on the Michigan Capitol to protest Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) constitutionally flawed assault on Michigan workers. Michigan’s voters, however, can do far more than simply make their displeasure known to Snyder and his allies in the state legislature. Michigan’s constitution is unusually easy to amend, and Snyder and his allies become eligible for a recall in just over three months.

The state House and Senate Minority Leaders have already called for a state constitutional amendment protecting collective bargaining rights, but Michigan voters can bypass the legislature altogether and call for a constitutional amendment by petition and referendum. According to the state constitution,

§ 2 Amendment by petition and vote of electors.

Sec. 2. Amendments may be proposed to this constitution by petition of the registered electors of this state. Every petition shall include the full text of the proposed amendment, and be signed by registered electors of the state equal in number to at least 10 percent of the total vote cast for all candidates for governor at the last preceding general election at which a governor was elected. … Any amendment proposed by such petition shall be submitted, not less than 120 days after it was filed, to the electors at the next general election. … If the proposed amendment is approved by a majority of the electors voting on the question, it shall become part of the constitution, and shall abrogate or amend existing provisions of the constitution at the end of 45 days after the date of the election at which it was approved.

In short, this means slightly over 300,000 signatures are required to place an amendment protecting workers’ rights on the ballot. Once the proposed amendment is on the ballot, a simple majority of the electorate can turn it into law.

Michigan also has a recall procedure that is similar to the one currently being invokedagainst eight GOP state senators in Wisconsin. The Michigan Constitution provides:

Laws shall be enacted to provide for the recall of all elective officers except judges of courts of record upon petition of electors equal in number to 25 percent of the number of persons voting in the last preceding election for the office of governor in the electoral district of the officer sought to be recalled. The sufficiency of any statement of reasons or grounds procedurally required shall be a political rather than a judicial question.

As in Wisconsin, Michigan elected officials enjoy a safe haven period immediately after they take office — “a recall petition cannot be filed against an officer until the officer has performed the duties of the office to which elected for a period of 6 months during the current term of that office.” But Snyder and his legislative allies began their current terms on January 1st of this year. Accordingly, they will be eligible for a recall in July.