DETROIT – There are good reasons that the U.S. Constitution has lasted more than two centuries: Mainly, that’s because it is flexible, elastic, and sets out the principles of how government is supposed to work– while leaving the details to elected officials.
And what it wisely didn’t attempt to do may be nearly as important as what it did — and why it has survived. The Constitution did not, for example, try to set tax and tariff rates for all time. It naturally says nothing about aviation regulations or the internet.
But it created a system of government flexible enough to deal with new problems as they arose. Yes, it was deeply flawed in some ways (think slavery) but while the Constitution isn’t easy to change, it did provide us a way to do it, which also has saved it.
That’s how all constitutions or framing documents are supposed to work. But that wisdom was totally lost on nine people who were elected three years ago to write a new charter for the city of Detroit.
They produced a monstrosity of book-length size that tries to regulate wages in a variety of industries; adds many pages specifying how police can do their jobs, and creates so many boards, commissions and regulations Detroit’s deputy chief financial officer told reporters it would sock the city right back into bankruptcy.
If the voters adopt the new charter on Aug. 3, during citywide primary elections, the result would be so devastating “it can’t easily be quantified,” Tonya Stoudemire, the city financial official, wrote in a memo to Detroit city council. However, she did say the proposed charter would push the city $3.4 billion into debt in four years.
You might have thought the commissioners then would have tried to justify their calculations, or offer to work with city council on a compromise. They didn’t. Instead, their reaction was belligerent.
“It’s a scare tactic,” said Nicole Small, the vice chair of the commission, “They want to bully us into submission.”
What happens next is up to the commission, and the voters. The proposed charter is now on the desks of the governor and Michigan’s attorney general. They can suggest changes or modifications. But the commission doesn’t have to take their advice. They alone decide what, if anything, to put on the ballot.
They have to make that decision by May 11. If voters enact the charter at the August election, it becomes law. If they don’t, the proposed new charter is null and void, and regardless, the commission goes out of business three days later.
The irony here is this: Detroit really didn’t need another charter commission. Nor did almost anyone expect to have one.
Detroit, after all, adopted a widely-praised charter only 10 years ago. Ken Coleman, a journalist and local historian, was a member of that commission. “We had an agenda and a reason to be there, and a majority of us worked to get it done,” he said.
That commission, which was elected in 2009, had two major issues to deal with. City Council wanted the commission to give the city more power to deal with a corrupt mayor, like Kwame Kilpatrick, who had held the city hostage for years.
Voters had also opted to move to a system combining at-large and district council members, and the city charter, which had been adopted in the early 1970s, needed to be changed.
According to Coleman, and press accounts at the time, that group of commissioners sought — and often took –advice from groups like the non-partisan Citizens’ Research Council and other experts. They worked with the state attorney general to make sure they weren’t violating the Michigan or federal constitutions.
They finished their work a year before the deadline, and voters easily approved the new charter, which took effect in 2012.
“We wanted to get it done early, so if the voters didn’t like it we could make modifications and come back,” Coleman said.
However, the new charter had one flaw. Normally, such documents provide for a considerable span of years to pass before voters are asked if they want to go back to the drawing board. For example, Michigan voters are asked every 16 years if they want to call a new state constitutional convention.
But Detroit’s new charter provided for voters to be asked if they wanted to try doing it over after only six years. When it appeared on the ballot in 2018, to general surprise, they did — by a microscopic margin of 33,272 to 33,088 votes.
This summer, most city leaders not on the charter commission are likely to recommend voters say no. But that’s no guarantee they will. But why should you care if you don’t live in Detroit?
For two reasons: It’s important to remember that any sort of a founding document, from a constitution to a charter, needs to be a framework, not a Christmas tree.
And it’s even more important to remember that elections have consequences. Make sure you know just what you are voting for.
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