An Agenda for Change -- Chapter 1

I recently started promoting the following
concepts as part of a basis for making
changes to how business is done in
Michigan, and particularly in Iron County.


Publicly Funded non-government entities:

All publicly funded non governmental entities
shall have a mission statement expressed in
measurable objectives.

All publicly funded non governmental entities
shall provide a published publicly available
annual (or more frequent) report that provides
detailed information that includes their annual
budget as well as the cost allocations to each
measurable mission and their performance for
each measurable parameter in simple,
understandable, terms.

Economic Development:

Every publicly subsidized economic development
initiative shall meet the following requirements:

1) Where vehicles are involved in the assisted
business enterprise, the target enterprise shall
agree to purchase all fuel (for locally based
vehicles) within the county providing assistance
and shall permit themselves to be audited by
state, county, or municipal authorities or their
agents.

2) The number of new or retained jobs shall only
be counted if they are full time (minimum 40
hours a week, 52 weeks every year) with fringe
benefits including group health insurance, in
the same group for all employees and management,
for the employee (and family through payroll
deduction,) paid vacation of 1 week per year,
five paid sick days per year, and no less than
6 paid holidays each year. Any employment not
including at least these benefits as a minimum
shall not be included in any "job count"
resulting from such an economic development
initiative.

3) The job count of new or retained jobs shall
only include jobs in direct employment by the
assisted enterprise.

4) New and/or retained jobs subsidized in any
way by public funds shall only be available to
permanent Michigan residents. Non residents may
be hired but may not start work or receive
payroll or other funds until the individual
is a permanent resident of this state.

5) All publicly assisted businesses shall
bank exclusively in Michigan.

6) All publicly assisted businesses shall be
incorporated in Michigan. This requirement
precludes registration in Michigan as a
foreign corporation.

7) No assisted enterprise shall be provided
with real estate at public expense at a rent
less than fair market value.

8) Assisted enterprises may not utilize
employees or contractors not comporting with
§ 2 above in a quantity greater than 5 % of
the total number of jobs comporting with
§ 2 above.



Open Meetings & the right of petition:

Brother Samaha's paper
The Declaration of Human Rights
very nicely traces that history for us. I find
the "right of petition" documented in Article 61
of the Magna Carta of 1215. The paper by
The Online Library of Liberty traces some
of the weaving and wobbling in settling just
what the "right" is. What is clear from all
this history is that we can consider ourselves
fortunate that the Founding Fathers were very
well read.

Through this winding history we arrive to the
First Amendment to the US Constitution with
its "petition the government".

During the late 1800's, an ancestral uncle of
mine, James G. Blaine, wrote about the fact
that during the hundred years or so that the
US had been independent, the mistakes of the
past were starting to be repeated. "So slowly
turn the mills of the gods." The country was
slowly but surely returning to the despicable
British practices that formed the basis of
the American Revolution.

We see similar erosions creeping in here in
Michigan presently.

Former Attorney General's Frank J. Kelley's
opinion number 5716 quotes the Open Meetings
Act as containing the statement, "These rules
must be reasonable, flexible and designed to
encourage public expression and not discourage
or prohibit it." The same paragraph today only
requires that "A person shall be permitted to
address a meeting of a public body under rules
established and recorded by the public body"
and other procedural requirements.

The entire basis for the open meetings act has
been stripped in this erosion. Today we have a
townships organization that is teaching Michigan
township boards that "There is no constitutional
or First Amendment right to open meetings." Where
and how else can the citizen be assured that
his 1st amendment right to petition the
government is assured?

We are presently seeing restrictive rules that
clearly violate the first amendment. For example,
the Iron County Board of Commissioners (BOC) has
rules that limit public comment to agenda items
and limit the total time to 20 minutes which
effectively denies a citizen of his right to
petition if there are issues to be discussed
that have the general population upset. The
restrictive nature of the BOC rule stands in
clear violation of "Congress shall make no
law ....or abridging...to petition the
government for a redress of grievances" as
brought to the states by the 14th Amendment.

There was a newspaper report earlier this
year that one of the City Council members
in Iron Mountain felt that when the council
was in session "it is our meeting" and
comments should be restricted or prohibited.
Such attitudes are absurd.

My request for new legislation is that we
return to the ideology that the meetings are
designed to encourage participation by the
citizens interested in doing so.

I request the following elements be made
part of the Open Meetings Act:

The agenda for an open meeting shall be
locked in and published concurrently with
the meeting notice.

At least 120 hours shall elapse between
the publication of the agenda and a
meeting notice and the meeting to which
those documents refer.

No new agenda items may be added at
the time of the meeting.

Whenever a motion is made, followed by
discussion, specific public comment on
that item must be permitted before a
vote is taken.

General public comment on any matter
must be heard at some point during
the meeting.

It is critical that we, as a state, revert
to citizen participation in government at
every level. That begins at the local level.
If we can't get that right, the rest of the
schema falls apart.

The above is the first foray into revising how
business needs to be done here in Iron County
and hopefully in the state.

The concepts above are put forth and supported
by their author, Bill Vajk.
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