Sorry.

One must wonder whether transit had broader support in 1967, allowing the act to gather the 2/3 majority vote in the legislature.

PA 204 was later amended to create a regional transit coordinating council (RTCC) for the purpose of acting as the recipient of state and federal funds and also to coordinate services of Detroit DOT and SMART. The RTCC has been a complete failure. Only time will tell whether this new RTA will have any better luck coordinating transit services.

One of my favorites, though, is in the Planning Enabling Act (PA 33 of 2008), which requires that local Planning Commissions must have 5, 7, or 9 members, except “in a city that on September 1, 2008 had a population of more than 2,700 but less than 2,800,” which may have a Planning Commission of 3. (Not favorite enough to figure out what community that is, though.)

As far as I know, all such legislation is considered legitimate, and none has been struck down by the courts.

Next question is whether the city would have a viable legal case that would be worth pursuing.

Then the organization’s (not “his”) board members aren’t performing their duty.

@8, 11: Raises the question of what is democratic–or, more to the point, constitutional–about a regional (taxing) authority created by the state government. What’s the mechanism that allows such a thing?

I’m understanding this comment as expressing the intuition that it feels odd for the state legislature to be enacting legislation that affects only one corner of the state. Can the legislature even do that? Under Michigan’s constitution (Article IV Section 29) local or special acts (like this seems to be) require a 2/3 majority in the legislature. But if you look at the RTA bill, the counties are not mentioned by name, but rather are described in terms of their population. This makes the RTA legislation seem to be about just some collection of counties that are described in a certain way, not about any specific counties. And it just happens that the only four counties that are accurately described by the legislation are Macomb, Wayne, Oakland and Washtenaw. Apparently this is a legal strategy for getting around the constitutional requirement of a 2/3 majority vote required for local or special acts. In that sense it’s not “enabling” legislation in the same way that the DDA statute is – as it sets out the ground rules for any municipality to follow in establishing a downtown development authority.

First, no responsible elected official would make the type of pledge you suggest (to appoint board members who immediately wish to remove their jurisdiction from the entity to which they were appointed).

Second, even if such upstarts were appointed, they would have no power to opt-out Washtenaw County. That simply is not provided for in the legislation.

Third, the only tradition with regard to the BOC leadership offices is that the offices rotate. Yousef Rabhi has simply gained that level of political support on the BOC, and it is all based on politics. I doubt that most of the “out-county” commissioners will see this as the number one issue.

Not clear to me is what will happen if the funding ballot measure fails. That will have to pass in the 4-county region. If a majority of voters in the entire region reject it, I am not clear about what will happen with the RTA, but I suspect that like any bureaucracy, it will find a way to survive.

I have been maintaining a blog post on this subject with updates by following action on the House floor and through news bulletins. [link] There are still two bills in the package pending. I’ll also update the post if any news comes out about the Governor’s decision.

Alan, it’s worth pointing out that the legislation doesn’t appear to allow for a mechanism to opt out (as the countywide Act 196 legislation did). So unless the bill is altered by the legislature (which is the desired impact of the Ann Arbor city council’s resolution for tonight – with the specific request being made of the governor to veto the bill and return it to the legislature), Washtenaw County is in. Now, the RTA legislation does provide that in order to put anything on the ballot in the four county region — a tax or a vehicle registration fee — at least one vote from each of the four counties is required. Otherwise put, two representatives from a single county could paralyze the RTA by voting against placement of any proposal on the ballot. So an analog of your suggestion might translate into a pledge that only people be appointed who would vote against placement of any ballot proposal. That would wreck everything for the residents of three other counties — which seems like a fairly destructive approach, and strikes me as counter to basic democratic principles (even if legal), and could in fact deprive Washtenaw County of considerable benefit. Elsewhere online, I’ve made a golf analogy: The ball is in a difficult lie; the Ann Arbor city council’s resolution is asking for permission to take a drop. If we don’t get permission for the drop — that is, if Washtenaw is in the RTA — then it seems to me like we should hack at the ball as best we can in the crappy lie, still with the idea of putting it in the hole eventually, instead of setting fire to the entire golf course.