And now the ballot language for the two proposed Ann Arbor city charter amendments has been certified by Michigan’s attorney general as meeting the requirements of the Home Rule City Act. The AG’s office communicated its conclusion in an Aug. 8, 2014 letter to Gov. Rick Snyder’s office.

The existing charter language imposes a one-year durational requirement of voter registration on elected and appointed officials in the city. But the federal court ruled that the city’s requirements were not enforceable, because they had been struck down as unconstitutional in two different court cases dating from the early 1970s. Similar durational requirements have – in the intervening years – been found constitutional in various jurisdictions. However, the court ruled on May 20 this year that the city could not enforce its requirements against Ward 3 Democratic primary candidate Bob Dascola – because the city had not re-enacted its requirement using a standard legislative process. The placement of a ballot proposal in front of voters on Nov. 4 will use the legislative process of a popular referendum on the charter to establish eligibility requirements that are enforceable.

The language approved by the council at its July 21 meeting imposes a requirement that in order to be mayor, someone would need to be a registered voter in the city, and to serve on the city council someone would need to be a registered voter in the ward they seek to represent – at the time they submit their paperwork to appear on the ballot.

For example, a potential candidate for the city council would need to be a registered voter in the ward they seek to represent at the time they submit their qualifying signatures to the city clerk. And a potential candidate for mayor would need to be a registered voter in the city at the time they submit their qualifying signatures to the city clerk.

With paperwork for partisan primaries due in April – for November elections – the new requirements would translate practically speaking to something similar to a six-and-a-half-month durational requirement. For independent candidates, that timeframe would be closer to three and a half months. In the case of a vacancy that needs to be filled by appointment, the new charter requirement would require the person to be a registered voter in the geographic area they are being appointed to represent – at the time of appointment.

A second amendment to the charter to be decided by voters on Nov. 4 would acknowledge state law with respect to residency requirements for paid appointed officials. With a few exceptions, local municipalities can’t impose geographic requirements on the residence of paid officials. The amendment would also stipulate that unpaid appointed officials must be registered voters in the city, unless that requirement is waived by a seven-vote majority on the 11-member city council.

What, if any, durational requirements should there be on elected officials? It’s time for the city council to take a step towards establishing legally enforceable eligibility requirements for elected officials.

Even though the immediate issue appears to be resolved, a longer-term question is still open. That’s because the result of the federal court ruling is that the city of Ann Arbor has no legally enforceable eligibility requirements for service as mayor or city councilmember.

Anyone at all is now eligible to serve – even youngsters under 18 years old, who would not even be allowed to vote for themselves in the election – just as long as they submit the minimum number of signatures on nominating petitions.

So it’s time for the council to put a charter amendment on a future ballot that would establish some sort of eligibility requirements for elected officials. The council has a choice about what kind of requirements to put on that ballot for voters to decide.

In broad strokes, I think the eligibility requirements for elected officials should pose only a minimal barrier to the ballot. It would be perfectly adequate if the requirement were something like the following: To be an eligible elected official, a person must be a registered voter in the geographic area the person seeks to represent, from the time that person files their paperwork to qualify as a candidate.

Before making a case that this is a perfectly reasonable and adequate requirement, it’s worth considering how we arrived at a place where the city now has no legally enforceable eligibility requirements for elected officials.

After the city of Ann Arbor informed Dascola that he could not serve as an elected official, because he did not meet city charter requirements, he filed a lawsuit to assert his eligibility to serve. Those charter requirements say a person is only eligible to serve on the city council if the person has been a registered voter in the city and a resident of the ward the person seeks to represent – for at least a year prior to election. Dascola contended he met the residency requirement, but conceded that he fell short of the voter registration requirement. He did not register to vote in the city of Ann Arbor until Jan. 15, 2014.

But Dascola successfully argued in federal district court that both of Ann Arbor’s city charter requirements were unenforceable – because they had been ruled unconstitutional, null and void in federal court cases dating from the early 1970s. The city had essentially argued that the charter eligibility requirements would be found constitutional, if those 1970s cases were litigated today, based on subsequent case law. But the court ruled that the city needed to legislatively re-enact those city charter requirements, before they could be enforced.

In fact, the ruling this week permanently enjoins the city of Ann Arbor from enforcing those one-year durational requirements before re-enacting them. And that re-enactment would need to take place according to the orderly process called for in Michigan’s Home Rule City Act.

That process is for the city council to decide upon some charter language and then put a ballot question before voters to establish eligibility requirements. This was actually attempted in 2003, but the charter amendment was not approved by a majority of voters. [For more detailed background on that attempt, see: "Ann Arbor's Dumb Old Charter."]

By any objective standard, the 2003 attempt was flawed – for at least two reasons. First, the ballot language mischaracterized the existing wording of the charter. Second, the proposed amendment would have established a requirement for elected officials that a person be registered to vote in the geographic area they sought to represent only at the time they took office.

The proposed 2003 requirement seems so weak as not to be practical. Voters have a legitimate interest in knowing that a candidate who has been qualified for the ballot is also qualified to serve, if elected. If the eligibility requirement is applied only at the point when the person takes office, it’s possible that a candidate might win election and then decide not to register to vote in the appropriate geographic area. That would lead to an outcome where the winning candidate would not be eligible to serve. That kind of scenario is clearly not in the public interest.

The kind of requirement I’ve proposed above would apply a voter registration requirement – with its attendant requirements on age and citizenship – at the point when a candidate files paperwork. It would be an easy fact for the city clerk’s staff to check at that time.

Deadlines for submission of paperwork start in mid-April for the general election in November. So the kind of rule I’m proposing would impose a shorter durational requirement than a year. One year is the span mentioned in the words of the current city charter.

Now, some might argue it’s important that a person be registered to vote in the geographic area they seek to represent for at least one year. And people are free to make that argument – in the context of a democratic election campaign.

For example, if someone thinks that Bob Dascola should not serve as a Ward 3 city councilmember because he has not been registered to vote for at least a year in Ward 3 and should be counted as a carpetbagger, that person is free to make that argument – or any other argument against Dascola – and to urge others not to vote for him. That’s exactly what city planning commissioner Diane Giannola did in a post on her blog, middleoftheleft.com: “I say don’t…don’t vote for [Dascola] if he happens to find his way on to the ballot.”

If the city council is not persuaded I’m right, and believes that a one-year durational voter registration requirement – or some other requirement – is preferable to the one I’ve proposed, then the council should put that different requirement in front of voters.

It’s important for the council eventually to act in some manner, because right now the city of Ann Arbor has no legally enforceable eligibility requirements at all for elected officials. And I don’t think that just anyone should be eligible to step into the center ring of our local governance.

This issue should have been addressed back in 1972 when the federal courts first ruled. And when the attempt in 2003 to establish eligibility requirements was unsuccessful, the city council should have tried again. It’s not necessarily an emergency requiring immediate action, because the ultimate check on eligibility is the election itself.

But now, as long as a lot of people are thinking about this issue, it would be a good time for the council to try again to get this part of the city charter cleaned up.

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At his downtown barbershop, shortly after getting the news that the court had ruled in his favor, Bob Dascola showed The Chronicle photos of himself as a clown participating in Ann Arbor’s Fourth of July parade – something he has done for several years. He will be participating again this year – also as a clown, not as a city council candidate, because he’s already registered his parade entry that way.

At issue were city charter durational requirements on voter registration and residency – that require city councilmembers to be registered to vote in the city and to be a resident of the ward they want to represent for at least a year prior to taking office.

Dascola contended he met the residency requirement, but conceded that he fell short of the voter registration requirement. He did not register to vote in the city until Jan. 15, 2014. Dascola submitted sufficient signatures to qualify, so the impact of the ruling is that Dascola will appear on the Ward 3 ballot.

Dascola was represented in the case by local attorney Tom Wieder.

Both of the Ann Arbor city charter requirements were ruled unconstitutional, null and void in federal cases from the early 1970s. But the city of Ann Arbor sought to enforce those charter requirements against Dascola based on subsequent decisions on eligibility requirements in other jurisdictions in the intervening period. Those included an Ann Arbor case in 2002 (Wojack v. City of Ann Arbor) that resulted in a finding by the local state circuit court upholding the residency requirement. But that finding came only after Republican Scott Wojack was allowed on the Ward 1 city council ballot – a race he did not win. Wojack’s attorney was Tom Wieder.

Based on subsequent case law and a shifted standard of judicial review, one-year durational requirements of the kind that the Ann Arbor city charter includes would almost certainly be found constitutional, if the 1970s cases were to be litigated today. But the May 20, 2014 ruling by Zatkoff found Dascola’s argument convincing: That in order for the city to enforce the charter requirements – which had been found unconstitutional, null and void in separate rulings in 1971 – it would have needed to re-enact those requirements.

From the opinion: “Plaintiff [Dascola] has provided compelling evidence that Defendants [the city of Ann Arbor] have used void provisions of the Charter in an attempt to preclude him from running for City Council. Further, remedies available at law would not compensate Plaintiff for his inability to run for City Council. Finally, as established above, the balance of hardships between the parties – and the public interest at large – warrant this Court enjoining Defendants from enforcing a void law when the City has failed to re-enact that law.” [Dascola v. City of A2: Opinion] [Dascola v. City of A2: Judgment]

That means all the Aug. 5, 2014 ballots for partisan primaries for Ann Arbor mayor and city council are finally set. On the non-partisan side, Bryan Kelly took out petitions for city council in Ward 1, but was informed by the city that he did not meet the charter’s durational eligibility requirements. The ruling on the Dascola case would clear the way for Kelly to run. And as an independent, he’d have until July 17 to submit signatures. But in responding to an emailed Chronicle query, he indicated that he’s content with the representation of Ward 1 on the city council, saying they are “good people,” and he is no longer contemplating running at this time.

The city does have the option to appeal the ruling, but council sources indicate that is not probable. More likely is that the council would vote to place a charter amendment on the ballot this fall so that voters could ratify some set of eligibility requirements. The May 20 ruling from Zatkoff permanently enjoins the city from enforcing either of the former charter requirements prior to re-enacting them.

The background of the case and a review of the opinion are presented below, as well as the complete set of briefings from the case.

Ann Arbor City Charter Durational Requirements

The words printed in the Ann Arbor city charter include two types of one-year durational requirements for city council candidates: voter registration in the city, and residency in the ward they seek to represent. From the Ann Arbor city charter [emphasis added]:

Eligibility for City Office – General Qualifications
Section 12.2. Except as otherwise provided in this charter, a person is eligible to hold a City office if the person has been a registered elector of the City, or of territory annexed to the City or both, and, in the case of a Council Member, a resident of the ward from which elected, for at least one year immediately preceding election or appointment. This requirement may be waived as to appointive officers by resolution concurred in by not less than seven members of the Council.

The Complaint: Feld and HRP

Dascola contended he has lived in Ward 3 since about Sept. 15, 2012, but he allowed that he did not register to vote in the city of Ann Arbor until Jan. 15, 2014. So according to Dascola, he met the residency requirement but did not meet the voter registration requirement.

Ann Arbor’s residency requirement was struck down in federal court as unconstitutional in January 1972 [Feld v. City of Ann Arbor]. The voter registration requirement was struck down in March of the same year [HRP v. City of Ann Arbor].

Dascola’s complaint was based on findings by the U.S. District Court in both the Feld and the HRP cases that the durational requirements were null and void. From Dascola’s complaint: “Neither the Feld, nor the Human Rights Party, decision was appealed, nor has either been overruled, vacated or modified in any way.” [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Complaint]

Dascola’s Request for Summary Judgment

Immediately after filing the complaint, Dascola’s attorney Tom Wieder filed a motion for summary judgment – asking the court to find in Dascola’s favor without a full trial. The brief makes essentially the same arguments in the initial complaint: The city’s charter requirements were ruled unconstitutional in Feld and HRP.

From the motion for summary judgment: “The Defendants [city of Ann Arbor] are improperly and illegally relying and acting upon one or more former provisions of the City Charter which are void and of no effect and, in so doing, are depriving Plaintiff of his constitutional right to seek elective office, as well as depriving the electors of the Third Ward of their right to vote for Plaintiff.” [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Motion for Summary Judgment]

The part of the argument on which the ruling in Dascola’s case eventually turned is the idea that once charter provisions have been explicitly ruled unconstitutional and declared null and void – as in Feld and HRP – they are not merely dormant, possibly to be awakened, but rather do not exist at all, and it’s as if they’d never been written. The brief cites a body of Michigan case law in support of that notion.

City’s Response to Motion for Summary Judgment

The city’s response to the motion for summary judgment included a potential factual dispute. The city pointed out that in spite of Dascola’s claim that he has resided in Ward 3 since about Sept. 15, 2012, he didn’t change his voter registration or driver’s license to an Ann Arbor address until Jan. 15, 2014. And when Dascola filed an application on Dec. 1, 2013 to be appointed to the city’s pedestrian safety task force, he gave a Grass Lake address as his home address and marked “No” on the application’s question about city of Ann Arbor residency. [.pdf of Dascola's application to the pedestrian safety task force]

The application was included as an exhibit in the city’s brief. But the brief does not appear to mention that in the same application, Dascola seems to indicate a habitual lodging at the Baldwin Avenue address in Ward 3, where he contends he’s been a resident since Sept. 15, 2012: “I walk to work every day from Stadium and Packard area and have to use crosswalk at Baldwin. I have witnessed an accident because a driver wasn’t paying attention and was almost hit by car.”

Under Michigan election law, for purposes of voting and registration, habitual lodging is one way to determine residency:

168.11 “Residence” defined.
Sec. 11. (1) ”Residence”, as used in this act, for registration and voting purposes means that place at which a person habitually sleeps, keeps his or her personal effects, and has a regular place of lodging. If a person has more than 1 residence, or if a person has a residence separate from that of his or her spouse, that place at which the person resides the greater part of the time shall be his or her official residence for the purposes of this act. This section does not affect existing judicial interpretation of the term residence.

Also supporting Dascola’s contention of residency at the Baldwin address for a year before the 2014 election was his application for renewal of his barber’s license on Aug. 8, 2013, which gives his Baldwin address. [.pdf of Dascola's barber's license renewal] The city’s response to the motion for summary judgment does not appear to include the barber’s license renewal.

Factual issues aside, the city’s legal position, as conveyed in the response to the motion for summary judgment, is that the Feld and HRP decisions from the early 1970s are no longer the controlling law in the matter. Among the decisions the city contends should be used to judge the current case is a 2002 Washtenaw County circuit court case [Wojack v. City of Ann Arbor opinion], which relied nearly exclusively on a 1981 federal court decision [Joseph v City of Birmingham (ED Mich 1981)].

The Wojack case involved Republican candidate Scott Wojack, who sought to run for Ward 1 city council. Wojack met the voter registration requirement – because he’d been registered to vote in the city for more than a year – but did not meet the ward residency requirement, because he’d moved, within the city, to Ward 1 under a year before the election. Wojack was allowed to appear on the ballot, but lost the election. The Wojack decision, upholding the Ann Arbor city charter’s durational residency requirement, came after the election.

Also among the cases that the city of Ann Arbor wanted the court to use in deciding Dascola’s lawsuit was a Detroit case from 2013 [Barrow v Detroit Election Commission]. That involved a challenge by Tom Barrow to the eligibility of Mike Duggan to appear on the ballot for mayor, because Duggan did not meet Detroit’s one-year durational voter registration requirement. One wrinkle in the Barrow case is that the Detroit requirement dates from the time of filing petitions, not the date of election. Duggan was ultimately ruled ineligible, even though he would have been eligible if he had waited a few days to file his petitions [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Response to Motion for SJ].

Dascola’s Reply to City’s Response to Motion for Summary Judgment

Dascola’s reply to the city’s response to the motion for summary judgment reviewed much of the ground covered previously.

The argument on which the case could possibly turn was reiterated: The idea that once charter provisions have been explicitly ruled unconstitutional and declared null and void – as in Feld and HRP – they are not merely dormant, possibly to be awakened, but rather do not exist at all, and it’s as if they’d never been written. A second part of that argument is to question by what orderly process charter provisions could be revived – whatever it is, the contention is that the city had not followed one [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Reply in Support of Motion for SJ].

Other Motions, Briefs

The city also filed a motion to dismiss along with a supporting brief. That got a response from Dascola and a reply from the city. Much of the material in those briefs covered ground also addressed in the briefs on the motion for summary judgment.

Zatkoff also ordered supplemental briefs that were to focus exclusively on the question: If a law is found “unconstitutional and void” by a federal district court, must that law be officially re-enacted before it is enforced?

All of those briefs are included in the complete set of briefs in the final section of this report.

Opinion: Finding for Dascola

The first four pages of Zatkoff’s 17-page opinion recite the historical background of the case. One highlight from that description is Zatkoff’s characterization of the status of the Feld and HRP decisions [emphasis added]:

Both parties agree that neither the Feld nor Human Rights Party decisions were appealed by the City. Further, neither party argues that the Feld and Human Rights Party decisions were ever explicitly overruled, vacated, or modified; indeed, these decisions have never been reviewed or reversed, and thus remain intact.

The analysis section begins with the controlling question on which Zatkoff had asked the parties to file supplemental briefs: If a law is found “unconstitutional and void” by a federal district court, must that law be officially re-enacted before it is enforced?

Zatkoff concludes that on both sides, much of the briefing material that had been submitted had no relevance to that controlling point. About the city’s argument that the charter requirements are, in fact, constitutional, Zatkoff states: “Deciding the constitutionality of the language contained in Section 12.2 of the Charter as if it had been passed today is not the question before the Court.” The opinion continues by noting that the Wojack decision was also not relevant to the question to be decided.

In evaluating the arguments on the basic question, Zatkoff concludes: “Additionally, the Court has not found – nor has either party presented – a case from any circuit indicating that a law found unconstitutional and void that remains intact need not be re-enacted prior to enforcement.”

Zatkoff analyzes three of the city’s arguments, as put forward by city attorney Stephen Postema. First, the city contended that the Feld and HRP decisions did not “repeal” the Ann Arbor city charter requirements, but rather found them null and void – as “repealing” a charter requirement was something that only a city could do through a legislative process under Michigan’s Home Rule City Act. The judiciary was not empowered to “repeal” a charter requirement, the city argued. Zatkoff rejected that argument, saying:

Furthermore, Defendants’ argument is premised on the flawed notion that the term “void” is materially different than “repeal,” and that the only way a law may become unenforceable is if the law is officially “repealed.” The 4th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary defines “void” as “[n]ull; ineffectual, nugatory; having no legal force or binding effect; unable, in law, to support the purpose for which it was intended.” Regardless of the definition of “repeal,” this definition of “void” demonstrates that the intent behind the Feld and Human Rights Party decisions was to give the Charter provisions “no legal force or binding effect.”

The city’s next argument analyzed by Zatkoff is one based on the idea that a federal court order applies only to the plaintiff in a particular case: “By arguing that prior federal court orders are only effective for the plaintiff(s) in those cases, Defendants are incorrectly attempting to apply a rule exclusively based on the Declaratory Judgment Act to all decisions made by federal courts.”

The argument is fatally flawed, Zatkoff concludes, because, it creates an “individual challenge” requirement, which would be inconsistent with the basic principles of the federal judicial system. Those basic principles include one expressed in Marbury v. Madison from 1803: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” The city of Ann Arbor’s argument “seeks to destroy this pillar of the legal system,” Zatkoff writes.

Zatkoff then characterizes the city’s position as reserving for itself to say what the law is:

The Court is deeply troubled by this proposition. First, the Defendants fail to indicate any authority granting the City the power to say “what the law is.” Further, the Defendants have provided no indication as to when exactly these voided provisions of the Charter “became” constitutional again. Additionally, the Defendants provided no evidence that notice as to “what the law is” was ever given to the public. In sum, the Defendants have provided absolutely no authority as to why this Court should simply abandon the basic principles of law that have formed the foundation of the United States legal structure for over two hundred years. The Court refuses to do so at this time.

The order from the court permanently enjoins the city from enforcing the city charter eligibility requirements – unless they are re-enacted. That means the council will need to put those or some different requirements before voters to enact – if the city of Ann Arbor wants to be able to enforce eligibility requirements on elected officials.

In explaining why he is issuing a writ of mandamus, Zatkoff points to the city’s failure to follow the federal court’s orders in the HRP and Feld cases:

Additionally, taking into consideration the Defendants’ demonstrated inability (or unwillingness) to follow the explicit orders issued by federal courts with regards to the constitutionality of the provisions at issue, the Court finds that issuing a writ of mandamus is necessary to guarantee Plaintiff receives the relief to which he is entitled.

Briefs

Here are links to .pdf files of the briefs and opinion:

• 03.28.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Complaint]
• 03.29.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Motion for Summary Judgment]
• 04.14.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Motion to Dismiss]
  
• 04.14.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Response to Motion for SJ]
• 04.18.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Reply in Support of Motion for SJ]
• 04.18.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Response to Motion to Dismiss]
• 04.23.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Reply to Response to Motion to Dismiss]
• 05.06.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Plaintiff's Supplemental Brief]
• 05.06.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Defendant's Supplemental Brief]
• 05.08.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Motion for Leave to File Amended Complaint]
• 05.09.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Response to Motion for Leave to File AC]
• 05.11.14 [.pdf Dascola v. City of A2: Reply to Response to Motion for Leave]
• 05.20.14 [.pdf of Dascola v. City of A2: Opinion]
• 05.20.14 [.pdf of Dascola v. City of A2: Judgment]

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Tom Wieder. (Photo provided by Wieder. The margins of The Chronicle inline layout required cropping out the person next to whom Wieder is standing.)

The Chronicle has previously covered the various lawsuit filings in a fair amount of detail. The central issue in the case is whether Ann Arbor city charter requirements that were struck down as unconstitutional and declared null and void in 1972 can still be applied today.

While we’re waiting for a decision to be handed down, we thought it would be useful to get a possibly more accessible, spoken-word treatment of the lawsuit’s subject matter. To that end, we talked with Dascola’s attorney, Tom Wieder.

Wieder litigated a case similar to Dascola’s back in 2001.

Some highlights from the conversation include the fact that Wieder thinks the city council potentially has a role to play in the city’s handling of the case – based on the fact that the city attorney is accountable to the city council. The city’s legal stance should be determined by the council, Wieder says, not by the city attorney.

And Wieder talks about the fact that a council controlled by Democrats should allow the Democratic Party principle of free and open access to the ballot to guide their thinking on this matter – given that there are at least two plausible points of view on the enforceability of the city charter’s eligibility requirements.

The council’s particular responsibility as a group of Democrats leads to some discussion of the idea that Ann Arbor Democrats, who dominate city politics today, might be a different stripe from the Democrats of the early 1970s and 1980s, who fought for fewer eligibility requirements on candidates for city office.

It’s fair to point out that that Wieder was involved in two key changes to Ann Arbor’s electoral process that could reasonably be analyzed as leading to Ann Arbor’s current political life being dominated by Democrats: (1) redrawing ward boundaries in 1991; and (2) shifting elections from April to November.

Wieder also ventures that the Democratic dominance of local city politics might have lessened an historically strong Democratic interest in the value of process, and not just doing the right things, but doing things the right way: “… I think the fact that the Democrats have now been in charge pretty much for a while, there may be less self-examination when it comes to process and basic political principles than when somebody else was controlling those levers.”

Asked what he thinks the eligibility requirements for city council and mayor should be, Wieder suggests these requirements: At the time of filing petitions for office, a mayoral candidate should be a registered voter in the city; and at the time of filing petitions for office, candidates for city council should be registered voters in the wards they seek to represent.

One unsuccessful attempt to clean up the city charter – so that there are clear and constitutional eligibility requirements – was made in 2003. No matter how Dascola’s lawsuit turns out, Wieder thinks the city council needs to make a better effort to clean up the city charter – by establishing clear and constitutional eligibility requirements for mayor and city council. The council could propose different charter language on eligibility requirements for elective office and place a charter amendment before voters.

During the conversation, Wieder describes how the Wojack case led the city to print up two different sets of ballots, one with Wojack’s name and another set without it. If the Dascola case is resolved by early June, that contingency would not be necessary this time around.

The conversation with Wieder is presented in Q & A format below, with some re-ordering and editing. 

Links to Subsections

The conversation was edited so that the material falls sequentially into the following categories, which link internally to the spot in the conversation where that section begins:

• Background of the Case
• Should the City Council Be Involved?
• An Issue for Ann Arbor Democrats?
• Ann Arbor Democrats: Different Now?
• After 1972: Attempts to Fix the Charter
• What Should Happen, Win or Lose?

Background of the Case

Chronicle: So, I don’t think we need to wallow around in the legal arguments too much, but can you by way of entry into this topic just summarize what the Bob Dascola case is about? How would you describe the situation to a very bright four-year-old?

Tom Wieder: A very bright four-year-old? Well, the case stems from the 1970s, actually, when the requirements in the city charter to be eligible for elective office – either mayor or council – were all struck down as unconstitutional and void, by two different federal court decisions in 1972. And Bob Dascola filed to run for office based on the assumption that those requirements were not enforceable and have not been for decades. The city is taking the position that they can enforce those provisions because of cases that have been decided since the original decisions were handed down.

Chronicle: So what is the legal fight about in this case?

Tom Wieder: The argument in the current lawsuit is about whether those decisions from 1972 still hold and determine what the city is allowed to do today. We argue that those decisions are just as enforceable and valid as the day they were handed down, and that is because of a legal principle that says: When you find something unconstitutional, it’s as if it were never written, it sort of goes away, it’s not really there anymore. And so it can’t be enforced. The city argues that these voided provisions of the charter can be enforced, because of decisions in other cases that happened since, and allowed the charter provisions to be revived and used today.

Chronicle: Right. And one of those other cases is the one that you also litigated back in 2001 – the Scott Wojack case.

Tom Wieder: Right. We had a similar situation there, in that Scott Wojack wanted to run for council and he was told by the city clerk that he couldn’t run, because he had not lived in the ward for a year that he wanted to run in. He’d lived in the city for that long, and he’d been registered to vote, but he changed his residence and was no longer in the same ward. That provision was one of the provisions that was struck down by one of the two federal court decisions in 1972.

And I represented Wojack in the case to force the clerk to put him on the ballot – because that barrier to him being on the ballot was not valid any more legally. We filed the case and there were some things going back and forth between us and the city. And then the city kind of did an about-face and said: OK, we will put him on the ballot and we’ll have the judge decide at some later time whether we can enforce this old provision in the charter. And it was a little strange because the only real practical thing involved in the case was whether he got on the ballot.

I say it’s strange because we already had a federal district court say it was not constitutional. And I’m not sure that there’s any basis for a Washtenaw County circuit judge to have any effect on, or overrule, or anything of the kind, a standing final judgment of a federal district court. He is certainly entitled to offer his opinion about something, but I’m not sure that it carried any legal weight, and in fact, I don’t think it does. [The opinion of judge Tim Connors in the Wojack case was that the city charter's durational residency requirement for councilmembers was constitutional.]

Chronicle: Yet, that is the court in which the case was filed. Your point is that you don’t believe the state court had the authority to overrule the federal court, so why would you file that case in the state court in the first place?

Tom Wieder: Well, the only relief we were seeking was to compel the city to put Scott Wojack on the ballot. It certainly could have been filed in federal court. In retrospect, we probably would have. But we were essentially seeking to compel a state officer to perform his duty – all city employees and officers draw all their power from the state, the Home Rule Cities Act – and therefore it’s perfectly appropriate, if you’re asking them to perform one of their duties, to ask a state court to order them to do so.

Chronicle: I assume it’s going to be decided one way or another in a couple weeks or so. …

Tom Wieder: Well, first of all to assume anything that a federal court might do is dangerous. Yes, it will come out in the next several weeks, I think. But the judge has been told by the city that the sort of drop-dead deadline in terms of knowing who’s going on the ballot doesn’t come until early June, when the ballots have to get printed.

And of course, even that is not etched in stone – because what happened in the Wojack case was: They printed two sets of ballots, because it was so close to the election. … They did double printing. One set with Wojack on and one set not. I’m not saying that the court would push it that far – I don’t think so. I just want to be careful that we not assume too much about that.

Should the City Council Be Involved?

Chronicle: So let me go back to something you said earlier. You said that during the Wojack case, the city at some point seemed to do, from your perspective, an about-face. In the most recent filing by the city in the Dascola case, there is a footnote … with words to the effect that the city attorney at the time recognized that Wojack had no likelihood of being elected, and so decided to allow him to be on the ballot, with the legal issue to be decided after the fact. Is that consistent with your recollection at the time as to why the city decided to allow Wojack on the ballot?

Tom Wieder: Let me start by answering that that footnote is one of the oddest things I have ever seen in a legal brief. And the language you’re talking about said “The then city attorney” – that’s Abigail Elias, who was later removed as city attorney and now is chief assistant city attorney – “recognized that Mr. Wojack had no likelihood of election, and that the validity of his candidacy could be decided if he were to win.” Basically the city is stating in its legal brief that “We ignored what we thought was a valid city charter provision for eligibility to run for office and let somebody we believed ineligible to get on the ballot anyway, because we were sure he was going to lose.” Which is just bizarre!

You asked about my understanding at the time. My understanding is mostly based on just rumor and grapevine, because the city obviously didn’t share with us their reasoning on doing things. What I heard at the time was that councilmembers weren’t too comfortable with the idea of keeping somebody off the ballot based on the legal position that the city had at the time – that these requirements that had been declared unconstitutional had somehow come back to life and could be enforced. And that this discomfort with denying somebody a place on the ballot under that reasoning led them to have the attorney go with this alternative, which was to have Wojack be on the ballot and have the judge decide afterwards whether the provisions could be enforced or not.

Chronicle: Well, if that’s what happened, then I guess it must have happened through back channel conditions between individual councilmembers and the city attorney.

Tom Wieder: Yes, of course. … It’s a question of how the council, and I’ll speak mostly of my fellow Democrats, deals with some issues like this. You know, there is the principle that the Democrats in 1971 filed suit over – it was, I think, an important principle. And it somewhat saddens me and disappoints me that the council does not recognize what the underlying issue is about all of this. And if they do recognize it, they don’t seem to be willing to act upon it – because whatever you might say about this case, this is not black-and-white that the only reasonable position the city could take is to say: Oh, yes, these voided provisions are alive again. They could just as well see it as we do and say: No, they are gone; they were declared unconstitutional and void and they essentially disappeared. There would be nothing inappropriate in the city saying: We give – we’re not going to keep fighting that.

Chronicle: So does it make any difference that it is now the city that is enforcing this and it’s up to Bob Dascola to file suit to get on the ballot? One could imagine a different scenario – a situation more like the one in the Barrow case [concerning the 2013 mayor's race in Detroit] – where some other Ward 3 candidate says: Hey, Bob Dascola shouldn’t be allowed on the ballot, and I’m going to file suit to keep him off the ballot.

Tom Wieder: Are you asking me if it makes a difference to me whether it is the city trying to do it or a third party trying to? Yes! I mean, third parties will do something in their own self-interest, which is probably to help themselves in an election or hurt somebody they don’t like. The responsibility of council – and therefore the city – is a bit different.

It is a council decision ultimately as to the legal stance that the city attorney takes, because the city attorney works for the council. And if there are two or more legally legitimate and plausible arguments and stances to take in a case, you sort of expect that the councilmembers, in deciding what course to take, might apply their political values and principles to making that decision.

And to me, what I would hope to see is Democrats who control the Ann Arbor council say: We’re not so sure that the argument – that these provisions are enforceable – is the right one, and the other argument sounds plausible too, and it fits with our approach to open government and letting more people participate. So we’re going to instruct our city attorney and our city clerk to go that way. Instead, it seems that this is being led by the city attorney’s preferences here, and not the political philosophy of the council.

Chronicle: Isn’t there some value, though, in getting a decision from someone who’s wearing a black robe? So that in the future, if indeed these two provisions are null and void, that nobody will get the idea, based on some different political philosophy, that we want to keep people off the ballot using those provisions? … I’m saying let’s consider what would have happened if it had become public that the city clerk notified Bob Dascola that he didn’t seem to meet the eligibility requirements, then you [Tom Wieder] basically come in and use the art of … “friendly persuasion” and the city said, “Oh, OK, we forgot,” or “You make a reasonable case,” and they let him on the ballot, and it doesn’t get into court. … The door would still be open to [someone else] to try to enforce the two charter provisions.

Tom Wieder: If the result of this case were a decision that those things are still null and void, that really ought to answer it permanently.

Chronicle: That’s why I’m saying: There’s some value in the city taking the position that they’re going to defend the enforcement of those two provisions.

Tom Wieder: … I don’t agree at all. I don’t agree. You say maybe we could get a court to repeat what it ordered 40 years ago, now we will listen to it the second time?! The idea that that has some value doesn’t really ring any bells for me. A decision was made.

An Issue for Ann Arbor Democrats?

Chronicle: Thinking about the current situation, do you think it would be helpful to the cause to have councilmembers convey their opinion one way or another to the city attorney with respect to just going ahead and allowing Dascola on the ballot? …

So for Bob Dascola’s specific cause of getting on the ballot, of course, it would be helpful. … [But] I take it that you do have some either personal or professional special interest in this topic area. I think the last time that your name was included in Ann Arbor Chronicle coverage was back when ward redistricting was being voted on in 2011, and the city attorney was planning to use different boundaries for the general election than were used in the primary. You and several others in the legal community weighed in, and what happened was the city held off its decision to implement the ward boundary changes. I’m sure you recall that episode. In my mind, ballot access issues and ward boundary issues, they seem to be in the same general category.

So maybe instead of asking “Does it help the cause?” maybe a better question is: Do you have a special interest in this topic area? Is this a “cause” for you?

Tom Wieder: Well, it’s certainly no secret that I’ve been active in local Democratic politics for nearly 40 years. So I have an interest as a Democrat. I’ve also been active in the American Civil Liberties Union for about that long or at least a member that long. And I take very seriously constitutional rights in general. But because of my interest in politics, I may take an even greater interest in those issues of civil liberties when they affect elections and the ability to run for office. … The original challenge to the charter was filed by Democrats in 1971 [the Feld case], challenging the requirement that a candidate for council had to have lived in the ward for a year before the election to be eligible to run.

And it was the feeling of Democrats back then that this was an unnecessary restriction on who could run for office – that this is a very transient city and people move a lot, and you shouldn’t be barred from running for city council because you happen to move a few blocks over and ended up in a different ward and couldn’t run for a year. If voters were concerned that you had not lived in the ward for a year, they certainly did not have to vote for you. But there was no reason to prohibit people from running on that basis.

They supported a much more open and accessible kind of election process that you might construct, and that’s what prompted filing that suit. I happen to agree to that approach to elections and people getting involved in them – we should put up as few barriers as possible. So when that case came down, I was pleased at that – I wasn’t directly involved in the case myself, but it certainly comports with my political viewpoint and my civil liberties viewpoint.

Chronicle: So you seem to be identifying the notion of having as few barriers to ballot access as possible as a Democratic value – Democratic with a capital D.

Tom Wieder: Certainly in this town I would say so. To be honest, we had a lot of disputes about that in Ann Arbor, but to the extent that it has arisen, I think you would find that … when we used to have a more visible group of Republicans, the Ann Arbor Democrats would have been more favorable to ballot access than Republicans.

Ann Arbor Democrats: Different Now?

Chronicle: Do you think that Ann Arbor Democrats of 40 years ago are somewhat of a different breed with respect to this type of issue than Ann Arbor Democrats of today? At the very first mayoral forum, the four candidates were assembled … and one of the candidates who has got, I think, unquestionable Democratic Party credentials – Stephen Kunselman – described the basic concept of what he thought a local government is as essentially a book of rules, and we have to follow the rules. Which is all well and good, but it’s not what I would necessarily think of as stereotypically Democratic Party principles.

Tom Wieder: I don’t know what Steve might have meant by that, but I would say that the tenor of the comment doesn’t strike me as what I would think of as the first principle that would come off the tongue of most of the liberal Democrats in Ann Arbor as the purpose of government. But maybe I’m not understanding what …

Chronicle: … well, I’m taking that somewhat out of context, and to be clear he was not trying to articulate in any explicit way what Democratic Party values are. But it is something that he said – in the context of explaining who he is and what he is about. So if indeed there has been a change in what it means to be an Ann Arbor Democrat over the last 40 years, would you be willing to accept some of the credit or perhaps blame for that? As I understand it, you were instrumental in redefining the ward boundaries back in [1991] … and with the shift of elections from April to November, and that pretty much gave us what we have today – which is, as you mentioned before, an invisible Republican Party.

Tom Wieder: That’s a complicated question and requires a somewhat complicated answer. Yes, I do think that Democrats of today in Ann Arbor are somewhat different from the Democrats of 30 or 40 years ago. I think that Democrats of 30 or 40 years ago in Ann Arbor were somewhat more process-oriented and civil-liberties-oriented. They didn’t just have substantive positions on delivery of city services and the like, but a lot of them came out of civil rights activity and anti-war activity and were very concerned about the government doing things in the right way – almost as much as what the city actually did. And when I say in the right way – in terms of individual rights and process. I think it has faded a bit with more recent Democrats, in general.

I think that part of that comes from the fact that Democrats had been in the minority for so long – you always tend to get a little more sensitive about process when someone else controls it! And for many decades, Republicans in Ann Arbor controlled the process. And that may have made Democrats more sensitive about it than they otherwise would be, but I think their instincts were also more in that direction, because of their political philosophy and experiences. Again … I think the fact that the Democrats have now been in charge pretty much for a while, there may be less self-examination when it comes to process and basic political principles than when somebody else was controlling those levers.

Chronicle: Do you think it could also be the simple fact that there are folks who are willing to accept the Democratic Party label on the ballot just as a practical step in order to gain election, and who are not in any way, shape or form actually Democrats? So take Stephen Rapundalo, who ran for mayor as a Republican. I don’t think that he had some deep political epiphany in the intervening years, but then he represented Ward 2 as a Democrat. From what I’ve read and from what I’ve heard, I don’t think that an early 1970s Ann Arbor Democrat would be inclined to prevent a guy like Tom Wieder from addressing a committee meeting for three minutes, and would have instead preferred to argue for three minutes about whether Wieder should be able to address a committee meeting – instead of actually letting him speak. I assume you remember the episode to which I’m referring?

Tom Wieder: Yeah, sure. I certainly think that I have seen things dealt with by the council controlled by Democrats in recent years that would not have been done that way by a council controlled by the Democrats I knew on council a number of years back. Now, I’m not sure that that’s a result of there being – as you would suggest – a number of Republicans in Democrats’ clothing. I think that the Democrats on council who I have no doubt are through-and-through Democrats, and not just wearing the label, are also different from the Democrats of old. So I don’t think it’s a question of there are too many not-real Democrats on there. And that’s why you see the change – because I think the real Democrats today are somewhat a different stripe than the Democrats of the ’70s and ’80s.

After 1972: Attempts to Fix the Charter

Tom Wieder: [After the 1972 federal court cases], the city sort of made up a rule, because there wasn’t any. They just sort of started a practice: People came in and were registered to vote in the city or the ward, and the city was taking their petitions. It’s just something that was made up – there’s nothing written about that anywhere. And they did it for 30 years. And that’s why we still have this question. Because what needed to be done was for new constitutional provisions to be put on the ballot and passed, and then it’s over because the city would have by its processes changed the charter. And then you don’t have to argue about whether the old charter provisions come back to life or anything, because you’ve replaced them with things that met the terms of the court decisions at the time. But nobody took the time or attention to do anything about that.

Chronicle: But you’d have to say that somebody tried to do something about that, in 2003 [when a ballot proposal was put before voters to put in new language for eligibility requirements] … Do you think that effort was in some way defective, and if so, what was the defect of that effort?

Tom Wieder: Well, the ballot language was horribly confusing. And in fact, it was wrong! … The way they described the change in charter language assumed existing charter provisions that never existed. … They threw in other things about volunteer and appointive officers, and I think a lot of people didn’t know what they were voting on. And it’s kind of an accepted principle of electoral politics that if people don’t understand a ballot question, they vote no. … Neither the city nor any independent group did anything to promote it, which is not really surprising on this kind of a change.

But there wasn’t anything that reached the average voter, except one Ann Arbor News article and an editorial – and they got almost everything wrong in that! They kind of missed the point that the two charter provisions had been struck down and made it sound like this was just something that came out of the blue to reduce the requirements to get on the ballot.

There was no hint of the fact that those charter requirements had been thrown out, and the idea was to establish some requirements. They editorialized against it, but the basic facts about what was being done were wrong.

If you thought that the Connors opinion [in the Wojack case] had no force or effect, when that ballot proposal was put on, the status was the same as it had been for 30 years, which was that we did not have any requirements. If you thought that Connors’ opinion did have force and effect, the only requirement would be that a candidate for council had to live in the ward for a year, and that’s it – there were no requirements for mayor, there were no requirements that require the candidate be a citizen or of voting age.

All the rest of that stuff went away with the other [HRP] case. The most you would’ve had is a requirement that council candidates live in the ward. That just didn’t come across [in the editorial] – what was portrayed is that we were going to get rid of these one-year requirements … and were going to make it so that you only had to be an elector at the time of election. But that just wasn’t true – that was not what was being done.

… [The ballot proposal] had this odd thing where it said it was going to make the requirement be that candidates for elective office had to be registered to vote by the date of the election. I don’t know how you could enforce that. Because someone could come in and file petitions and not be a registered elector, they get on the ballot, and then indicate, Well, yeah, I am going to register by Election Day.

Chronicle: I assure you I will absolutely register to vote by Election Day – yes, I promise!

Tom Wieder: So I suppose the result of such a thing if someone did not register by Election Day is that they would be declared ineligible and even if they won election, they could not take office. Normally we decide the eligibility for office at the time of filing. So in many ways, it was a screwed-up ballot proposal. It was not explained well and it was not written well.

Chronicle: … but you’d have to say that somebody tried to do something about this in 2003, even if it may not have been a super-great effort.

Tom Wieder: Well, that’s 30 years later, because we had one of those challenges to deal with. That’s a long time to wait and just go with some sort of jerryrigged method to determine who is eligible to run for office in the city. Well, okay, they tried it once – they could’ve tried it again.

I have to tell you that I did some lobbying, with some council people, to press the city attorney to give an opinion as to what the eligibility requirements were post-Wojack. What could the city do, what could the city not do? And those efforts were to no avail. So that the council could know what ticking time bomb was there about what requirements they still have, if any – it never happened. They made the one effort in 2003, it was unsuccessful, and then everybody ignored it again, and here we are back litigating what we litigated 40 years ago. And it should have been cleaned up by new charter provisions, so that nobody can argue whether they were valid or not. That’s why we are where we are today with another lawsuit about somebody getting on the ballot – because we never cleaned up the charter.

What Should Happen, Win or Lose?

Chronicle: If Bob Dascola wins the case, is there anything left to be done? Or do we say that’s now settled again, until somebody forgets?

Tom Wieder: The answer to that is a little complicated, because winning by Bob Dascola could take a couple of different forms. There are basically two different voided charter provisions that get involved in this. One is that the person running for council has to have been a resident of the ward for a year. The other is that a candidate for any elective office has to have been a registered voter of the city for a year before the election.

The city hasn’t quite conceded, but has come close to conceding, that Bob has lived in the ward for a year. There’s a few factual questions, but even in their pleadings they are indicating … there is a problem there. He could win by the court finding that both of those charter provisions are still null and void, in which case we don’t have to worry about how long he has lived in the ward or whether he is registered in the city or not. And that will give us exactly where we are now: The city doesn’t have any requirements.

Chronicle: Well, it would leave us exactly where we were right after the Feld and the HRP decisions – both were struck down in the 1970s, declared void … I can’t imagine that there would be anything left to do at that point, but that would be my question to you: What else, if anything, might the city council consider undertaking, even if that is the outcome?

Tom Wieder: If that is the outcome – that those two provisions remain voided – then the city needs to make another effort to put proper qualifications back in the charter.

Chronicle: So you’re saying a better effort than was made back in 2003?

Tom Wieder: Yes.

Chronicle: That covers at least some of the ground associated with what might need to happen if Bob Dascola gets on the ballot.

Tom Wieder: But not all of it. As I say, this gets a little complicated. One of the things that could happen is that the judge could decide that the one-year ward residency requirement has once again become enforceable – either because of the Wojack case, or other cases decided on the so-called durational residency requirement. But the court could decide that the other requirement about being a registered voter for a year has not been similarly reinstated, in which case Bob Dascola, if he can show that he has indeed been in the ward for a year, would get on the ballot.

But you would still have this hole in the requirements for mayor and other kinds of requirements for city council that would not have been fixed. You would just have the one-year ward residency requirement for councilmembers. So there would still be a gap in the charter, in terms of elective office that needs to be fixed, and that has needed to be fixed for 40 years.

Chronicle: On the other hand, if the judge in Dascola’s case upholds both of the requirements, is there anything to be done under that scenario? What do you think should happen if Bob Dascola does not get on the ballot?

Tom Wieder: If the judge finds that those charter requirements can now be used again, then nothing has to be done. But if you asked me what do I think should be done, I still believe that those requirements are too strict – as the Democrats did who filed the lawsuit in 1971. And I guess I would like to see a Democratic council take another shot at making the requirements less to get on the ballot.

Chronicle: What do you think the eligibility requirements should be?

Tom Wieder: I think the requirement should be what they were de facto for 30 years, when they didn’t have anything in the charter to go by: If someone came in by the filing deadline and filed a sufficient number of signatures, and was a registered voter in the city, then you got on the ballot. … The requirement I would have is that if you’re running for mayor, at the date of filing the nominating petitions … you have to be a registered elector of the city. And if you’re running for council, you have to be a registered elector of the ward.

Chronicle: So no durational residency requirement beyond that?

Tom Wieder: No, I think we can trust the voters. If they care that the person just moved into the city six months ago, then don’t vote for them. If they moved a half-mile across town and are now in a different ward and they think you have to actually live in the ward to know about the issues that might affect that ward, then you don’t have to vote for them. But why should we keep people off of the ballot?

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Bob Dascola, who owns a barbershop in downtown Ann Arbor, has filed a lawsuit to run for Ward 3 city council.

That same day, Dascola filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Michigan’s U.S. District Court to assert his right to compete in the Aug. 5 Democratic primary election. [.pdf of March 28, 2014 complaint Dascola v. City of Ann Arbor]

Even though Dascola has more than the required 100  signatures to stand for election, the city clerk previously informed Dascola that he does not meet the city charter eligibility requirements for candidates.

And city clerk records still indicate in red type that Dascola does not meet the eligibility requirements.

The city has two different eligibility requirements for city council candidates. The first requires one year of residency in the ward that a candidate seeks to represent, prior to election. The second requires one year of voter registration in the city of Ann Arbor, prior to election.

Dascola’s lawsuit is based in part on the fact that each of Ann Arbor’s charter requirements were explicitly struck down in federal court in the early 1970s. [Feld v. City of Ann Arbor] [Human Rights Party et al v. City of Ann Arbor]

The complaint indicates that the city apparently believes Dascola doesn’t meet either of the requirements. Dascola contends that he actually meets the city charter’s residency requirement.

Previous coverage from The Chronicle includes: “Dascola to Assert Right to Run in Ward 3.”

Residency Requirement

The lawsuit, filed on Dascola’s behalf by local attorney Tom Wieder, contends that Dascola has been a Ward 3 resident since about Sept. 15, 2012, which would meet the one-year residency requirement. On that question, the court may need to make a determination as to the facts.

In an application Dascola filled out on Dec. 1, 2013 to be appointed by the city council to a pedestrian safety task force, he checked an item on the application indicating he was not a city resident. [.pdf of Dascola's application to the pedestrian safety task force] That would put him a few weeks outside the city charter’s one-year residency requirement. But on the same form, Dascola seems to indicate a habitual lodging at the Baldwin Avenue address in Ward 3, where he contends he’s been a resident since Sept. 15, 2012: “I walk to work every day from Stadium and Packard area and have to use crosswalk at Baldwin. I have witnessed an accident because a driver wasn’t paying attention and was almost hit by car.”

Under Michigan election law, for purposes of voting and registration, habitual lodging is one way to determine residency:

168.11 “Residence” defined.
Sec. 11. (1)  ”Residence”, as used in this act, for registration and voting purposes means that place at which a person habitually sleeps, keeps his or her personal effects, and has a regular place of lodging. If a person has more than 1 residence, or if a person has a residence separate from that of his or her spouse, that place at which the person resides the greater part of the time shall be his or her official residence for the purposes of this act. This section does not affect existing judicial interpretation of the term residence

Also supporting Dascola’s contention of residency at the Baldwin address for a year before the 2014 election is his application for renewal of his barber’s license on Aug. 8, 2013, which gives his Baldwin address. [.pdf of Dascola's barber's license renewal]

Voter Registration Requirement

On the question of voter registration, there does not appear to be any dispute on the facts. Dascola did not register to vote in the city of Ann Arbor until Jan. 15, 2014. So he falls about two months short of the one-year charter requirement on voter registration.

In defending the charter requirements, the city of Ann Arbor is likely to point to a ruling in the Washtenaw County circuit court from 2002 by judge Tim Connors on the Wojack case. However, the ruling from Connors focused on the residency requirement, not the voter registration requirement.

The Wojack case – also handled by Wieder – involved the 2001 candidacy of Republican Scott Wojack to run in Ward 1. Wojack was told he could not run based on the in-ward residency requirement. He was allowed to run. But after the 2001 election, Connors issued an opinion upholding the charter residency requirement. [Wojack v. City of Ann Arbor opinion] In that ruling, upholding the charter’s residency requirement, Connors relied on a 1981 federal court decision: [Joseph v City of Birmingham, 510 F Supp 1319, 1327 (ED Mich 1981)]

Status of Voided Charter Provisions

The complaint filed in federal district court on March 28, 2014 gives some indication of the city’s likely approach to the case, by quoting a March 24 email sent by city attorney Stephen Postema: “[W]e believe that they [city charter requirements] are no longer void in light of subsequent changes in federal and Michigan jurisprudence.” So a key question before the federal district court will likely be whether subsequent rulings in jurisdictions other than Ann Arbor can in some way revive Ann Arbor charter provisions that were explicitly ruled void by a federal court.

The complaint asks the court to enjoin the city permanently from enforcing the city charter provisions on eligibility of candidates for city office. The complaint further asks the court to issue a writ of mandamus directing the city clerk “to accept and process any nominating petitions submitted by [Dascola] and determine his eligibility without regard to the voided provisions of [the city charter].”

In a phone interview on March 29, Wieder indicated he would be filing a motion for summary judgment in the case.

Context of Ward 3 Race

The only other candidate so far to take out petitions to run in the Ward 3 Democratic primary is Julie Grand, who also competed in the August 2013 primary. Incumbent Stephen Kunselman received more votes than Grand in that race.

Kunselman is not up for re-election in 2014, but is running for mayor, along with three other councilmembers: Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Sally Petersen (Ward 2) and Christopher Taylor (Ward 3). Because he cannot simultaneously run for mayor and run to retain his Ward 3 seat on the council, Taylor’s decision to run for mayor will leave that seat without an incumbent on the ballot.

Petitions for the partisan primary in August 2014 must be turned in by April 22. For councilmembers, 100 signatures are required from their ward. For mayor, the requirement is for 50 signatures from each of the city’s five wards, for a total of 250 signatures.

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Extracted screen shot of Legistar interface that allows search of Legislative items by category.

Legistar is an information-rich archive for upcoming as well as past meetings. I’ll grant you, it is not perfect. Legistar can at times be sluggish to respond or counterintuitive in its user interface. But Legistar will mostly cough up what you’re looking for.

The city of Ann Arbor has been using Legistar as part of its record management for Ann Arbor’s government for six years. By now I’d guess residents have figured out for themselves as much as they need or want to know about Legistar. So my purpose in writing is not to provide a tutorial on its use.

In this column, I’d like to focus on one feature of Legistar: the ability to classify meeting agenda items by category. The city of Ann Arbor’s Legistar system is set up so that an agenda item can be classified as: appointment, introduction, minutes, ordinance, proclamation, public hearing only, report or communication, resolution, resolution/public hearing, work session. Of those categories, I’d like to focus on just one: introduction.

I think that a more robust and meaningful use of “introductions” by the city council could lead to better public notice of upcoming council work, and more efficient use of limited city staff resources.

The change I have in mind wouldn’t be difficult to implement, and wouldn’t require changing the city charter to do it. But I’ll wrap up this column by noting how a change to the council’s approach to “introductions” could help get the ball rolling on a possible effort to review the city charter.

What Is an Introduction?

The “introductions” section on the Ann Arbor city council’s agenda pre-dates the use of Legistar. Over a decade ago, for example, at the Jan. 6, 2003 council meeting, an “introductions” slot appeared on the agenda. It was filled with a presentation on the city’s annual audit.

Even now, presentations like that are fairly typical for the way “introductions” are used by the Ann Arbor city council. Most typically, items classified as an “introduction” are presentations of information, not items on which the council takes any action requiring a vote. Items not classified as an “introduction” sometimes appear in the “introductions” section. For example, those items classified as “proclamations” also get slotted in under “introductions.”

So what exactly gets “introduced” during the Ann Arbor city council’s “introductions” section of the agenda? A fair description would be: (1) people (through proclamations), or (2) information (through presentations).

What about legislation? Does legislation ever get introduced during “introductions”? No.

Introducing Legislation: Through First Reading?

Every schoolchild who has ever had a lesson in “how a bill becomes a law” knows that legislation must first be introduced. So what is the Ann Arbor city council’s standard procedure for introducing a new or amended local law? Answer: It’s placed on a meeting agenda for a first reading.

Sometimes councilmembers will use their communications time at a council meeting as an informal heads-up. They’ll alert their colleagues during communications that sometime soon they intend to bring forward an ordinance or resolution on a particular topic. For example, on Oct. 21, 2013 Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) announced during council communications that he’d be bringing forward an ordinance that would regulate outdoor smoking. The Chronicle’s report of that meeting last year included Warpehoski’s remarks. The council’s minutes from that meeting also reflect Warpehoski’s remarks on his intent to bring forward the new ordinance.

But the first occasion for a new piece of legislation to become formally visible on the council’s work plan is when it’s placed on the agenda for a first reading. By that time, a councilmember will typically have laid claim to some amount of time from city staff – in the city attorney’s office and in the city department affected by the content the ordinance. It shouldn’t have surprised anyone who was paying close attention to the council’s work to see that Warpehoski placed the outdoor smoking regulation on the council’s agenda for a first reading on Feb. 3, 2014. But it was the first occasion on which the item actually appeared on the council’s agenda.

The council’s current custom on introducing new topics is less than optimal in two respects. First, formal notice could come much earlier. Second, formal notice could come before laying claim to limited staff resources. Is there some better way to do this?

A Better Way to Introduce a Law: By Introducing It

The Ann Arbor city council’s own rules provide some insight here. Compared to current custom, the council’s rules appear to contemplate an additional step in the ordinance enactment process. It’s a step with an outcome that is not necessarily to take a vote on the question of giving initial approval to an ordinance. Specifically, the council’s rules indicate a step where a natural outcome of that step is to “refer” the matter to another authority [emphasis added]:

RULE 13: Ordinances, How Introduced
Proposed ordinances shall be introduced by one or more individual members of council. Ordinances may be referred to any or all of the following: the city Attorney, the city administrator, appropriate agencies, and council committees, for study and recommendation.

I don’t think it’s accidental that the Ann Arbor city council’s list of allowable motions during debate includes a motion to refer:

RULE 11: Motions in Order during Debate
When any question is under debate, no motion shall be received but the following, and they shall have the precedence in the order in which they stand arranged [emphasis added]:

1. To call the previous question/cloture
2. Motions to Adjourn
3. To Lay on Table
4. To Postpone to a Time Certain
5. To Refer
6. To Postpone Indefinitely
7. To Recess a Meeting to a Date Certain

I don’t recall the council ever taking advantage of a motion to refer in the last five years. So I’d like to propose a modification to Rule 13, which I think should include not just ordinances, but also resolutions:

Rule 13-P: Ordinances and Resolutions, Necessity and Method of Introduction
Proposed ordinances and resolutions by councilmembers should first be placed on a meeting agenda as an item of introduction, before being placed on a meeting agenda as an item to be voted on for initial or final approval. Outside of their work on a council committee to which a matter has been referred by the council, councilmembers shall not lay claim to time and effort from a city staff member or a city board or commission related to an ordinance or resolution, unless the council has voted to refer the matter to the staff member, the staff member’s department, or the city board or commission.

Using Introductions to Introduce: Supporting Arguments

An approach to introducing legislation that makes literal use of an “introduction” is not novel for a city government. New York City’s approach to the process is visible in the NYC city council Legistar system.

Screenshot of New York City Legistar system search results for items classified as “introduction.”

That’s right, NYC uses Legistar software. And a search for “introduction” items in the NYC Legistar system does not give a results list that is dominated by informational presentations, as does a similar search in Ann Arbor’s Legistar system. Instead, NYC’s Legistar system turns up a screenful of titles that begin with “A Local Law to …”

And if you click through to read the history of some of those items, what you’ll find is a NYC city council action to “refer” those items to some kind of committee. For example, a NYC local law in relation to creating a task force on the sport of cricket was referred to the committee on parks and recreation.

But pointing to NYC’s example is, I think, a pretty weak argument in favor of Ann Arbor’s adoption of an introduce-then-refer approach to governance. In fact, it could be cited as an argument against Ann Arbor’s adoption of this kind of procedure: In a smaller community like Ann Arbor, governance should be simpler than in the largest city in the country.

But the idea that things should be simple, I think, weighs in favor of the introduce-then-refer approach. If every ordinance and resolution requiring staff time is first formally introduced then referred, it becomes simple to keep track of the to-do list. It’s a to-do list that the Ann Arbor city council is creating for city staff and other boards and commissions. That to-do list takes the form of a search on “introduction” items in Legistar. So, about that NYC local law in relation to creating a task force on the sport of cricket: I will not be following up on the legislation that might result from the council’s referral to the NYC committee on parks and recreation. But because it went through a process of introduction, I could easily track it on Legistar if I wanted to.

The introduce-then-refer approach can also keep things simple by providing an early opportunity for the council, as a group, to nip an initiative in the bud, without voting against it per se. If Warpehoski had literally introduced the outdoor smoking item in October last year, the council might not have chosen to refer it to the city attorney’s office or the park advisory commission. If it had not been referred, then it would have died relatively early – before any significant staff time had been consumed by the effort.

And I think that conservation of staff time and resources should be a significant consideration for the council as it thinks about how to set the city’s work plan. That’s especially important as the city’s total staff has decreased over the years. It strikes me as completely reasonable that any initiative that requires staff time should have the support of a majority of council for the expenditure of that staff time.

This introduction-then-referral approach in the proposed Rule 13-P would also ensure more transparency for the council’s work. Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) surprised nearly everyone on Aug. 9, 2012 when he put an item on the agenda that called for placing a public art millage on the ballot. He’d been working behind the scenes with the city attorney’s office on the matter. If Rule 13-P had been in place, he would have been forced to be more transparent in his approach.

That’s because Taylor would have needed to get the backing of a majority of councilmembers to refer the matter to the city attorney’s office, before he could have tapped city attorney resources to help him work on the issue. I imagine the council would have backed Taylor’s initiative at that earlier stage. And the outcome on the council’s action would have probably been the same: The millage would have been placed on the ballot.

The difference? The process from start to finish would have been more transparent, and the possibility of a ballot question would have been day-lighted to the public much earlier. That difference might have led to a different outcome on voting day. [The millage failed.]

Introducing: Charter Commission?

One issue that has generated some interest across the community over the last few years – though not enough to result in any council action – is the possibility of switching Ann Arbor to non-partisan elections for mayor and city council. That change would require a charter amendment, which could be placed on the ballot for voters to decide.

What I think is actually needed, instead of a one-off amendment, is a comprehensive review of Ann Arbor’s city charter. The mechanism for conducting that review involves establishing and electing a city charter commission. Getting the wording right for a city council resolution – and the development of background educational materials so that councilmembers could weigh the wisdom of establishing a charter commission – would require a significant time investment from the city attorney’s office.

To get things rolling toward establishing a charter commission – in a completely transparent way – wouldn’t require adoption of Rule 13-P. Existing mechanisms could be used that allow for, but do not require, introduction then referral.

Action could take place as early as the March 3, 2014 meeting, if anyone on the council wanted to move this forward. A councilmember could introduce a resolution – literally as an “introduction” item on the agenda – to establish a city charter commission. That resolution could be very much a draft – a councilmember’s own best shot at the required wording. One starting point might be to track down similar resolutions that other municipalities, including Ypsilanti, have used for this purpose. And a councilmember could use one of the possible motions during debate to refer that resolution to the city attorney’s office.

If a majority of the council agreed, we might expect to see an actual resolution for a charter commission placed on the council’s agenda sometime this year. That’s no guarantee that the council would approve the resolution, but at least it would put the issue on the table for discussion.

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This graphic was poached from a column written for The Chronicle last year by former city attorney Bruce Laidlaw – advocating for non-partisan elections. Laidlaw’s argument was based in part on the idea that it reduces the potential for lame ducks. It might also encourage more competition and participation. (Image links to Laidlaw’s column.)

How bad is it? The August 2012 Democratic primary featured contested races in four of the city’s five wards – with voter turnout ranging from a high of 13.9% in Ward 5 to a low of 8.2% in Ward 1.

In Wards 1 and 4, the winner received less than 1,000 votes. That compared to a citywide turnout of 56.2% in the November 2012 mayor’s race.

What about the Republican primary? If you’re not familiar with Ann Arbor politics, that’s a punch line.

Only in Ward 5 did voters have a choice of city council candidates in November 2012 – Republican Stuart Berry or Democrat Chuck Warpehoski. And 62% of the ward’s voters turned out to choose Warpehoski – by a wide margin. In the other wards, the decision had already been made – in August, by fewer than 10% of registered voters in those wards. In Ward 3, no candidate stepped forward as an alternative to incumbent Democrat Christopher Taylor, in either the primary or the general election.

While Anglin recently lamented the lack of participation in the Democratic primary, I don’t think that exhorting residents to vote on Aug. 6 is likely to bump participation to anywhere near the level we might see in November. So the decisions about who represents Ann Arbor residents on the city council will likely again this year be made when less of the electorate will head to the polls – in August, not November.

But Ward 2 will be a definite exception. That’s because voters will choose between two formidable candidates in November: Democrat Kirk Westphal (unopposed in the primary) and incumbent Jane Lumm, who’s indicated she’ll again be campaigning as an independent. They might be joined by independent Conrad Brown, if he submits enough signatures by the August deadline.  Still, in Ward 2, there’s no question the choice will be made in November, not August.

In Wards 1, 3 and 4, other independent candidates affiliated with a University of Michigan student group calling itself the Mixed Use Party have taken out petitions. None have yet filed the required signatures. But to the extent they prove to be serious candidates, voters in those wards might also feel they were offered a legitimate choice in November.

But when three legitimate candidates take out petitions, why are we forcing a selection between just two of them – precisely at a time of year when few voters turn up at the polls to make that selection?

Take Ward 3 as an example. Julie Grand, current chair of the city’s park advisory commission, and incumbent Democrat Stephen Kunselman are solid choices. They’ll be offered to voters in August. Only one will advance to the November general election. And as voters get to know him, independent Sam DeVarti – if he files his nominating petitions – could also prove to be another solid choice in November.

If they’re all three credible candidates, I think a more rational approach to an August primary would be to use that initial election to winnow the field of all three (or more) candidates down to two. That way the important choice, between the two finalists, would come in November, when more voters participate. Or all the candidates could be offered to voters in November, with no primary election at all.

It’s fairly common now for a city council election to draw only two candidates, both Democrats, who compete in August. If there’s no other candidate in the race at all, it would be more rational to offer those same two candidates to voters in November, when many more voters participate.

That kind of rational approach to candidate choice would be possible if Ann Arbor city council elections were non-partisan.

But under the city charter, Ann Arbor city council elections are conducted on a partisan basis.

Last year around this time, former city attorney Bruce Laidlaw wrote two op-eds for The Chronicle, the first explaining the historical background for Ann Arbor’s partisan system, and the second making a case for changing the city charter to provide for non-partisan elections.

There seems to be at least some interest this year in moving the idea forward. One indication came in a response to a recent Ward 2 resident satisfaction survey. An open-ended question asked respondents to identify the one issue that councilmembers should focus on in the next six months. Among the question’s many responses was this one: “Implement a non-partisan election process for city council and mayor.”

A question about non-partisan elections also was posed this week to Ann Arbor mayor John Hieftje, who spoke at a Rotary Club lunch.

At the June 12 Ann Arbor Rotary Club meeting – held at the Michigan Union – Steve Dobson asked Hieftje for his thoughts on non-partisan elections. Dobson, who served as treasurer of councilmember Jane Lumm’s 2011 campaign, noted that Ann Arbor is one of only three cities in the state that hold partisan city council elections. [The other two cities are Ypsilanti and Ionia.]

Most Michigan cities either originally adopted a non-partisan system or have chosen to convert, Dobson said. He asked Hieftje why non-partisan elections haven’t gotten any traction in Ann Arbor, and he wondered what Hieftje personally felt is the case for and against that approach.

Hieftje’s response:

A few [cities] have switched from partisan to non-partisan, but most of that was put into their charters. It was in Ann Arbor’s charter from the very beginning, and it is an interesting issue and one that doesn’t get discussed a whole lot.

I can give you one side that I heard at a dinner party a few weeks ago. Of course, these were mostly Democrats and one of them had to say, ‘Well, they never worried about that for the hundred years before the mid-1990s when it was totally governed by Republicans.’ But it’s an interesting issue.

It would require a change of the charter, and a vote of the people. That would have to get on the ballot and that could require close to 10,000 signatures – or it’s something the city council could put on the ballot. I don’t know that that’ll happen. I’m not sure it would pass in the city, what the electorate would have to say about that. So those are only guesses. It’s certainly a conversation that can continue.

I would not mind at all running for office in a non-partisan environment. I think the other side of the argument that you asked me to talk about is some people really respect those labels. If they’re not following issues closely, they can tell something about that candidate from their party label – although sometimes you wonder that the party label doesn’t work anymore. So it’s hard to tell. It’s an issue with some different sides and a robust conversation perhaps could be had.

In resuscitating the issue this year, I’m mindful that there’s only about a two-month window of opportunity for the city council to act to place a ballot question before voters in November. By late August, a council decision will need to be made on that.

As other issues compete for the time and attention of councilmembers, it’s important to give them a nudge – if you think we’d benefit from a chance to decide for ourselves to switch to non-partisan elections. Contact information for city councilmembers is on the city’s website.

Chronicle publisher Mary Morgan contributed to this column. The Chronicle could not survive without regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of public bodies like the Ann Arbor city council. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’ve already elected to support us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too! 

Since being hired as city attorney, Stephen Postema has circumvented Ann Arbor’s city charter requirement that written legal opinions be filed with the city clerk (thus making them public) by contending that his written opinions are “advice memos” and thus not opinions. The city responds to requests under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act for the content of such advice memos by asserting attorney-client privilege.

By Ann Arbor’s city charter, however, the city attorney is under the direct supervision of the city council. And the council could have forced Postema to produce a written opinion with the resolution on its April 2 agenda. In the 3-7 vote, the council showed no enthusiasm for exercising its city charter mandate. The resolution got support only from Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Mike Anglin (Ward 5).

The resolution was brought forward by Kunselman and co-sponsored by Briere. For additional background, see: “Council Preview: Marijuana, Art, TIF.”

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

As over 50 people throw their fists into the air, the contest resembles a superhero’s meeting more than a pie competition. On Sunday, July 24, Slow Food Huron Valley (SFHV) hosted its 5th annual Pie Lovers Unite! event at the Ypsilanti Ladies Literary Club. Most participants easily fit the “pie lover” label, considering themselves connoisseurs of crusts and aficionados of fillings.

Cardboard cutouts of the five wards of the city of Ann Arbor – not arranged in their actual geographic proximity to each other. (Photo for art by the writer)

But consistent with The Chronicle’s appetite for all things government-related, we could not simply let them eat pie. Instead, we brought handmade cardboard cutouts of Ann Arbor’s five wards and asked a roomful of pie enthusiasts which ward most resembles a slice of pie.

Why?

At its July 5 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council discussed redrawing the boundaries for the city’s five wards. And the city charter states: “The five wards should each have the general character of a pieshaped segment of the city with the point of such segment lying near the center of the city …” That discussion revealed that at least one councilmember holds some reservations about whether the current wards really are pie-shaped wedges of the city.

Kim Bayer, the program coordinator of Pie Lovers Unite!, began the night’s festivities by articulating the event’s mission beyond eating pie: “To strengthen our region’s food system, build community food security, and preserve our culinary heritage.”

She continued, saying, “When something is made from love, you can taste it.”

After a quick thank-you to the owner of Mighty Good Coffee, David Meyer, for providing the event’s coffee, Bayer addressed the audience: “What do you remember from last year?”

The pie lovers shouted back in unison, “PIE!” Then came individual murmurings – “pie-kus,” as the event’s pie-themed version of the Japanese form of poetry is known. And a piece of advice: “Pace yourself” – the evening includes feasting on pie.

A sampling of the fifty-some pies submitted at Pie Lovers Unite! (Photo by Elizabeth Knight)

Before beginning the sacred annual ritual of pie-ku reading, Bayer posed one more question to the audience about pie making: “Any secrets?” No one skipped a beat – the most popular one-word reply was butter, followed jokingly by lard.

While most bakers during the evening seemed to calmly accept approaches to pie baking different from their own, one idea provoked collective annoyance. Never, ever use margarine.

Then came the treasured tradition of reading the pie-ku contest submissions. To formally submit a pie-ku, public recitation is mandatory. About 10 minutes’ worth of pie poetry followed. Each pie-ku was structured in the same way as the Japanese haiku: three lines, arranged around a set number of syllables (five/seven/five). A sampling: “Blueberries it is/other fruits try to compete/my tongue says no way.”

After everyone recited their pie-kus and entered them for a chance to win a pie-related prize, the “pie-tinerary” dictated the next event – pie walks.

Similar to cake walks, each pie walk promised one lucky winner a free Zingerman’s pie. Not content with just one pie walk, organizers offered multiple categories: one for people who baked pies, one for children under twelve, one for the teachers of pie-making, for pie-making kids, for grandparents, and one for flapping like a chicken. (This writer’s flapping led to a delicious peach pie from Zingerman’s.)

Pie lovers crowd around the main table as the pie eating begins. (Photo by Elizabeth Knight)

By the end of the pie walks, anticipation was building. The pre-feasting festivities could only curb an appetite for so long. So finally, when Bayer headed up to the microphone again, she gave us a much-anticipated announcement – that we could slowly make our way to the pie-laden tables in the next room.

A smorgasbord of pies appeared – everything from adventurous goat cheese with tomato to a classic very cherry.

After about half an hour of pie-filled bliss, the judges filed out to announce the winners. The event offered six categories: fruit, sweet (non-fruit), savory (the non-sweet treats like quiche and pancetta), crust, local, and kids.

But before announcing the winners, the judges outlined two very serious (and somewhat contradictory) philosophies.

First, the idea of being “true to the fruit,” as one judge said, is paramount to any pie-maker. Allow it to keep its texture, its flavor – in short, don’t complicate things. “Bells and whistles don’t impress us,” one judge commented.

But, as some other judges mentioned, originality and creativity are also key. Innovation in pie-making is always appreciated. With those two philosophies in mind, the judges announced the winners of the 2011 Pie Lovers Unite! event.

Pie lover Elizabeth Knight proudly presents her winnings from a pie walk. (Photo by Sarah Marshall)

First announced was the sweet non-fruit pie and the winner, as one judge put it, “was an awesome pie.” A buttermilk chess pie won the sweet non-fruit category.

Next up was the category for kid pie-makers. The judges called the entries “amazing,” and praised them for a precocious grasp of pie-making. The winning pie had “the perfect mixture of sweet and sour, crumbly and delicious” – a blueberry crumble. When the young pie-maker was asked about his inspiration for making the pie, he replied, “Blueberries.”

Crust was the next category, and the winner’s pie was “light and flakey” – a classic apple pie. Accepting his prize, the winner urged everyone to take crusts seriously, “Go with the crust category.” Then came the cardinal caution yet again: Do not skimp on the butter and never use margarine.

The savory category was for pies that could be eaten as meals, not desserts. A pancetta with caramelized onions won, and the judges commented on its “excellent flavor and smooth custard.”

The fruit category was up next, and it drew hushed voices and respect from the crowd. Similar to the “Best Movie” of the Oscars, the fruit pies are the most eagerly awaited. Of the 50 or so entries, Bayer estimated that 15 to 20 competed in the fruit category. The winning pie was “visually arresting,” and epitomized the judge’s philosophy of being true to the fruit. The winning pie “let the fruits be themselves.” A blueberry peaches pie took home the honor.

Last was the category dedicated to locavores, where the ingredients of each entry must be “local.” Only a handful of pies entered this category, but the judges stressed its importance: “I think it’s important to remember that essentially every ingredient in a pie can be found locally,” one judge urged. The winner was a crunch apple tart.

After the formal judging, the last award to be announced was a Peoples’ Choice Award. A wild black raspberry pie won the prize, and with that, the awards ceremony for the pies ended.

One last non-culinary prize remained – the winning pie-ku. Drawn from a hat was the following: “Crust shaped of fingers/Curved in and out, to and fro/Memories of Mom.”

A cutout of Ward 2, the ward voted the most pie-shaped, next to a piece of Zingerman's peach pie. Readers who are strict interpreters of the city charter will note a certain irony. (Photo for art by the writer)

Throughout the event, the pie chefs in attendance had a chance to tell us which Ann Arbor city ward they thought most resembled a pie-shaped wedge.

It may seem easy enough to point at a cardboard cutout of a ward and quickly announce a favorite in the pie-shaped ward contest. But most bakers scrutinized each choice.

Clarificational questions were asked: “Do you mean a slice of pie or a whole pie?” “Are you talking about the ward overall or does this include individual precincts?” And, a personal favorite from a confused passer-by, “What are you guys doing? Is this some sort of alien game? You’re so weird.” After much consideration, each pie-maker would point decidedly at one ward: “That one, definitely. Or at least that’s how my pie slices look.”

And the results were clear. Based on our polling, Ward 2 meets the city charter definition the best, while Ward 5 (which received zero votes) has a more questionable shape.

Editor’s note: The Chronicle is headquartered in Ward 5, which tallied zero votes in the poll. Note that the poll conducted on ward shape at the Pie Lovers Unite! event was unscientific and likely includes considerable margarine of error. On the Ann Arbor city council’s Aug. 4 agenda is a vote on the reapportionment of its wards. The staff-recommended tweaks on the Aug. 4 agenda are a little different from the changes presented on July 5. The specific changes have not been terribly controversial, but the timing was contested, and ultimately altered to be implemented after the November general election.

About the writer: Saline resident Hayley Byrnes is a Chronicle intern. The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of elections to public bodies like the Ann Arbor city council. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!