Guy Gordon (00:00.985)
Welcome into the hashtag facts matter podcast courtesy of the Citizens Research Council of Michigan. As we know coming up November 3rd, we’ve got a big question. The Michigan voters will be asked a question that’s asked every 16 years and that is do you want to hold a constitutional convention where you could have a top to bottom review and perhaps revision of our state’s constitution. Eric Luefer doing a variety of research on this as president of the Citizens Research Council joining us today to talk about

Article three, which is one of those that you wouldn’t think would be a Pandora’s box of problems, because it really is just about how government is structured

Eric Lupher (00:41.672)
It is. It’s, think in 1963, the delegates said, well, we have these provisions that don’t fit neatly into the legislative or executive or judicial branches that are not, you know, declaration of rights or do they just need a place to be? And so they created Article 3 and called a general government that just will be the bucket for

Anything that doesn’t fit neatly anywhere else.

Guy Gordon (01:11.513)
Yeah, and some of it’s quite obscure, I guess. This idea of intergovernmental agreements. What are those, and why might they be subject to review?

Eric Lupher (01:25.974)
in a different section of the Constitution, there is a provision that says local government should work together, right? You shouldn’t be an island just working within the little dotted lines on the map. And they use this Article 3 to say, well, we should do that elsewhere too, right? We’re just across the river, across the lake from

Canada, we do a lot of things with them. We’re worried about water quality and air quality and different things. We share a border with Ohio and Indiana and Wisconsin up in the Upper Peninsula. There’s no reason that the little dotted lines that define us on a map should limit what we’re doing. in Article 3, it says, yeah, work with the federal government, work with different states, work with Canada.

Guy Gordon (02:07.429)
We share lakes.

Eric Lupher (02:23.886)
And this is sort of the permission to go for and do that and not worry that we’re stepping on any details, some any niceties in state or federal law, we have the ability and it’s just granted here to do that.

Guy Gordon (02:42.769)
And I guess the common interest that we have here in Michigan is the Great Lakes, where we work with all of those states and Canada in trying to preserve the lakes and the environmental quality.

Eric Lupher (02:56.704)
Yeah, I mean, clearly water is the big issue for many of these types of things. But you know, wildlife protections that can land in and on the water. So a lot of it will be environmental, but we see cooperation with other states on a number of different things. And now is issues of, you know, Medicaid and things like that.

pharmaceutical changes coming out of the CDC, we see states creating their little compacts to work together and an article like section five and article three gives permission for Michigan to go forth and work with states that have equal issues that they’re trying to deal with.

Guy Gordon (03:47.407)
Let’s back up a moment to section four, which covers Michigan’s militia. And I guess this has been an element to every version of the Constitution we’ve had, but the term militia itself seems to be a bit outdated.

Eric Lupher (04:01.826)
Well, clearly it’s outdated. I asked the question as we were drafting our paper analyzing this, know, do we even need this in a state constitution anymore? The background is that, you know, sort of upon becoming a nation, all the way through the Civil War, every state had its, we called it a militia, and then it became the National Guard, the Army National Guard, the

Air National Guard, that will be some contingent of citizens ready to defend the state, ready to, in the case of the Civil War, to try to preserve the Union. But where we are now is that the federal government requires every state to have that. It’s called upon in times of crisis, tornadoes or things like that to come out and serve.

and in times of war to sometimes go overseas and help us. So it’s not that we could get away from doing this to dissolve these. The question I think before the Constitutional Convention is like, do we need to have this in our Constitution? What was true in 1837 and 1850 is less true today.

Eric Lupher (05:33.135)
If we do, you know, part of what we see, how the National Guard is used has become controversial in some ways and a constitutional convention might try to put some boundaries on that. But that I think will just beg a judicial question of can states put boundaries on their National Guard or does the federal

Guy Gordon (05:56.304)
right.

Eric Lupher (06:02.54)
you know, federal use of these national guards, Trump, anything states try to do.

Guy Gordon (06:09.499)
Section six prohibits the state from being involved in internal improvements. That’s how it’s counterproductive. Not what you don’t want. want to be in a constant state of improvement. So explain that one to me because that’s another one that might come off as a bit obscure.

Eric Lupher (06:24.556)
Right, so in our original 1835 constitution, there was a encouragement to engage in internal improvements, to create roads and what have you. And it became controversial because states, not just Michigan, but other states, started investing in things that…

just weren’t on the up and up. Sometimes it was in getting involved with groups that wanted to build a canal from Lake Erie to Lake Michigan or other things that they were going to use public resources to invest in these and then some private company was going to benefit from it. So they said, well, no, let’s not do that. Let’s put in a provision that says we can’t use public resources to

to benefit those private entities. But here we are today where we have roads built for private companies. We build ports, docks and harbors to help with shipping on the Great Lakes that are helping private companies. Our railroads work to the benefit of private companies. We see on the more micro level

New development on the fringes of some of our cities and and there’s provisions in state law that allow the city to extend the water and sewer lines to help a business that is technically outside the city so we see it a number of ways and a constitutional convention might want to again open this up and say well, this is Sort of like we discussed in article 2 the idea that

Our constitution says 21 years to vote, but in practice we do 18. We have something here that says you can’t use resources for internal improvements to benefit a business, but we’re doing it. Either we have to put teeth on it or just take it out.

Guy Gordon (08:19.3)
Right.

Guy Gordon (08:32.017)
Well, we’ve seen the SOAR fund for auto plants. We now have these, the data centers and yeah. And it doesn’t seem that there’s any limit. Yeah. Okay. So the, and maybe this is kind of falls under similar headings, but non-disclosure agreements also fall under article three and whether they are permissible. It could be, you know, these are things that are not covered now, but perhaps should be.

Eric Lupher (08:36.13)
You’re right, so many of our economic development efforts just would seem so contrary to this. Yeah.

Eric Lupher (09:02.188)
Yeah, so we have this again catch-all and the non-disclosure agreements have become controversial at the state level with our legislature also at the local level with city councils and township boards. If you were to put into our constitution some sort of restrictions or prohibition on these NDAs then

Article 3 would be the place to put it. Similarly, the transparency, right? We have for the longest time said should the legislature be subject to freedom of information? And every legislature drafts a bill saying it should happen and either the party in charge of that group, you that House or Senate

Guy Gordon (09:41.969)
every year.

Eric Lupher (10:02.154)
says, nah, I don’t think so, or one chamber will do it and the other one won’t, and it just doesn’t go anywhere. If we were to open up the Constitution, we could sort of put a foot on the gas a little bit and tip the scales and say, we need transparency and you guys figure it out. So again, this would be a place if we were to do that, we’re a place where that would fit.

Guy Gordon (10:28.129)
How often is Article 3 amended? Have we seen a lot of activity there over the past 60 years?

Eric Lupher (10:35.73)
There has been only one attempt to amend it and that failed. When I say attempt, that’s when the actual question appeared on the ballot. we didn’t scour the history to find were there other efforts to introduce something that just didn’t get the petition signatures or the legislature didn’t take it to fruition to introduce it. So.

Guy Gordon (10:47.579)
Right.

Eric Lupher (11:04.578)
This is really, if you were to walk into your high school civics class and tell me what’s in the state constitution, this will be the one that people forget. It’s just so far under the radar.

Guy Gordon (11:18.289)
All right. By the way, we shouldn’t leave without at least touching on this important anniversary that the Citizens Research Council is going to be celebrating here in a month or so that we got 110 candles on our cake.

Eric Lupher (11:31.727)
110 candles and I’ve been here for 39 of those anniversaries. So yeah, the Citizens Research Council we really think is doing important work helping people to understand issues like this constitutional convention question, getting into school finance and state finances and tax reform, all sorts of things. So citizens care about their government care that the services that are provided in the

efficient way that the taxes are not too high. And so having a independent nonpartisan body like the Citizens Research Council that have the experts and the wherewithal to look at these things and help people understand these issues is so important and support of people listening to this podcast and consuming our information would be very helpful to keep us going for the next 110 years.

Guy Gordon (12:27.117)
especially in a time where everything has become so hyper partisan, you really hear people crying out and saying, where do you go for objective information when everything seems to have a partisan slant? So we invite you, if you believe that this is an important service to support the Citizens Research Council financially with a donation, you could do that by going to crcmich.org and help keep those candles burning on that cake for many, many more years.

to come. Eric, thanks very much.

Eric Lupher (12:59.32)
Yeah, thank you.

Guy Gordon (13:00.677)
All right, until next time, I’m Guy Gordon. Thanks for joining us on the hashtag Facts Matter podcast. And me want to tell a friend this is a great place to find objective research that takes facts first to drive policy, not politics. Until next time, take care.