Guy Gordon (00:00.61)
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Facts Matter Podcast. I’m Guy Gordon. We know that coming up on November 3rd, Proposal One will ask us whether or not we want to have a constitutional convention. we’ve seen through recent polling that there is a very high level of interest for people that think that might be a good idea. There’s no better place to find objective information about it than here with our good friend Eric Lufer, the president and CEO of the Citizens Research Council of Michigan. Eric, welcome in once again.

Eric Lupher (00:29.854)
Great to be back as we near the finish line here.

Guy Gordon (00:32.396)
Yeah, ten down two to go. we’re looking at Article eleven, which basically covers public officers and state employment, the civil service portion of state employment, managing the public officers, ethics, compensation, things like that. Let’s start off with just the general provisions that probably won’t be in dispute in in a con.

Eric Lupher (00:56.968)
Yeah, as any constitution would, we have several sections of this article that simply lay out the oath of office when we elect somebody to public office, the governor’s office or legislature. It dictates the terms of office for the various offices, how long shall a term be that’s what once somebody gets elected.

section three prohibits the extra compensation to public officers or agents after the service has been rendered. So you can’t say we’re gonna do it for this amount and then the come back afterwards and increase the amount and so you could see how this sort of dirty corruption could happen in that type of way. Section four creates a qualification for office, ensuring the individuals in charge of

public money have handled it properly so we’re not getting anybody with any prior crimes elected to offices where they’re required to handle money, a treasure, things like that. So, you know, those are pretty basic. going forward, we would expect if there is a constitutional convention, they might look at the words, but

Guy Gordon (02:09.814)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Lupher (02:24.978)
stick to the meaning and and try to keep those different sections moving forward.

Guy Gordon (02:30.781)
Okay. So now let’s enter the other part of this, which there could be grounds for some serious discussion and and number one would be collective bargaining. Right now there are some elements of collective bargaining for public employees, but there is no constitutional guarantee of that. You see that as being a possible area of of contention?

Eric Lupher (02:52.274)
Well, yeah, I I think if we were doing this sixteen years ago, the last time the question was asked, given the general tenor of our research on this question of a constitutional convention, the threshold question might be do we need a provision in the constitution providing for a civil service? Could that be done legislatively and satisfy everyone and and therefore have the

latitude to adapt over time to find things on unexpected issues and be able to hand it stat handle it statutorily. We do live in 2026 where we can look at the what’s going on in Washington, D.C. with the federal civil service and efforts being made to weaken it and see why maybe this is not the time or place to bring that up.

But generally it it exists. I we haven’t had a chance through this exercise to look at how many states provide for the civil service in their constitution. The US Constitution doesn’t provide for a civil service. That was done legislatively. the issue we have now is we want still to have a professionalized workforce, one that is not

ba it’s based on merit, it’s not based on the old system. You go back the patronage system, where based on whoever gets elected they bring in their cronies and aunts and uncles and cousins to do different things and benefit off the public payroll. having said that, now the question is should we provide to them the right to collective bargaining? Does that need to be into the Constitution or could that

Guy Gordon (04:28.47)
Right.

Eric Lupher (04:51.784)
continue to happen statutorily, working with the the different bargaining agencies of the different sections of the workforce going forward. and we see because there is a separate civil service commission that operates separate from the legislature, separate from the executive branch, there’s issues of timing of when things have to happen and

Because the compensation of different levels of civil service employees is determined by the commission, it oftentimes we see ties the hands of of the legislature when they get to the budgeting process and their ability to control the purse strings.

If so much of government is labor intensive and the compensation of that labor is predetermined, it really restricts the ability of the legislature to determine how big government should be. How big how much money does it cost to operate the government? So i there’s some threshold questions at the beginning of, you know, if they should come together as a constitutional convention.

Guy Gordon (06:09.483)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Lupher (06:19.794)
Should these provisions continue to exist in a state constitution? And at what level? Providing for the civil service? Yes, we we definitely want that going forward. the question of collective bargaining becomes a real sticking point that will probably in large part depend on the makeup of the constitutional convention. And then they’re gonna have to work on some of these details of timing and thread.

Guy Gordon (06:43.084)
Yeah.

Eric Lupher (06:48.208)
and authority responsibilities, and how the commission interplays with the three branches of government that really play the key role and and the ones that most accountable to we the people.

Guy Gordon (07:03.285)
And and this is one that seems to be to some extent the most emotional, especially among those that that feel the government is bloated, that the cost is too high. and and what happened with Doge and and and the federal level certainly i ignites those that say we need more protections for civil servants, but it also brings into those that are say, Yeah, but in some cases you’re institutionalizing mediocrity because you’re tying the hands of of those that maybe want to clean out the dead wood.

Eric Lupher (07:33.801)
That’s exactly it. Right. we can look back at the history books and see how things used to be and say we clearly need to have a professionalized workforce. but that creates the question then you know, how do you manage that workforce? How do you keep it lean and mean and economically efficient for we the taxpayers that are footing the bill in the end?

no easy task, but there’s certainly other states to look f look at, learn from those others. And we have a long history now of working with this and s can certainly learn from past examples.

Guy Gordon (08:18.207)
One of the things that you point out in your paper, which I found interesting, is the the whole idea of the legislative influence over the Civil Service Commission to set pay rates. And that when when this was originally established under the Constitution, they said, Well, you need to do this after the adjournment of the legislature. Because it was a part time legislature, there was ample time to do that. Now that they have the the you know, it it like isn’t adjourned until in some ta cases the eleventh hour.

That’s problem.

Eric Lupher (08:49.702)
It is. for those who are not familiar with it, Michigan does not have a provision like many states do that puts a time limit on the legislative term. We can look back to the nineteen fifties and sixties and to the very early nineteen seventies, and the legislature would regularly go home by the end of June or early July, sometimes to be called back in special session to deal with specific things, but there was a

very clear time limit to that. And then you could see how this provision having the budget set and it’s clear delineation of the resources available within each department, now the Civil Service Commission could work with those numbers and you know determine the different levels of of pay based on different classes of

of the civil servants. But now without that limitation, since the nineteen seventies, our legislature has clearly gone on past Thanksgiving, sometimes to our detriment, and the budgeting process has drawn been drawn out. during the Snyder administration, they tried to put some real teeth into it to say let’s get this done by the Fourth of July.

but there, you know, is kind of a paper tiger and when the legislature chooses to ignore it, they ignore it. And so we end up at the eleventh hour on September thirtieth, sometimes into early October without a budget, and that really makes it very hard to do these provisions that the Civil Service Commission is meant to do. And so you end up with these these timing issues that

Guy Gordon (10:38.615)
Right.

Eric Lupher (10:46.448)
erode accountability and erode the ability of the legislature to control the purse strings. clearly something that needs to be addressed, something that will not get addressed through an amendment process, right? This is what we’re discussing through the do we need a constitutional convention to clean this up c or could amendments as we’ve been doing for the last sixty plus years fix something like that and something like this is

So off the beaten path, so off everyone’s radar that it’s not likely to be addressed in a amendment process.

Guy Gordon (11:25.297)
one of the other elements of Article eleven that we might see addressed is the issue of impeachment. That the legislature does have the ability to impeach public officials. you need a majority in the House, supermajority in the Senate. It’s something they can do, but there’s it gets fuzzy because there’s not necessarily a good, clear definition of what a civil servant is.

Eric Lupher (11:52.949)
There’s not and right and and so we haven’t seen this used for a very long time. and so just cleaning it up, I guess it’s kind of a good thing that you know, clearly there’s been issues in the past and people have stepped down before this whole process has worked its way out. so we haven’t had to go through all of this and

Guy Gordon (11:53.835)
Or civil officer.

Eric Lupher (12:21.958)
and really find out the where the warts and the hiccups come about, but we can look at that and see there are things that could be made clear going forward, both in the process and in the definitions of who it applies to. again w our position through all this is that we have a whole lot of minutiae in our state constitution. And so while we say these things

We wanna leave some discretion to the legislature for how this should be implemented and not bog everything down so much in the details within a constitution.

Guy Gordon (13:03.349)
One other article that or or section that may be ripe for cleanup is is the fact that regarding impeachment in the Senate there is removal from office, but it says nothing about that individual coming back and holding office again. the the the punishment is is only in the moment, not perpetual.

Eric Lupher (13:19.475)
Right.

Eric Lupher (13:25.79)
Elsewhere in the Constitution we have a provision that says anybody convicted of a crime is ineligible to serve, and that relates back to the Kwame Kilpatrick corruption issues that he cannot redeem himself or others in similar situations can’t redeem themselves, and then having been been a popular public figure, come back and get reelected. In the case of impeachment, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve committed a crime.

so making those consistent I think would be a step in the positive direction of cleaning up the constitution and giving greater clarity moving forward.

Guy Gordon (14:08.013)
And that really falls under the heading of ethics. Is is there anything else in that realm that might be fertile ground to plough for a c constitutional convention?

Eric Lupher (14:16.858)
Yeah, a number of national groups have ranked the different states on the on issues of ethics and Michigan consistently falls forty ninth or fiftieth among the different states with very weak reporting requirements for us to know where legislators, public officials get their funding, the the

revolving door, leave the legislature one day and back in the next day as a lobbyist. There’s a lot of opportunity. And I think what we would look for in a constitutional convention is not to define all of those things, but to call on the legislature to legislatively implement a number of ethics provisions and say we can’t stand by anymore and and let our

Guy Gordon (14:48.363)
Lobbyist the next.

Eric Lupher (15:13.406)
Distrust in government continue to be eroded due to our lack of ethics provisions and call on the on the legislature to get these things done.

Guy Gordon (15:24.609)
Yeah, and the minimum would be a financial closure requirement.

Eric Lupher (15:29.402)
that would be a great start for sure. just putting out there that we need to know where the money’s coming from, who’s responsible, and you know, there’s a number of different issues on the ability to limit how much money and and that type of thing. So putting more sunshine into the whole process is a positive step and we the people again can look at that and understand better.

who’s not only you know, the character of the person running for office, but who’s supporting that person where that money’s coming from, how they have the resources to lobby or or to campaign for office.

Guy Gordon (16:13.599)
We we have seen this incredibly fraught effort to to inject more transparency and more sunshine. You use the word sunshine into the process. It seems like that w w in one legislative session, the House will pass something, the Senate will fail to act, and then the the next legislative s session it it appears that the roles are reversed. it gives everybody a chance to say that they’re for transparency and done something about it, but nothing ever gets done.

Would that be something that could be forced in a con con?

Eric Lupher (16:47.538)
Yes. T typically and if you look back throughout the Constitution, there’s a number of provisions that say this needs to happen and it shall be legislatively enacted. And so when you look at the period from nineteen sixty three when our current constitution was adopted in the years that followed, there are a number of bills that carried out the dictates of the Constitution.

And we would expect if a constitution is convened in twenty twenty seven and within a year or two, twenty twenty eight, twenty twenty nine, we vote on it and if it’s a new constitution is adopted, we would expect in the early twenty thirties a number of laws to be enacted to carry out the d dictates of a new constitution. And I think on something like this if

If a new constitution says, Darn it, it’s time to have some ethics among our public officials, then the legislature has little choice to start carrying that out, otherwise the courts will be asked to step in and force the issue.

Guy Gordon (18:04.951)
Yeah, but w I guess is there a level of trust to say that they will be aggressive or that similar to campaign finance laws, they’ll beat their chest and say they did something and then when you really get to push and the shove, there’s a lot of workarounds that they can undertake.

Eric Lupher (18:22.098)
Yeah, I mean that’s the basic issue.

there is so little trust in the legislature generally, regardless of the party in control. and the and being a purple state where control of the legislature in recent times switches back and forth, even if you trust this legislature, you don’t necessarily have confidence the next one will be of the same party and same f frame of mind. so we see things like

Guy Gordon (18:33.836)
Right.

Eric Lupher (18:57.426)
voters not politicians when they put in the reform of the redistricting process that they left no discretion to the legislature and really spelled it out in great detail that went on for words and words and words and pages and pages and putting fine detail into a constitution. So that’s the downside of not having that trust in the legislature going forward.

We could see Constitutional Convention coming out and saying within the constitution, these are the ethics provisions and here’s the fine detail and here’s who it applies to and under these circumstances this is what needs to happen.

Eric Lupher (19:42.6)
Yeah, it could happen and then we would be back in the same position of trying to figure out what it all means and looking at the unexpected, the unforeseen circumstances that we’re not controlled for and how do you how do you deal with that going forward?

Guy Gordon (19:57.966)
Yeah.

the unintentional consequences. All right, Eric. there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it it it’s not a train. It’s Article twelve. And we’ll tackle that in a in another time.

Eric Lupher (20:12.562)
Looking forward to it. Thank you everyone for listening and please continue to support the work of the Citizens Research County.

Guy Gordon (20:19.285)
And to that end, before we leave, there is an opportunity to do that, and that’s at our annual dinner coming up on September thirtieth.

Eric Lupher (20:26.098)
We are having a dinner September thirtieth at the Lansing Center. the event starts at five and will run till about eight o’clock or so. We’re gonna honor former congressman Dan Kilde and Fred Upton, two different sides of the state, two different parties, but both absolute statesmen that stood up for Michigan and what what we need to move the nation and particularly our state forward.

Guy Gordon (20:49.228)
Yeah.

Eric Lupher (20:55.058)
So we hope to honor these two gentlemen and we hope all of you will maybe join us on that date. Tickets are available on our website. and we’re gonna have a great evening.

Guy Gordon (21:06.529)
Yeah, people we wish we could clone. That’s Eric, thanks very much. And I’ll see you there September thirtieth. in the meantime, and we again thank you for joining us. And Article twelve coming up next. You can always find these podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts. Let your friends know about them if you think they’d appreciate this kind of fact based reporting and analysis. Until next time, I’m Guy Gordon. Take care.

Eric Lupher (21:09.47)
Please. Yes.