East Lansing City Council adds disclaimer to controversial housing proposal on General Election ballot

FRIDAY, Aug. 2 — The East Lansing City Council split the baby Wednesday over a proposal to add a description to a controversial housing proposal that will appear on the Nov. 5 General Election ballot.

Acting at a special meeting, the Council voted 3 to 1 to add a “caption” that says: “The proposed charter amendment below was initiated by a citizen initiated petition and not the East Lansing City Council.”

But it rejected stronger language that said the Council “believes” a citizen-led Charter amendment seeking to overhaul sections of the city’s housing code “contravenes” the Home Rule City Act and Michigan Zoning Enabling Act.

Mayor George Brookover, Mayor Pro Tem Kerry Ebersole Singh and Council member Erik Altmann voted for the amended caption, while Council member Dana Watson opposed it. Council member Mark Meadows was absent.

The sentence will accompany the Charter amendment, which, if passed, would prohibit the city from restricting relationships “of persons living together as a household” or interfering “with the rights of owners to live with persons of their choice, so long as they are not rent-paying tenants.” It would also require the city to make all zoning and rental records available to the public and rewrite city definitions for terms like “tenant,” “rental unit,” and “occupancy.”

The ballot language for the Charter amendment.

Brookover said the amended caption was “a fair explanation to the voters of the genesis of the ballot proposition.”

Altmann, a vocal opponent of the amendment, was also pleased that the caption passed.

 “Charter amendments proposed by the City Council go through a process that involves public scrutiny and vetting by a municipal attorney. Citizen-initiated proposals don't, so voters can't be assured that they're legally sound or do what proponents say. The caption we adopted helps make this key point,” Altmann said.

Caption opponents included Ingham County Commissioner Mark Grebner, who called the caption “inflammatory.”

“I have never seen a proposal where a public body added language to a proposal that came before them. It is advocacy, and I don't believe the courts will allow it,” Grebner said. “The place to fight about it would either be door to door or, after it’s adopted, in the courts. I don’t think it should be litigated or campaigned about by the city of East Lansing.”

Patrick Levine Rose claimed the Council would have violated state law by framing the question through a legal lens.

Rose cited a 2018 Michigan Court of Appeals decision in which the court ruled against the city of Ann Arbor for promoting a similar explanatory ballot caption because it provided “information that advocates a specific election outcome.”

“The law requires a caption to be just a title or a heading, not commentary or advocacy for or against the proposal,” said Rose, one of the Charter Amendment Committee’s leaders. “It's not a legal caption, and it gives an explanation that’s also illegal. It puts your thumb on the scale, makes you a player in the election, rewrites the voters' ballot proposal language and so takes away their right to frame the question.”

Rose dubbed the decision “a win” because the Council ultimately excluded the second sentence, which raised concerns that the amendment would not be legally permissible. Rose, an attorney, disputed those claims, noting that he and other attorneys like Grebner vetted the language to ensure there wouldn’t be any conflicts with state law.

Half of the 10 residents appearing in public comment favored the added description’s original language. They said the issues the amendment was designed to address were already permissible under city ordinances and feared its passage would circumvent existing rental restrictions.

James Newton expressed concerns that the amendment would “destabilize” neighborhoods with an influx of renters and overoccupancy. He said he supported adding language to the ballot to alert voters to the fact that the amendment wasn’t proposed by the city.

“No other cities that I know of have rental requirements and penalties in their charter. Tenants will be in danger. We'll have students living in basements and attics. Rental prices will go up to keep pace with Airbnbs, forcing the marginalized renters right out of the market,” Newton said.

Carole Hetherington said she felt the proposed Charter amendment “was not presented in an honest way.”

“Those people that signed were misled. Even the way it’s written it makes it sound like East Lansing is a backward community where only people in traditional nuclear families can live together. It also talks about penalties as though East Lansing is policing people in their living rooms,” she said.

Susan Froetschel said she supported the Charter amendment because she believes the city’s housing code is “muddled.” She said she became an active supporter of the initiative petition because she believes the existing city code would not permit her to have a guest stay in her home for more than 30 days without a rental license.

“The Council's plan to pre-judge our ballot language will likely backfire. It's going to draw more attention,” she said.

In explaining her no vote, Watson agreed with Froetschel, noting that most residents still don’t fully understand how the city’s housing code works.

“Most of this sparring has been between attorneys. The lay person needs to show up at the booth and be able to make a decision for their community,” Watson said.

Despite voting for the edited caption, Ebersole Singh acknowledged that the city’s housing policies need a revamp.

“I think one uniting phrase that folks would agree on is that our Democratic Republic is imperfect. I think we've seen examples of that. However, the beauty of it is there are checks and balances and opportunities for folks to be engaged and create policy change,” Ebersole Singh said.

She noted that the city is looking into how it can make its housing codes more concise.

“The ordinances that cite these provisions are all over the place within our ordinance language. And it is confusing. So, again, it's our responsibility to review those ordinances, and proceed with cleanup changes,” Ebersole Singh said.