The Tap: Friday, July 29, 2016

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The Tap covered election news, public policy, and other noteworthy events from February 2016 to February 2022.

Review of the day

The excerpts below were compiled from issue #27 of The Tap, which was published on July 30, 2016. READ THE FULL VERSION HERE.

State

• The United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit struck down a North Carolina election reform law approved in 2013, finding that the Republican-led state legislature had enacted the law with racially discriminatory intent. That law reduced the number of early voting days, prohibited same-day voter registration, eliminated pre-registration for teenagers, and, perhaps most controversially, established a photo identification requirement for voters. The appeals court overturned a district court decision rendered in April that had upheld the law. The law's challengers, including the United States Department of Justice and the NAACP, alleged that "racial minorities are more likely than whites to lack acceptable ID; that there's no significant voter fraud of the kind that could be stopped by the ID requirement; and that the state hasn't done enough to educate voters about law." Meanwhile, the law's proponents argued that the law's provisions were necessary in order to "combat voter fraud and to preserve the integrity of the voting system."
• For Adult Industry Responsibility, the group leading the support campaign for Proposition 60, filed a legal challenge against the California official voter guide argument in opposition to Prop. 60. The measure would require the use of condoms and other protective measures during the filming of pornographic films. Derrick Burts, the petitioner behind the suit, claimed that initiative opponents made false/misleading statements in the language they submitted for the Proposition 60 “arguments against” sections in the voter guide. The legal challenge applied to the opposition’s arguments that the initiative would allow Californians to sue adult performers and would cost the state “tens of millions in state and local tax revenue.” The court has until August 15, 2016—the deadline for finalizing the California voter guide—to decide whether to issue a writ of mandate requiring initiative opponents to delete and/or amend the language in question.

Local

• With only $350,000 in its general fund, city officials in Opa-locka, Florida, announced that the city may face bankruptcy. According to city leaders, Opa-locka will not be able to pay city workers, including police officers, by September 2016. A state financial emergency board began overseeing Opa-locka in June 2016, but the city’s deficit has continued to grow. The city attempted to offset revenue losses by using money from restricted funds, which is money earmarked by the city for a specifically defined purpose such as a reserve fund or a water and sewer fund, to fill general budget gaps. Florida Inspector General Melinda Miguel urged city officials to make “drastic cuts” in city spending. A budget and recovery plan was expected to be filed on August 1, 2016, but city officials have missed several critical deadlines for the plan, according to Miguel. In order to make its August payroll, the city will not pay multiple vendors, including contractors and health insurers. Unless more funding is made available to the city, bankruptcy is looming large.
  • Opa-locka’s potential bankruptcy was announced a day after city manager David Chiverton resigned from his position. Chiverton, along with Opa-locka Mayor Myra Taylor and city commissioner Luis Santiago, has been the recent focus of an FBI investigation into corruption in the city. In the spring of 2016, The Miami Herald reported that Chiverton paid himself tens of thousands of dollars in unearned salary. There are further accusations that Opa-locka business owners paid Chiverton and other city officials thousands of dollars in bribes to obtain operating licenses and permits. No charges have been filed and the investigation is ongoing, says Opa-locka’s city attorney Vincent Brown.
• In Detroit, a $4.7 billion proposal for regional transit expansion failed to get the support needed to put the proposal on the November ballot. The transit proposal can still be added to the November ballot if a compromise can be reached among members of the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan (RTA) planning board by early August. If placed on the ballot, voters would decide on a 20-year 1.2 mill property tax increase to fund transit expansion in greater Detroit. According to the Detroit Free Press, the proposal would cost the average homeowner roughly $95 per year if passed.
  • To put the proposal on the November ballot, seven of the nine RTA planning board members had to vote in favor. It was also required that one representative each from Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, and Washtenaw counties voted yes. All four representatives from Oakland and Macomb counties voted no. Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel and Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson led the dissent. The representatives cited concerns that the current plan would increase taxes for the residents of Oakland and Macomb counties but would not considerably expand transit in those areas. Hackel and Patterson presented a 19-page critique. To approve the proposal, Hackel and Patterson would require changes to the governing structure of the RTA board and an expansion of local transit services for residents in the more rural portions of northern Oakland and Macomb counties.
  • Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan (D) supports the plan and has expressed his desire to quickly reach a compromise. Other board members expressed surprise at the sudden dissent after working on the proposal for several years. Washtenaw County board member Alma Wheeler Smith called Patterson and Hackel’s dissent hypocritical. “The two representatives insisted that the property tax be close to 1 mill or they would not support the transit plan. That level of millage restricts how far bus routes can go,” Wheeler Smith commented. Detroit is the largest city in Michigan and the 18th-largest city in the U.S. by population.

Preview of the day

There were no items for this day in issue #26 of The Tap, which was published on July 23, 2016. See the "Review of the day" tab for more information.