SaveMICity’s Anthony Minghine to Fight for Local Control at Issues and Ideas Event Tuesday

The Michigan Municipal League’s Anthony Minghine will represent local government in an Issues and Ideas Event focusing on the local control concept. The League and the SaveMICity movement are staunch supporters of local control in that we believe decisions impacting every-day residents are best made at the local level. However, there have been a series of actions and attempted actions by state lawmakers to take away or pre-empt local control from local governments.

Minghine, the League’s COO and Deputy Executive Director, will argue in defense of local control during an event being sponsored by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The League and the Mackinac Center are sometimes on opposite sides when it comes to municipal-funding related topics, so it should be an interesting conversation. The event is 11-noon Tuesday, May 14, in Lansing, but it will be streamed-live here and later posted on YouTube.

Other speakers are State Rep. James Lower, chair of the House Local Government and Municipal Finance Committee, and Chance Weldon, an attorney with the Center for the American Future at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Here is the official event description by the Mackinac Center: Increasingly in recent years, local governments have asserted their power by passing occupational licensing requirements, banning the use of plastic bags and scooters, prohibiting short-term rentals, restricting ride-sharing, mandating business offer certain wages and employee benefits, and more. States and even the federal government have responded by preventing local government officials from pursuing these policy options by “pre-empting” local rules and laws with state or federal rules and laws. This raises a question: What’s the right balance between local, state and federal control? What about the rights of citizens — should these vary widely based on where one chooses to live? This panel will feature a lawmaker, policy expert and local government advocate to talk about what is happening in Michigan and across the nation on these issues.