On July 1st, representatives for Community Action Michigan arrived on the steps of Kalamazoo City Hall with boxes of signatures.
“My name is Azlan Ibrahim. And I'm with the folks here and with Community Action Michigan and with Kalamazoo Forward,” Ibrahim said.
Ibrahim and others touted the ballot measure as a potential pathway towards lowering high healthcare costs.
“Should the ballot proposal get onto the November ballot, the voters of Kalamazoo will address healthcare at the local level and act collaboratively with all stakeholders at the table to demand solutions that can bring down healthcare costs,” Ibrahim said.
The proposal made it onto the November ballot in the city of Kalamazoo – as well as Portage, Benton Harbor, Lansing and East Lansing.
The ballot language proposes the creation of what it calls a “Healthcare Action Plan”. If passed, the measure would compel these cities to create an advisory board made up of volunteers, who would then hold community meetings and forums to gather citizen feedback on potential local solutions to healthcare-related challenges.
The advisory board would then be tasked with creating a report every two years containing recommendations for actions city officials could take to address issues like high healthcare costs.
Denavvia Mojet is a senior organizer with City Action Michigan, as it’s now known. City Action said it changed its name from Community Action Michigan to avoid confusion with the existing group Michigan Community Action.
This election season, Mojet has been knocking on doors and telling residents about the ballot proposal.
“I've always believed that the answers are sitting around the table in our houses and this is kind of going to do more of that. It's about citizen-led action. Creating a committee where at your local level, you guys come together around the table and start thinking about what you can do about a mainstream problem,” Mojet said.
Mojet and others at City Action said it’s a pathway towards changing the healthcare status quo at the local level. But some city leaders have expressed concern, and even stark opposition.
Kalamazoo Mayor David Anderson said he and his colleagues at the Kalamazoo City Commission haven’t been able to find much information on City Action.
“The first we heard about is when the stacks of signatures were dropped off at our city clerk's office for verification,” Anderson said.
City Action is a brand-new organization. A spokesperson with City Action says the group was created in April of this year for the specific purpose of crafting a ballot measure to address healthcare.
Former nurse and Texas Township Board member Barbara Hammon, who leads City Action’s volunteer board, says none of the elected officials who have voiced concerns have reached out to City Action to talk or learn more.
“No one has approached me,” Hammon said.
Mayor Anderson said his concerns go far beyond the group’s freshman status. One of his primary issues with the measure is that it would permanently amend the city’s charter.
“Politics is politics, but does the collateral damage of that have to be that you are literally changing the charter in perpetuity?” Anderson said.
City Action spokespeople and organizers argue that amending city charters isn’t a new or novel idea. They said several past ballot measures in the city of Kalamazoo have done the exact same thing.
Mojet at City Action said the measure is simply using an established democratic process to give city residents the opportunity to take action. She says if residents vote to pass the measure and amend the charter, that would be the will of the people.
“There is a process that I did not design that the city of Kalamazoo already wrote into their constitution that they want people to use when someone cares enough to move this forward. I don't know why [Anderson] feels so concerned or so threatened that once people care enough about an issue, they can get something to happen,” Mojet said.
But Mayor Anderson said he’s not convinced the group’s motivations are sincere. He said City Action is making broad statements about a plan that has no guarantee of success, and putting undue responsibility on cities.
“What concerns me about this particular initiative is — I feel like it is unfairly taking advantage of that benefit that's available to city residents,” Anderson said.
That benefit being the ability of city residents to petition for a ballot proposal.
He describes City Action as “a dark money-funded group that – we have heard nothing from, they had no communication with the city prior to collecting signatures.”
Benton Harbor Marcus Muhammad voiced similar concerns.
“This ballot initiative was never presented to the City Commission and or the Mayor’s office. My office has not been contacted by those who paid circulators to procure signatures to place this initiative on the ballot. I have voted no and am unable to encourage residents to vote yes for this ballot initiative,” Muhammad said in an email.
Anderson and Muhammad aren’t the first people to question City Action’s financial backing or use the term “dark money”. Several other news reports have brought attention to the group’s ability to secure large amounts of funding in a matter of months.
Spokespeople with City Action say claims of “dark money” are unfounded because the group’s campaign finance records are publicly available.
Michigan’s campaign finance database does show records revealing $1.4 million dollars in City Action campaign contributions from three out-of-state organizations. But there is little to no information about where those three organizations get their money from — or who they’re connected with.
The largest contributor, listed as CityScope Inc., has no publicly available financial filings, incorporation documents, or even a website.
Two other donor organizations, Global Impact Social Welfare Fund and American Opportunity Action, have incorporation information and other basic documents available, but their financial information is exempt from public disclosure due to their status as 501(c)4 organizations.
Contributor American Opportunity Action has several former and current Democratic party officials and campaign managers associated with it — including Preston Elliot, who ran Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s second gubernatorial campaign.
Anderson wonders if City Action’s motivations truly lie in improving healthcare — or if their ultimate goal is simply to draw Democratic voters to the polls.
“What kind of stuff could be coming our way from someone who might have a political agenda and just wants to amend charters,” Anderson said. “As far as I can tell, the vast majority — if not 100% of this money – came from some entities outside of the state of Michigan. So, I'm fearful of that kind of an idea.”
City Action has separate websites for every city that has a ballot measure — each featuring a Republican politician that’s currently running for reelection alongside criticisms of their healthcare policy.
The websites for City Action Kalamazoo, City Action Portage and City Action Benton Harbor feature a large photo of US Representative Bill Huizenga. Underneath, the Kalamazoo site says: “Bill Huizenga cut our healthcare to give billionaires a tax break. It’s time for Kalamazoo to fight back.”
The websites for Lansing and East Lansing each feature 7th District Republican Congressman Tom Barrett.
Polls show that the 4th district congressional race between incumbent Republican Bill Huizenga and Democrat Sean McCann, as well as the 7th district congressional race between Barrett and Democrat Will Lawrence, are some of the closest and most hotly-contested seats in the state.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee lists MI-4 and MI-7 as two of the most crucial seats for Democrats to flip in order to gain control of the House.
But officials with City Action say their messaging is purely to illustrate the need for more local action as a response to national problems. City Action spokesperson Ryan Cohn says the group recognizes that Democrats tend to be more aligned with their messaging, but says their goal is to give people from all sides of the political spectrum a chance to speak up about changes they want to see.
“We're focused on connecting the people with their elected officials and bringing about transparency and accountability to our government,” Cohn said.
City Action doesn’t deny that it takes a progressive stance – and even its skeptics don’t necessarily disagree with the group’s core message that solutions are needed to address issues like high healthcare costs and lack of access to care.
Though Mayor Muhammad in Benton Harbor and Mayor Anderson in Kalamazoo are both in offices considered nonpartisan, they each have ties to the Democratic Party.
Anderson said he knows that city residents struggle with things like affording healthcare and accessing resources to live a healthy life, and agrees something needs to change. But he doesn’t see how city governments could tangibly address what he says are larger, systemic issues.
“It's not something that we have responsibility for now and it is not something that we have particular expertise in — healthcare, affordability, writ large — or authority. We can't issue orders to the hospitals, you know, ‘reduce your billing’ or anything like that,” Anderson said.
Interim Portage city Manager Adam Herringa said as a city staff member that’s not an elected official, he doesn’t have an official stance on whether he supports or opposes the measure. But he said he’s also not sure if the city has the ability or authority to address broader healthcare issues.
“It may inform us as we provide healthcare for our own employees, but as far as being able to implement any type of cost reduction or dramatic change in the market, our options for that are fairly limited,” Herringa said.
Hammon and other City Action organizers stopped short of naming potential healthcare solutions that could come as a result of the Healthcare Action Plan.
“It's not up to me to come up with these ideas. I'm hoping that this board, you know, this advisory board — when they get information about what is available and what [their] needs are – that each city will be able to come up with something new,” Hammon said.
Hammon and others say they’re leaving the brainstorming up to the community because they’re not in the business of making campaign promises.
But Hammon said addressing healthcare at the local level includes addressing a multitude of issues outside the healthcare sector that contribute to a person’s health.
“There's so many things in health care – housing affects health care. Fresh and high quality food affects health care. I think you need to let people be imaginative and innovative,” Hammon said.
But Anderson said he’s concerned the proposal may compel people to vote yes based on false hope of a meaningful change in healthcare costs.
“There's a likelihood that like many, many reports, it will be, on a shelf or on somebody's thumb drive and that will be the end of it more or less,” Anderson said.
He said if the measure passes, it is guaranteed to cost the city time and money — he estimates it could be in the low six figures.
But City Action officials like Denavvia Mojet say residents deserve a chance to decide for themselves whether they’d like to give it a shot and see if solutions can be found.
“The truth of the matter is, people care about health care. They care about the fact that their politicians have not been as effective as they need them to be. And so they trust that their neighbors can get more done. And that works. I don't know why that's so scary,” Mojet said.
Voters in all five Michigan cities with the Healthcare Action Plan ballot proposal have already started voting.
City Action spokespeople say a parallel initiative is underway this election season in a few Wisconsin cities — but they aren’t aware of anywhere else in the country where a Healthcare Action Plan like the one they’ve proposed already exists.
If passed, cities will enter uncharted territory.
