This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan (bridgemi.com), a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from Bridge Michigan, sign up for a free Bridge Michigan newsletter here.
LANSING — A nonprofit with unknown financial backing is fanning out across six Michigan cities with petitions to change local charters — and give elected officials an earful on health care, a key election-year issue.
The potential ballot proposals seek to establish “Citizens’ Advisory Healthcare Action Committees” in Lansing, East Lansing, Kalamazoo, Portage, Battle Creek and Benton Harbor.
The bodies would “make recommendations to address prohibitive healthcare costs and healthcare inaccessibility in a biennial action plan” and measure related “actions or inactions” by state and federal lawmakers.
In collecting voter signatures, the nonprofit Community Action Michigan is also attacking two Republicans facing significant Democratic challenges as they seek re-election this fall: US Reps. Tom Barrett of Charlotte and Bill Huizenga of Holland.
“Representative Tom Barrett is failing us,” said a flyer distributed by signature collectors in Lansing. A related website contends that “Barrett works for billionaires,” citing his vote on President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful law” that extended tax cuts while reducing future Medicaid spending.
A consultant for Barrett’s re-election campaign questioned the group’s motivation, arguing the petition drive is “really a voter ID exercise” to “identify which voters are responsive to that messaging and gathering that data, so they can retarget them through the course of the campaign.”
Roe also defended Barrett’s record on health care, saying he has laid out reform ideas that could lower costs and “rejected any contributions from healthcare insurers.” Barrett “is pretty committed to reforming health care in a way that puts patients ahead of insurance companies’ profits,” he said.
Barrett represents Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, a toss-up that three Democrats are competing for the chance to take him on in November. In the Republican-leaning 4th Congressional District, Huizenga faces an organized challenge from Democratic state Sen. Sean McCann.
Unknown origins
Community Action Michigan, which is not related to the similarly named Michigan Community Action, registered as both a nonprofit and state political action committee in late April — hallmarks of so-called “dark money” efforts.
The only publicly identified member of the organization is nonprofit board chair Barbara Hammon, a retired nurse and trustee of Kalamazoo County’s Texas Charter Township, who was named in a press release.
“We are hurting and we’re taking action, by holding politicians like Tom Barrett accountable,” Hammon said in a statement. “If our members of Congress refuse to act and make health care more affordable, we will do it for them. Enough is enough: No more excuses, spin, and partisan gridlock.”
Attempts to reach Hammon for an interview on Thursday or Friday were unsuccessful. Byrum & Fisk, an East Lansing-based public relations firm who distributed the press release, did not immediately respond to questions about the group, including its funding sources.
Nonprofits have become common vehicles to fund ballot campaigns because they can accept unlimited donations from any source, including corporations, and aren’t required to disclose the names of their donors, hiding the origin of the money behind significant policy proposals.
The push from Community Action Michigan appears to marry issue advocacy with a concerted effort to change local government. The proposed petition language for each city has been tailored to the structure of that municipality’s charter, according to copies of the language available on their website.
The proposal
The advisory committee proposed by the petition would “create solutions for local families and small businesses to save on health care costs” — by offering recommendations to city leaders, according to the group’s literature.
If passed by voters, the “Citizens’ Action Committees” would have to meet every two years and produce a “Healthcare Action Plan” that assesses health care affordability in each city and how policies at all levels of government are impacting residents. They would require cities to “hold multiple community forums” every year to “first-hand accounts of community members’ ability to afford and access” health care, along with forums discussing policy.
City governments contacted by Bridge seemed largely unaware that charter amendment proposals were being proposed in their communities.
The public information officer in the city of Portage, Mary Beth Block, said she encountered a circulator last weekend and saw the petition, but neither she nor the city clerk had heard of it before. “We have had no formal communication from the organizers,” she said.
To get on local ballots for the Nov. 4 election, Community Action Michigan will have to collect signatures from at least 5% of the registered voters in each city and submit them to the local clerk ahead at least 90 days before the election, in early August.
Lansing, the largest city targeted, had more than 90,000 registered voters as of the 2024 election, meaning the group would need to collect more than 4,500 signatures from local voters to have a chance of making the ballot.
Like statewide ballot proposals, local ballot proposals can be rejected over small technicalities. An employee in the Lansing City Clerk’s office told Bridge Michigan their staff had not reviewed the petition. The city has rejected some petitions whose organizers hadn’t sought review before circulating.
One petition circulator told Bridge she was being paid hourly to collect signatures but would receive per-signature bonuses if she met certain thresholds.
A form on the Community Action Michigan website exhorting visitors to “sign up to join the fight” contains an agreement that signers will “receive emails, calls, and texts from Community Action Michigan and its partners and member organizations.”
Interview Transcript
Sophia Saliby: Voters in some Mid-Michigan communities might see an interesting proposal on their ballots this November.
They could be asked to create what’s being called a Citizens’ Advisory Healthcare Action Committee for their city.
But who’s backing the effort and where they’re getting their money from is unclear.
Simon Schuster is a political reporter for Bridge Michigan who looked into these ballot proposals. He joins me now to talk about what he found. Thank you for being here.
Simon Schuster: Thanks so much for having me.
Saliby: So, this measure could show up on Lansing and East Lansing ballots, along with several other Michigan communities. What would these proposed committees do?
Schuster: These Citizens' Action Committees, they'd have to meet every two years and produce what the proposal is calling "a healthcare action plan." It sort of assesses healthcare affordability in each of these cities and how policies at all levels of government are impacting residents' access to healthcare.
It also requires these cities to hold multiple community forums every year, and they'd have to be able to get firsthand accounts from community members talking about their ability to afford and access healthcare, and then have forums discussing policy fixes.
Saliby: A lot of people would say that makes sense, but why are these proposals kind of weird, or why are they interesting that you felt like you wanted to report on them?
Schuster: Yeah, so this piqued my interest as a political reporter because, of course, city charter amendments are not anything particularly unusual here in Michigan.
But the signatures that are seeking to get these on the ballot were collected by paid signature gatherers, and they came with political campaign literature, attacking Republican members of Congress, specifically Tom Barrett here in Lansing and East Lansing, and then Bill Huizenga over on the southwest part of the state, and essentially using these vehicles, these city charter amendments, as a way to more or less attack these members of Congress for their records on healthcare and advocate for more progressive policy solutions and increasing access to healthcare.
Saliby: Do we know who's behind these proposals?
Schuster: It's a group that's calling itself Community Action Michigan. They're not to be confused with Michigan Community Action, a social service nonprofit, but this is a dark money group that was only recently founded, and we don't know who their funders are.
I asked a spokesperson for the group, Mark Fisk, if he would be willing to disclose who the donors or fundraisers for this organization are, and they were unwilling to do so.
Saliby: So, these measures aren't officially on the ballot for November yet. When will we know about that part?
Schuster: This organization submitted signatures both to Lansing and East Lansing city clerks. Those signatures will have to be verified before general election ballots go out later this autumn.
But this was particularly of interest to me because while we've seen city charter changes like this in the past, essentially changing the structure and organization of a town in order to also strike political points isn't something that I had seen before in my coverage of the state.
Saliby: I feel like a lot of people think dark money comes in for big, statewide races. Obviously, we have huge Senate, gubernatorial elections right now. A lot of money comes in there. Does this happen locally that often?
Schuster: No, you know this is the first time that I had seen this, and it really struck me as something fascinating because of the fact that it's a marriage between sort of local policy action and political advocacy wrapped into one. This would be a permanent change; they would have to hold these forums every year into the future in perpetuity and require again another change of the city charter to stop holding these forums.
So, it's an interesting form of advocacy that I had not seen before, and it's one that could have far-reaching consequences if it's deployed in more Michigan communities because the way that these signatures are collected, these paid gatherers are going door to door and essentially canvassing the way that you would for any political candidate in collecting these signatures. But on top of the political points that they're trying to make about the members of Congress and their criticisms of them, they're also able to give these voters as they're knocking on their doors a means of direct political action by allowing them to sign these petitions.
Saliby: A lot of times, charter amendments, changes to city government, I feel like come from within the city structure or from citizens' groups. There's really no way of knowing who's behind this at this point, so we don't really know their intention. What does that say about the use of dark money in elections?
Schuster: Yeah, and I think this is an interesting merger because of how it marries local city charter amendments. This is something that, if it's passed in November, these cities and communities are going to have to hold at taxpayer expense in perpetuity. And on its face, the language of this ballot proposal really seems pretty innocuous.
It's talking about healthcare access and affordability, impediments to those, what possible policy solutions could be, but they have to hold them again every two years in perpetuity, and you know, viewed through the right lens, these are liberal communities in two very competitive swing congressional districts where Democratic candidates are going to be looking to drive a lot of turnout, and this is going to essentially offer an opportunity for these communities to hold at taxpayer expense more or less an airing of grievances on this really critical issue for a lot of people.
And so, if you look at the ballot proposal, it seems relatively nonpartisan in its language, but when you read some of the political literature that accompanies it, it's clearly, you know, targeted at attacking Republican incumbents, and these ballot proposals, were not being crafted necessarily with the input of local elected officials. The language is tailored to the individual local governments that are being targeted here, but at least in one of these six communities that's being targeted with these charter amendments, Portage in Kalamazoo County, they had no idea that signatures were being collected for this prospective charter amendment.
Saliby: Simon Schuster reports for Bridge Michigan. Thank you for joining us.
Schuster: Thanks so much for having me, Sophia.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
