Michigan House Representative Kurt Heise has just introduced a bi-partisan bill to create a super-special-privatized-quasi-governmental-organization which is immune to external scrutiny.
This is the proposed Michigan Water Quality Alliance.
Its purpose is to identify, target, and secure grant funding from public and private sources and have local public school districts, including universities, local and regional public agencies join as voluntary members and collect fees.
What those "fees" are has yet to be answered. I am going to put it out there that a fee is another unchallenged legal term meaning a kind of default of authority.
Then the Alliance will have the powers to enter into contracts, pull permits and legally represent these voluntary members.
This Alliance seems to be taking on a university model of construction, but I would prefer to see the actual rule of construction for this Bill.
If the Alliance is, and more than likely will be formed under Michigan Corporation Laws as a non-profit, the audit provision in the Bill becomes null and void, or, as the state has weighed in on other so-called authorities when it come to transparency in operations with public funds by allowing the formation of the Alliance as a domestic for-profit, using the Alliance as a public strawman to circumvent legal liabilities.
This is clearly not a job for the State Auditor General nor any other Inspector General in Michigan as the state authority to audit was omitted from this legislation.
This, to me, is the most alarming provision in the Bill:
A WATER QUALITY ALLIANCE MEMBER MAY ALLOCATE THE USE OF PUBLIC FUNDS FROM FEES, TAXES, OR ASSESSMENTS GENERATED UNDER OTHER STATE LAWS FOR USE BY A WATER QUALITY ALLIANCE.
I shall assume the public will not participate in the decisions to allocate.
In essence, the Alliance seems to be a viable option to secure alternative funding to address the crumbling potable water infrastructure, but is this not what universities do already?
Is this the beginning of a corporate take over of public lands, its water sources and access to public funding or is this another artificial authority to substantially profit off the ills of society and control the water scarcity debate?
Will the state's legal defenses in dealing with Flint be paid from this Alliance?
I am excited to hear discussion and clarification on this Bill because I have a sneaky suspicion that this is going to get juicy and quite salacious.
Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©
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