* Complaint: Reform Michigan group failed to report money spent on plan
LANSING – The ballot proposal campaign called Reform Michigan Government Now! broke the law by failing to report tens of thousands of dollars spent in 2007 to develop the plan, a Michigan Chamber of Commerce official claims in a complaint filed with the Secretary of State.
Chamber Vice President Bob LaBrant said in a statement Wednesday morning that RMGN “simply and clearly violated the law” when it commissioned polling and focus group research on aspects of the proposed constitutional amendment.
LaBrant cited documents from a PowerPoint presentation which surfaced last week, indicating that RMGN planned to spend nearly $5 million on the campaign designed to make changes in the state’s political structure to give Democrats control of all three branches of state government.
The RMGN amendment, backed by nearly 470,000 petition signatures, would reduce the size of the Legislature and appellate judiciary, cut elected officials pay and make dozens of other changes that campaign claims would fix a broken state government.
Campaign spokeswoman Dianne Byrum, a former Democratic state lawmaker, denied Monday that RMGN broke the law. No campaign finance reports were required in 2007, she said, because the proposed amendment was not developed until early 2008.
An opposition campaign formed by LaBrant and the Chamber also plans to file a lawsuit to bar the proposal from being approved for the November ballot, claiming it is a general revision of the constitution, not an amendment.