Two citizen-led ballot initiatives seek to rein in Michigan’s powerful electric utilities as residents say politicians have failed to address pressing issues around controversial datacenters, high energy rates and poor electric reliability. On Tuesday, voters statewide will consider a nation-leading ban on political donations by the state’s deeply unpopular regulated utilities. At the same time, organizers in Ann Arbor, one the state’s largest cities, are proposing to banish utility giant DTE Energy by municipalizing the grid.
It would establish a public power company to deliver energy. The two initiatives are not coordinated, but are borne out of increasing frustration over energy delivery and datacenters. The citizen-led campaigns represent test cases that could help gauge the US public’s appetite for structural change in the nation’s politically powerful utility industry, and what is legally possible, organizers say.
DTE and Consumers Energy are among the nation’s largest utilities, and serve about 80% of Michigan’s customers. They have supported dark money non-profits, Pacs and front groups to attack the proposals, while their allies among city of Ann Arbor leadership have filed a last minute lawsuit to stop the public power initiative. If voters approve either proposal, a bitter legal fight is virtually guaranteed.
The utility-aligned group opposing the political spending ban, Protect MI Free Speech, has claimed the initiative violates free speech protections under the Citizens United ruling that struck down limits on companies’ donations to candidates. But the proposal’s architects say they have figured out a way around Citizens United. Regardless, the initiatives underscore the broader, growing discontent with many of the nation’s large utilities, said Karlee Weinmann, a researcher with the utility industry watchdog, Energy and Policy Institute.
Michigan consistently ranks among the nation’s worst in terms of frequency and length of outages, federal data shows. Each year, DTE and Consumers propose steep rate hikes, and they ally themselves with unpopular datacenters because the energy-hungry facilities demand fossil fuel resources that are profitable to utilities. The problems in Michigan “are a microcosm of the nation”, said Christy McGillivray, the Michiganders for Money Out of Politics executive board co-chair.
She said voters understand that political spending is a root cause of the problems – 93% of legislators took utility industry money in a recent session. Optimism is high as the Ann Arbor public power initiative appears to have momentum, and recent polling found broad bi-partisan support statewide for the political spending ban, with 71% of respondents backing it. It would also block executives and their immediate family members, as well as other people with close connections to the companies, from making donations.
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