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The Institute's list of accomplishments in 2000 shows how the combined power of the pen and the people works to shine a spotlight on insider politics and put citizen-backed solutions on the policy-making table.
SMART GROWTH
A prime example of the Institute’s investigative and organizing role is an exposé it produced last spring when real estate interests in Lansing turned a package of farmland protection legislation into a major taxpayer subsidy to land speculators.
We used actual real estate examples to demonstrate the giveaway risk and then broadcast this information to key decision makers and the general public through editorials, direct mailings, email alerts, and our Web site.
The exposé was a critical information tool that hundreds of organizations and individuals used to stop the taxpayer subsidy to speculators.
Additional highlights of the Institute’s Smart Growth work in 2000 include:
• Winning legislation in December that strengthened the state’s soil erosion law. Developers now face larger fines for reckless earth moving and greater local authority to protect hillsides and riverbanks. Institute articles and commentary on the issue were instrumental in raising public awareness statewide, which prompted the legislative action and ensured its success.
• Launching the Institute’s national Elm Street Writers Group, which provides opinion pieces on Smart Growth issues to major newspapers, magazines, Web sites, and radio networks. Elm Street columns appeared in at least 20 major publications in 2000, including the Chicago Tribune. Writers include Utne Reader editor Jay Walljasper and James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Geography of Nowhere,” as well as Institute staff.
• Publishing a “12-Step Program” for breaking the sprawl addiction in the spring 2000 issue of the Institute’s magazine, the Great Lakes Bulletin. The articles lay bare the myth that sprawl is a natural result of the free market and demonstrate how traditional zoning plans actually promote the kind of development that clogs roads and overruns local economies with chain stores.
• Adding key communications pieces to the efforts of a broad network of farmers, environmentalists, and tax reformers to defeat state legislation that would have increased the power of developers, under a law called the Michigan Drain Code, to shift stormwater management costs onto local property owners. Institute journalism cut through the complexities of the legislation to focus lawmaker attention on the proposal’s fundamental flaws.
• Helping citizens across the state develop successful strategies for protecting their communities, including a notable victory in southeast Michigan’s Milan Township. The Institute helped Milan Area Concerned Citizens prevail in its efforts to protect 1,000 acres of farmland from a General Motors plan to rezone the land and build a massive auto shipping facility. Township voters soundly rejected the rezoning proposal and, in November, joined at least a dozen other communities in Michigan that replaced local officials with candidates who pledged to protect farmland and the environment.
Transportation Accomplishments >>
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