On Wednesday, the Kent County Black Elected Officials issued a press statement announcing its opposition to a series of recall efforts being coordinated by "anti-tax" activists who oppose the budget deal worked out earlier this month to avoid a shutdown of Michigan's state government. The group is charging that the recall effort is "a senseless and divisive" tactic unfairly used to target the legislators "just because an elected official does his or her job due to the position that they hold."

Locally, the recall effort is targeting Michigan House of Representatives member Robert Dean. The recall campaign against Dean is being run by Kent County Families for Fiscal Responsibility. The group has claimed credit for defeating August's millage for Grand Rapids Community College and is touting the fact that similar recall efforts in 1983 were successful. Campaign spokesperson Jeff Steinport said:

"Michigan today by voting to raise taxes without any serious spending reforms. He failed to make the hard decisions to balance the budget with structural changes and instead took the easy route and raised the taxes on our already ailing Michigan economy. We simply cannot continue to spend money that we do not have. It is because of this reckless action that we feel the need to remove him from office before he does more damage to our families and businesses."

Last November, Steinport ran as the Libertarian Party candidate against incumbent 3rd Congressional District Representative Vern Ehlers. Steinport is a longtime Libertarian activist who has authored articles for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and who has campaigned against Grand Rapids' Rapid public transit system.

At the statewide level, the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance--chaired by former state representative Leon Drolet--is targeting ten state legislators. Interestingly, the individual identified as "president" of the organization is Massachusetts resident Grover Norquist, who represents Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist is a prominent anti-tax activist who has worked for a number of organizations ranging from the American Conservative Union to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Other members of the board include David Littman a senior economist at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and an economist at Comerica Bank, Ray Wilson of the Kalamazoo County Taxpayers Association, Rose Bogaert of the Wayne County Taxpayers Association, Darin Chase of Homesite Mortgage, David Grudzyski of Lasercom Mail Services, and Steve Thomas of Detroit Athletic Company. The last three of whom "bring to the MTA decades of activism on behalf of taxpayers, small business and property owners" according to Leon Drolet.

The Kent County Black Elected Officials statement:

"We, the membership of the Kent County Black Elected Officials are asking our constituencies and all of those people who believe in Democracy in this Great State and Country to oppose this senseless and divisive recall effort that is being perpetrated by Leon Drolet on a statewide basis and Jeff Steinport locally. We as a group feel that it is utterly ridiculous for this type of action to happen just because an elected official does his or her job due to the position that they hold. We are looking at this issue as an issue that has to be done on a bipartisan basis because neither Democrat nor Republican Representative should have to suffer this type of retribution for doing their jobs.

No one is in love with paying out more money from their budgets, however it seems that there was not a lot of choices that we had in this budget crisis. We applaud Governor Granholm, Speaker Dillon, House Appropriation Chair Cushinberry, and representatives Rev. Robert Dean, Wayne Kuipers, Steve Bieda, Marc Corriveau, Mary Valentine, Chris Ward, Ed Gaffney, Gerald VanWorkem and Velda Garcia for having the courage of principle to stand up and stand on the square and be counted in defending the state from a drastic shut down during the recent budget negotiations.

We are asking those of us that have like minds to let people through news releases and letters to the editors and in any form necessary to not support (Stop) this recall effort. If you see someone about to sign a petition then, make sure that you let them know that what they are signing is not the right thing to do. We, in a democracy, already have a mechanism to recall persons that is called election/re-election. If there is anything that we should be upset about it is the authors of the term limits. They are the real culprits here. Our institutional memory has been affected and taken away by term limits and we all have to share the responsibility for what is happening in our state because we voted for term limits and did not realize how bad it would be on us citizens."