Rina Baker and Bonnie Burke are long-time Grand Rapids residents unhappy that the same old policies and politics seem to dominate their city government.

So, last March, in 12-degree temperatures, they went door-to-door asking residents to sign a petition to place a term limits proposal on the November ballot. The initiative would limit the mayor and city commissioners to only allow a person to serve two four-year terms in office.

The response was overwhelming. Within months, they had recruited 45 people to circulate petitions. They called their group the “Grand Rapids Citizens for Municipal Term Limits” and by summer had collected 10,000 signatures, some 3,400 more than needed.

Baker and Burke say they're glad the proposal got on the ballot this year, a year in which voters are choosing a governor. Local turnout for gubernatorial elections is several times higher than it is for mayor and city commission.

But they're not finished yet. Recently, the two women have dodged bad weather, dogs and on one morning a dead mouse while going door-to-door asking residents to support the measure at the polls and place “vote yes for term limits” signs in front of their houses.

According to the Michigan Municipal League, 27 municipalities in the state have term limits for local elected officials.

With the exception of Chicago, nine out of the 10 largest cities in the U.S have term limits. In 1992, Michigan voters approved term limits for state lawmakers by an 18-point margin.

Baker and Burke say they have gotten support from all groups: progressive, conservative, minority, young and old.

The Grand Rapids City Commission is made up of the mayor and six commissioners. All are part time and are non-partisan. By 2017, five of the panel of seven would have served at least two terms. A published report from city attorney Catherine Mish questioned whether the proposal would apply to those already in office. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Opponents of term limits say voters can already kick politicians out of office on Election Day. But Baker and Burke note that few people vote in municipal elections. Turnout for the last election in 2013 was 14 percent.

“Low turnout favors incumbents," Baker said. "They rely on their loyal base to dominate such a low number and control the election.”

Four groups have publicly opposed the effort: the local Chamber of Commerce, the local AFL-CIO, the Grand Rapids Press and a group calling itself “Protect Your Vote,” led by local political science professor, Glenn Barkan.

Burke is not surprised by the groups fighting term limits and offers a reason why she thinks they are.

“I think they have time to develop relationships with the people in power once they are familiar," she said. "Lobbyists and special interests become friends with politicians and naturally have a voice where the common man doesn’t necessarily have that access."

Baker ran unsuccessfully for city comptroller and city commissioner, but denies her push for term limits is sour grapes.

“I see a great need in fixing a system, first and foremost that will allow people [in] – and it doesn’t have to be me," she said. "I want to be part of creating a more fair and equitable system. That’s where I want to concentrate my energy.”

Opponents have conducted a mass mailing of post cards in which the phrase “term limits” is noticeably absent. Instead the card urges voters to “protect your vote” and not to “change the local charter.” The group did not respond to a request for comment.

None of this pushback surprises Paul Jacob, who sits on the board of directors of the U.S Term Limits organization, and was one of the organizers of the nationwide term limits movement of the early 1990s. He said in an email:

"This grassroots campaign for term limits in Grand Rapids shows just how citizens can take back their government from the insiders and special interests. They'll be outspent by those powerful special interests, but voters very much want the new blood and new ideas that term limits bring."

The local pro-term limit group hopes to raise money for a mass mailing. Currently, it is passing out cards with a baby in a diaper and a quote from Mark Twain: “Politicians and diapers must be changed often and for the same reason.” 

 According to the most recent study by the U.S. Term Limits Foundation, nationwide, 58 million people live in municipalities with term limits for local elected officials.

The state of Michigan granted more than $3 billion in combined tax breaks and cash subsidy deals to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler in the final years of former Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s tenure, which helped make this state among the biggest corporate welfare providers in the country, according to a recent study.

Chrysler ($1.30 billion), General Motors ($1.07 billion) and Ford ($909 million) were awarded the benefits in 2009 and 2010 under the Michigan Economic Growth Authority program. The deals required the firms to “create or retain” a specified number of jobs in order to actually collect the benefits.

Michigan has been the fourth most generous state in dispensing business subsidies, according to a report by Good Jobs First, a government accountability advocacy group. Only New York, Washington (home of Boeing) and Louisiana (home of large energy producers) offered more.

The report attempts to quantify subsidy deals going back to 1976. Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, said tracking these is not easy because the information is scattered among many government reports and websites.

Michigan had 15,205 deals authorizing $10.4 billion in combined tax breaks and cash subsidies according to the analysis. New York led the country with 71,759 deals worth $21.7 billion.

De Rugy said the deals lowered the incentive for auto companies in Michigan to operate efficiently, because they offered the firms an advantage over competitors

James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said taxpayers can’t even determine how much money the auto companies claimed from the billions they were approved to receive. That’s because the state of Michigan considers the tax deals to be private information, the equivalent of an individual tax return.

“This is a huge expenditure of taxpayer dollars,” Hohman said. “A company should expect confidentiality about the taxes they pay. But that confidentiality should cease when it’s taxpayers who are giving money away to businesses. More than $3 billion in state tax credits — which often result in cash payments — have been offered to these three companies and taxpayers deserve to know how much they are paying.”

In 2013, legislation was introduced that would remove current restrictions on revealing such information. Senate Bill 316 was sponsored by state Sen. Jack Brandenburg, R-Harrison Township. It would prohibit the Department of Treasury from using taxpayer confidentiality as a reason to deny requests by legislators or others for “statistical and economic information or data” if this does not directly identify a taxpayer.

For example, the Department would still be required to withhold how much of the “refundable” tax credits awarded to GM were collected in the form of checks rather than reduced tax payments. But it could not use confidentiality as a reason to not disclose the aggregate amount of cash distributed to all MEGA beneficiaries.

The bill was referred to the Senate Finance Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Brandenburg himself, but has never received a hearing.

The state has released the number of jobs the companies reported they had “created or retained,” which is required for them to actually collect the authorized credits. For example, the Michigan Economic Development Corp. reported that in 2012, Chrysler “retained” 18,034 jobs in Sterling Heights. But the report doesn’t give any indication how much cash the car company received for not eliminating those jobs, or alternatively, how much tax liability was erased by the credits.

The MEGA program was started under Republican Gov. John Engler in 1995. Gov. Granholm greatly expanded the program during her administration. A 2009 Mackinac Center study found that only 29 percent of the jobs promised in MEGA agreements were actually created. A 2010 Auditor General report found that most of the jobs and wages that companies did report did not meet the criteria to qualify for collecting a credit.

A recent CapCon investigation revealed that only 2.3 percent of projects met or exceeded expectations.

Gov. Rick Snyder eliminated MEGA in 2011, replacing it with a less open-ended program in which the Legislature appropriates a fixed annual amount to be disbursed as cash subsidies to firms selected by a state agency called the Michigan Strategic Fund. The state is still bound by the terms of past MEGA agreements, however, many of which extend for decades into the future.