A Washtenaw County lawmaker is renewing efforts to authorize local tax hikes to finance government-owned high-speed internet infrastructure projects, despite concerns that they may saddle taxpayers with losses.

Rep. Donna Lasinski, D-Ann Arbor, along with nearly a dozen co-sponsors, introduced House Bill 5673 on March 17. The bill would amend a 1954 statute that allows townships to create special assessment districts for public works projects.

Traditionally, this kind of property tax has been used to pay for services like garbage collection, parks and erosion control efforts. Lasinski’s bill would add the construction, improvement and maintenance of communications infrastructure, “including broadband and high-speed Internet.”

When introducing nearly identical legislation in 2017, Lasinski said in an op-ed in the website WeLoveDexter.com, “Expanding broadband access for our state has been my personal mission since coming to the Legislature. Every hardworking Michigander deserves the opportunity to define for themselves what success looks like, and in today’s economy you simply cannot achieve that success without access to the internet.”

In a March 31 interview, Lasinski said recent developments “magnify the crisis” of less-than-universal access to high-speed internet service. She pointed to the current public health coronavirus emergency, school closures and government-mandated stay-at-home orders.

Theodore Bolema, director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Growth at Wichita State University, said that local governments can either use their regulatory powers to favor their own projects or rework regulations to help private companies.

“Governments have no sustainable advantage in offering broadband, as compared to private companies that bring far more experience from other communities where they operate,” said Bolema, who is a member of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy's Board of Scholars. “So the only way governments can compete is by giving themselves regulatory advantages or by arranging for taxpayer subsidies for their operations. Instead of building government-run systems that drive off private alternatives, local governments could help private companies obtain regulatory approvals and access to rights-of-way.”

Publicly funded broadband initiatives have a poor record of success. A 2017 study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania found that only 2 of 20 such projects reviewed nationally earned enough to cover the projected costs over the life of the network.

This poor record is probably due to the same local market realities that cause officials to perceive a need for taxpayer funding in the first place. Specifically, less-densely populated communities might not have enough potential subscribers to justify the cost of installing high-speed fiber networks. If there were, private internet service providers would install them.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 9 of 10 Washtenaw County residents (88.6%) subscribed to high-speed internet in 2017. But local elected officials there have persistently sought to expand that number in the county’s rural areas.

The county commission has an active group called a “broadband equity subcommittee” that seeks government-led solutions to a perceived deficit of broadband options in rural areas.

In 2017, voters in Lyndon Township, a rural outpost north of Chelsea, approved $7 million in bonded debt to finance universal local broadband access. The average taxpayer in the township has been paying $22 per month for the system since 2018. Both users of the service and those who do not use it are responsible for this amount.

According to the Lyndon broadband committee, by 2020, about 850 households have signed up for the service (at an additional cost of $35-$70/month). Construction of the network is scheduled to be completed later this year, a forecast clouded by uncertainties related to work stoppages caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.

In 2018, voters in Sharon Township, also in Washtenaw County, resoundingly rejected a similar broadband property tax proposal of $4.9 million from a levy of 3.25 mills over 20 years.

Lasinski said she believes the negative vote in Sharon Township was a consequence of many voters, who already had broadband service, rejecting the idea of subsidizing a broadband build out for their neighbors.

Creating a special assessment district, in which only those within the prospective service area are required to pay for it, would obviate that concern, she said.

Lasinski’s 2017 proposal would have expanded the use of special tax assessments to include government-funded broadband, but it never received a hearing in the state House. Since then, she said, she has worked to develop a coalition of supporters, including the Michigan Townships Association and AARP.

Lasinski acknowledged that restrictions on the legislative agenda imposed by the current health emergency make it unlikely the proposal will get a committee hearing anytime soon.

A committee looking to place a ban on oil and gas hydraulic fracturing — commonly known as fracking — in Michigan law says it may get its proposal on the November ballot “if all goes our way.” But the way its petition is written wouldn’t just ban fracking in the 13 gas wells using that procedure; it could ban all oil and gas drilling in the state. That would shut down the thousands of wells across Michigan.

The Committee To Ban Fracking made the claim on its website after the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in its favor. The proposal will now go back to the Board of State Canvassers.

The director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections had rejected the organization’s petition in 2018, which would have placed a ballot question before voters. The initiated law’s cover page stated that if the measure was not enacted by the Legislature, it would be voted on in the November 2016 general election, which had already taken place.

According to court documents, the committee had started collecting signatures in May 2015, when there were two relevant deadlines. The first was a statute governing the signatures required for “initiated legislation,” which would include the ban. The law says that all petition signatures in support of placing the question on the ballot must be gathered within a window of 180 days.

The second deadline required any committee advancing an initiated law to file its completed petitions with the Secretary of State at least 160 days before the election in which the measure would appear. The requirement would apply only if the Legislature did not pass the proposal first, which most observers believed would not happen. The committee met neither deadline. According to court documents, it gathered 150,000 signatures within 180 days, but 252,523 were needed.

The committee nevertheless continued to collect signatures, and in November 2018 stated it would work toward having the measure placed on the 2020 general election ballot. It is now challenging the constitutionality of the 180-day window.

While selling the proposal as banning fracking, the petition language calls for a law that would likely stop all drilling for fossil fuels. That’s because it prevents the use of chemicals and fluids commonly used in all gas and oil drilling.

“The proposed language would ban common production techniques that are necessary for all oil and gas wells to be drilled and to operate to their full potential, regardless of whether hydraulic fracturing is used,” Michigan Oil and Gas Association president and CEO Erin McDonough said about the petition in 2015.

Nationwide, fracking and new technologies have increased the U.S. production of oil to record levels. In January 2020, the U.S. produced 395 million barrels of oil. That’s the second-highest amount ever for a month, only eclipsed by the 397 million barrels produced in December 2019, according to the Energy Information Administration.

In Michigan, the average price for a gallon of gas was $1.65 as of April 3, according to American Automobile Association.

According to the state, just 13 active wells producing oil and gas here use “high volume hydraulic fracturing,” meaning they use 100,000 or more gallons of water. Six of those 13 wells are located in Kalkaska County. There were about 15,000 active oil and gas wells in Michigan as of 2012.

According to Michigan’s state environmental agency, fracking has been used in over 12,000 wells here over the course of five decades. It adds that “the process of hydraulic fracturing itself has never caused environmental damage in Michigan.”

The state of Michigan is home to less than 1% of domestic crude oil production in the U.S., according to the Energy Information Administration.