East Lansing residents won’t face the possibility of $500-per-day fines for having long-term guests in their homes after voters approved a ballot measure this month.

Proposal 1, approved Nov. 5, will prohibit the city from “interfer[ing] with rights of owners to live with persons of their choice, so long as they are not rent-paying tenants.” It will change a situation under which residents who allowed nonpaying guests in their homes for more than 30 days, were, with some exceptions, required to seek a city permit or risk being fined.

Voters supported the proposal by a vote of 7,972 in favor to 6,666 opposed.

“This vote and campaign showed that East Lansing residents want to have guests live in their home without potentially facing large fines,” the East Lansing Charter Committee, which pushed for the change, said on its website.

“Those for and against Proposal 1 agreed on the key points – they want to have live-in child care, to age in place without fines, to have loved ones live so they can be cared for,” the committee continued. “City council and officials were moving in that direction. YOU just made it official.“

The committee included on its website testimony from a retired Ingham County circuit court judge who described a case brought to him that involved thousands of dollars in fines. Outrageous fines were not unusual, wrote retired judge James R. Giddings. A retired prosecutor wrote that one factor in her decision to leave East Lansing was the possibility of being fined by the city if she ever needed in-home caregivers.

Michigan Capitol Confidential submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the city, asking for records of all permits issued to residents under now-repealed requirements. It also sought information about any citations and fines issued to violators. City officials responded that they do not have such records.

“The reason that this request was denied is as follows,” wrote Carrie Sampson, the city’s communications director. “The City is not in possession of documents that respond to this (FOIA) request. Homeowners can have guests and the City does not issue permits for guests. We do not issue citations to homeowners for having guests, and no permits would have been issued, since such a thing does not exist,” she told CapCon in an email.

But Mark Grebnar, a longtime East Lansing resident, said a colleague faced fines from the city. In the last 10 years, he has represented about 30 clients who had problems because of the unusual regulations on residential guests, Grebnar told a public forum.

Members of the charter committee asked the city to change its code, Grebnar said, but council members replied that there was not a problem.

The charter committee gathered enough signatures to add the proposal to the ballot, at which point, Grebnar said, officials decided to begin reforming the rule.

Various press accounts, as well as the charter amendment committee, said that some property owners have been fined thousands of dollars.

CapCon has asked the city the amount of revenue it has collected through these fines since 2020. It is awaiting a response.

Michigan Democratic lawmakers are sponsoring bills to create statewide standards for keeping or removing books from libraries.

Democratic Reps. Veronica Paiz of Harper Woods and Carol Glanville of Walker introduced House bills 6034 and 6035 Nov. 7. The bills are tie-barred, meaning one cannot be enacted without the other.

“This bill aims to protect our libraries by establishing clear standards and processes for selecting and withdrawing materials from collections,” Glanville told Michigan Capitol Confidential in an email about her proposal. “Additionally, this bill enhances local control of libraries by setting guidelines for out-of-district requests. By protecting our libraries, we’re not just preserving books. We’re supporting freedom, community, and the values that unite us.”

The bill aims to give the district library’s chief executive employee the final responsibility for keeping or removing materials in a district library's collection. The director or chief executive employee may designate another individual to act on the director’s or chief executive employee’s behalf to assist with selection or withdrawal.

Under the bill, only a district resident or contracted service area resident can submit a request for reconsideration of material.

If the district library decided on a request for reconsideration of material, then the library can’t consider a reconsideration request of that same material within 365 days after that determination, according to legislative language.

The bills aim to create uniform rules dictating when and how library materials can be challenged and removed from shelves, said the Michigan Library Association’s Executive Director Debbie Mikula.

"For the last three years, we have been dealing with book challenges — removing and moving books,” Mikula told CapCon in a phone interview. “These bills help identify ways that our public libraries can handle some of those challenges. In many libraries, people from outside of their districts come in and want to remove materials. Libraries are locally funded, locally controlled, and we wanted to make sure that every library had a board-approved policy in effect that complies with this act."

Under the bill, a reason or basis for a request for reconsideration cannot be made based on the religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, height, weight, familial status, or marital status of the author or because the subject matter mentions one of the aforementioned topics.

It’s unclear if lawmakers will take up these bills during the lame-duck session in December. The bills were referred to the Committee on Government Operations.