Supreme Court declines to jump into Lansing Township annexation case
The Michigan Supreme Court Wednesday declined to step into a case about a short-lived Lansing Township annexation effort, sending the case back to the Court of Appeals for a hearing.
The township earlier this year sued to challenge a request by some township residents to place an annexation question on the November ballot. Circuit Court Judge Clinton Canady III ruled that the annexation attempt was done improperly because residents didn't collect signatures from the entire township and he ordered that the question be blocked from the ballot.
During an emergency appeal by the city, a three-judge panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals then agreed that the annexation proposal was flawed and that Canady was correct to determine that it should not be on the November ballot.
The city then asked for a new hearing before the Court of Appeals, and requested that the Michigan Supreme Court take the case immediately and bypass that appeal.
In the Supreme Court order issued this week the justices declined to bypass the Court of Appeals and Lansing's written arguments to the appeals court are expected by Dec. 23.
Lansing Township's attorney in the case, Michael Gresens, declined to comment. The township has filed a motion to dismiss the appeal, saying it is moot since the original judge's order concerned the November ballot.
Scott Bean, a spokesman for Lansing Mayor Andy Schor, said: "We are continuing to move forward with the case."
Organizers of the annexation effort, which sought to move borders so that about 2,000 people in a non-contiguous part of the township would become Lansing city residents, have said they'll need to try a different route.
Lansing Township is less than 5 square miles and consists of five non-contiguous areas. The Groesbeck area where some wanted to annex into Lansing is completely surrounded by the city. Annexation organizers collected about 120 signatures, took those to the city of Lansing and the city attempted to get the annexation on November's ballot. It would have been the biggest annexation in the state in a generation or longer, township leaders and others said.
In the earlier decision issued Sept. 9, Court of Appeals Judge Amy Ronayne Krause wrote on behalf of judges Michael Gadola and Brock Swartzle that the effort should have required the signatures of 20% of registered voters in the township because the entire township is not completely surrounded by the city. The difference between one part being surrounded and all portions of the township being surrounded is not, Krause wrote, a "mere technicality."
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Michigan Supreme Court declines to intervene in annexation case
