Earlier today, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett shot down a lawsuit from Wisconsin that aimed to block President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. The case is actually a good reminder of why seemingly “unimportant” elections, like the 2022 WCC Trustee Election, deserve close voter attention.
It’s hard to misinterpret Justice Barrett’s response to the 29-page filing: Application denied. Barrett’s decision upheld a lower court ruling that found that the plaintiff, the Brown County Taxpayers Association, had no standing to sue. Without standing on the part of the Plaintiff, no other legal questions matter. (In case you’re wondering, Brett Kavanagh has jurisdiction over the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.)
The lower court, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, found that the Brown County Taxpayers Association had no right to bring its case to court because taxpayers generally do not have legal recourse to challenge the way a governmental body spends their tax dollars. That tenet is based on a 100-year old case, known as Frothingham v. Mellon. The gist of that ruling is that the money an individual taxpayer (or even some number of taxpayers collectively) contributes to a government expenditure is so small that it is negligible. Therefore, even if a taxpayer could somehow demonstrate that the government’s expenditure of the funds was harmful to him or her, the harm would be likewise negligible.
So, what does this have to do with the 2022 WCC Trustee Election? It is a reminder that once you have given a governmental authority (the WCC Board of Trustees) money to spend, you cannot get the money back. Your only influence on the way the entity spends money is through the election of the people authorized to spend it.
WCC 2022 Trustee Election is a shot at accountability
When you elect people who vote to build health clubs and hotels instead of higher education facilities, you have no redress. When you elect people who openly plan to convert the College’s parking lots to retail spaces, you’re going to get retail spaces in the parking lots. The only impact you can have on the process is to vote for Trustee candidates who will remain accountable to the people who elected them.
That’s why the 2022 WCC Trustee Election is, in fact, important. As the taxpayer, you get one shot at this question every other year. You can continue to return people who use your educational taxes for financing non-educational projects, or you can vote for candidates who will remain accountable to Washtenaw County voters for the decisions they make on your behalf.
So, how would you like your educational tax dollars spent?
Photo Credit: JD Hancock , via Flickr
