The Michigan Daily sat down with Cynthia Wilbanks, vice president of the Office of Government Relations, to discuss the University of Michigan’s efforts to work with officeholders and agencies at the local, state and federal level. Wilbanks and her office manage interactions with government officials in regard to legislative and regulatory policy that affects the University and its programs.
A Michigan congressional delegation introduced a bipartisan bill to designate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, detected across the state as hazardous substances, allowing the Environmental Protection Agency to direct funds to cleaning up polluted sites.
The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to hear a challenge to a city program requiring the installation of sump pumps in residents’ homes, ending the fourth such lawsuit Ann Arbor has faced over the initiative.
Ann Arbor City Council passed a resolution Monday night directing the city attorney to settle a lawsuit with a citizens group over the sale of a plot of land adjacent to the Ann Arbor District Library. Local attorney Tom Wieder filed a complaint in August in Washtenaw County Circuit Court on behalf of the Ann Arbor Central Park Ballot Committee in response to the sale of the lot to Chicago developer Core Spaces.
City Council moved to amend an ordinance limiting the unauthorized use of Ann Arbor’s official seal at a meeting Monday after the American Civil Liberties Union called restrictions requiring mayoral permission unconstitutional.
Mayor Christopher Taylor said the city attorney’s office worked to craft an ordinance to respond adequately to the ACLU’s concerns.
City Council voted down a resolution Monday that would have directed the city attorney to investigate the actions of the protesters who sought to disrupt Ann Arbor’s annual deer cull. The measure, which was defeated in a 6-5 vote, would have required the city attorney to “take any and all appropriate responsive actions, including issuance of citations and the filing of lawsuits seeking an injunction or such other relief that the city attorney determines appropriate.”
Pledging to build bridges and fix roads, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took the oath of office on the steps of the Capitol in Lansing Tuesday morning, becoming Michigan’s 49th governor. Whitmer is the second woman to ever hold the post.
Throughout her campaign, Whitmer focused on pragmatism and improving the state’s public institutions and infrastructure, commitments she referenced in her inaugural address before a crowd of several thousand people.
Ann Arbor City Councilmembers and city residents discussed efforts to fill liaison positions to the Independent Community Police Oversight Commission at a City Council meeting Monday night. City Council passed a resolution to hire a full-time employee working under City Administrator Howard Lazarus to provide administrative support, and defeated an amendment to remove Councilmember Jane Lumm, I-Ward 2, from her role as liaison to the commission.
A newly elected editor-in-chief and class of managing editors will take charge of The Michigan Daily next semester. The new editors will lead their sections and the newspaper for the 2019 calendar year.
Staff-wide elections determined the incoming editor-in-chief and editorial page editors, while the paper’s management desk selected the new managing editor and the new editor of The Daily’s weekly magazine, The Statement. Staff members in each section elected their respective section editors.