LANSING – Plenty has been said to date of the Reform Michigan Government Now’s proposal to reduce the size of the Legislature, but how will the Senate decide who runs for two-year terms in 2010 and who runs for four-year terms in that election, as the proposal requires?

What does it mean within the proposal to limit all state boards and commissions to no more than 200: would temporary commissions (created to, say, investigate specific problems with bridge construction) be outlawed, or would long-standing bodies such as the Michigan Cherry Commission and the Michigan Plum Advisory Board have to be combined into some type of state stone fruit commission?

Those are some of the many seemingly arcane questions that could fill the days and nights of state elected officials, lawyers and judges should the RMGN proposal be adopted by the voters at the November ballot.

In fact, before the proposal even makes it to the ballot, it is filling the time of some individuals. Earl Ryan of the Citizens Research Council, said in an interview that four staff members in his office are working almost exclusively on analyzing the proposed amendment in hopes of releasing a preliminary assessment of the issue.

Since the controversial amendment first became public in June it has been blasted by Republicans and different organizations as an attempt by Democrats to take control of state government.

Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer has called the proposal a grassroots effort to bring meaningful change to the state.

Officials have largely been mum about who drafted the proposal, although sources have said that Mr. Brewer along with several prominent labor lawyers did the majority of the work on the proposal. Brewer has refused to comment on the statements.

On Thursday, a powerpoint presentation came out and was displayed by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy on its website. The organization said the powerpoint was discovered on the website of UAW Region 1C, headquartered in Flint. The powerpoint said changing the state’s government structure would help Democrats, and critics have said the powerpoint is the smoking gun that proves that Democrats are trying to take control of state government.

Lawsuits and other challenges to the proposal have been promised by opponents and on Friday, Michigan Chamber of Commerce executive Robert LaBrant said a lawsuit would be filed next week to challenge the proposal’s Constitutionality.

But presuming the proposal did collect enough signatures, more than 380,000, to qualify for the ballot, and did survive judicial review, went to the voters and was approved: How many changes to the Constitution would it in fact add?

The short answer is dozens. The Michigan Chamber identified at least 36 possible changes in a policy paper its board adopted.

Ryan said 36 changes seems to be at least a minimum number of changes.

Those, however, deal with identifiable changes the proposal makes. Less certain are the potential effects of things left out of the proposal.

For example: the proposed amendment amends Article II Section 9 of the Constitution to require that appropriations bills not subject to referendum are general appropriations bills and not legislation the Legislature has added a small amount of money to in an attempt to avoid a referendum. The provision seems aimed to avoid situations like that surrounding the concealed weapons law earlier in the decade. The Legislature added money to the bill to avoid a referendum, the public submitted enough signatures for a referendum but in a 4-3 decision the Supreme Court ruled the money was enough to make the measure an appropriations bill and stop the referendum.

However, the amended section the RMGN proposal cites does not include the rest of Section 9, which details that the governor cannot veto initiated acts and when such acts take effect. And in the section of the RMGN that displays amended and abrogated sections of the Constitution if the proposal passes, it lists that additional language of Section 9. So, if the RMGN passes would the governor now have the authority to veto initiated acts? Former Governor William Milliken was not a supporter of the state’s bottle deposit law, former Governor John Engler opposed legislation allowing for the Detroit casinos and Governor Jennifer Granholm opposed a provision barring so-called partial birth abortion: Would such initiated laws in the future be subject to gubernatorial veto?

Neither does that section of the RMGN include Article II Section 10, which imposes term limits on Michigan’s congressional members. All states that tried to impose congressional term limits were overruled by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 1990s. But if a different U.S. Supreme Court holds differently, that states can impose term limits on its congressional members, would that section of Michigan’s Constitution be lost in the ether through the RMGN?

What to do with the apparent errors in the proposal? It has already been reported that the schedule of temporary provisions the RMGN lists refers to Article II Section 11, which doesn’t exist. There is also a paragraph in the proposed changes to Article V which refers to a “board of commission” when it apparently intended to refer to a “board or commission.” Does that then technically create a new entity in the state, a board of a commission, and leave the other boards and commissions that head departments free of any changes?

Ryan also pointed out that the proposal specifies that citizens who are 18 “who is neither an illegal alien nor a legal resident” aliens can vote. That suggests, he said, that there may be categories of citizens that are either illegal aliens or legal resident aliens. But a citizen cannot be an alien, alien status belongs to non-citizens, he said. So in an effort to enshrine 18-year old voting in the Constitution, does the proposal have any effect at all?

Sources have said that the Democrats goal in the proposal was to change the state’s redistricting proposals.

Rich Robinson of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network said in reviewing the proposal “the headline in it” is what it would do to the state’s judiciary.

While the headlines on stories dealing with the proposal have focused mostly on who crafted it, who supports it and who’s trying to stop it, those stories that have looked at the issue itself have focused mostly on redistricting, legislative size and changes to the judiciary.

A partial, with stress on “partial” list of all the changes the proposal would enact include:

? Provisions already cited that seem aimed at ensuring illegal aliens do not try to vote.

? A requirement that the Legislature enact laws to prevent and punish election and petition fraud (which gets at the issue over what circulators say to entice individuals to sign petitions. The controversy was first raised in 2006 when circulators for an anti-affirmative action petition were found by federal courts to have told the opposite to potential signers, but the petition could not be blocked on that basis. Ironically, critics of the RMGN have made the same claim against its circulators – that they talked only about legislative pay and benefits and not about the other provisions).

? A requirement that public post-election audits of vote records and tabulations be conducted to ensure the accuracy of the vote.

? A provision for no-reason absentee ballots, which both Democrats and Republicans support and yet does not seem to move legislatively.

? A requirement that voting systems provide for a paper trail to ensure that votes could be accurately counted. Such audit trails became an issue after the 2000 election debacle in Florida and federal legislation was enacted to prevent setups where citizens voted the wrong way or their ballots were not counted. Many states loo