Communities Lose, Corporations Win Under Gretchen Whitmer’s Green New Deal

Lansing, MI - Michigan Democrats’ takeover of local zoning is already having devastating consequences for communities across the state, stripping residents of any real say over projects that reshape their town. With a Democrat trifecta in 2023, Governor Gretchen Whitmer took the zoning authority for her Green New Deal projects away from local residents and gave it to Lansing bureaucrats. That means that local boards no longer get to decide how their communities are zoned.

In Washtenaw County, Saline Township was forced to accept a massive data center after a costly lawsuit by the developer, Related Digital, and its partners. The township had rejected the proposal, deferring to their master zoning plan, but they received threats of multimillion-dollar damages under state law. The settlement now allows the facility to move forward, with the community describing it as “the lesser of two evils.”

In Oshtemo Township, residents are fighting a 100-megawatt battery storage project. Local officials admit that they are “powerless” to stop it because Democrats in Lansing changed state law to strip local zoning boards of their authority. Even if the township were to pass new ordinances, a developer can bypass them entirely by appealing to state regulators.

Gretchen Whitmer has shown time and time again that she has no interest in local control or hearing from the people in the communities she is supposed to represent. Under her administration, communities have been met with lawsuits from developers and strong-armed into accepting projects they never requested. Residents who trusted their local officials to protect their neighborhoods are now finding out that those decisions have been preempted by Gretchen Whitmer and Lansing Democrats’ quest for more expensive and less reliable energy.

“The state has a responsibility to protect our communities and give residents a say in what happens in their own backyards,” said Gabe Butzke, a spokesperson for Michigan Forward Network. “Apparently, Gretchen Whitmer disagrees. She and her lobbyist allies now have the power to use the resources of the entire state to force their extreme agenda on local communities, and they don’t seem interested in what those communities have to say.”