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Many of my constituents know we've been active on saving the Secretary of State branch office that's located in Buena Vista Township just outside the City of Saginaw. We got some good news earlier in the year after a long fight. We had many approaches to trying to convince the Secretary of State to keep that office open and she denied us each time. We had a hearing here in the House Appropriations Committee and I brought down several vanloads of constituents and it was fantastic experience both for them and for me because, you know, we were speaking to "truth to power" as they say and it was sort of an exciting moment.

Unfortunately, the Secretary of State refused to hear us and so we continued to rally in the community and I tried hard to fight the battle in the budget and was somewhat successful in that respect. But what we wanted to do was find a long-term solution to the problem. In the meantime we got a really favorable decision from the U.S. Department of Justice who came in and said that because of BV's Township status, as a Section 5 community under the Voting Rights Act, that the Secretary of State cannot take away from the citizen's of that community, their access to the Secretary of State's branch office because that's where they go to register to vote, potentially and so that was a big win for us. But, I see this as a broader policy dispute with the Secretary and many in our state who continue to abandon the core communities in Michigan. I represent one of the poorest communities, overall, in the state. The urban core of Saginaw County has an exceedingly high rate of poverty, of child poverty, of access to basic government services. And what we've seen over the years is, even government, not just business, but government has begun to ignore the urban cores in Michigan. And so fighting the Secretary of State issue is really taking a stand in that broader fight and saying, "Enough is Enough". We should be putting the bricks and mortar of government, we should be putting those basic core services. You know, I think that anyone would say that the Government agency or department that they interface with most over the course of their life would be the Secretary of State. That should be in the backyards of the people who may not have a car to travel across town, who are older, and poorer and more in need of the basic services, don't have internet access so that they can get online and interface with the Secretary of State in that way.

I want to see the Secretary of State take the same approach that the Governor is calling on all state departments to take and that is to retrench, to rebuild in our urban core communities. To help with the revitalization of Michigan's cities. I think it's a tremendous stand that the Governor has taken and so what we want to do, is make sure that the Secretary of State has to take the same stand.

I've introduced a bill that would require the Secretary of State to locate branch offices in communities, in cities, that have a population of 60,000 or more. Now, that would include the City of Saginaw and the City of Kalamazoo. Pontiac, I think, is also struggling to keep their Secretary of State office. But it's amazing to me that a city like Pontiac and a city like Kalamazoo, even, wouldn't have a Secretary of State branch office within the city limits. I think that that's sort of a bizarre thing. So what we've done with this legislation is change the law to require her to locate one. Now, the Secretary of State, as it stands, has to locate a branch office in each county. What we're saying is, within those counties, if you've got a city of 60,000 people, you've got to have one. Now we want to create a little bit of leeway for her to accomodate townships like Buena Vista so we've said in the legislation that if you have one of the Section 5, Voting Rights Act communities like Buena Vista and, by the way, there are only 2 in the State of Michigan, if you have one of those communities adjacent to a city of 60,000 or more people, then it would be perfectly fine to locate the branch office in that township. We want to certain create some leeway for that.

I think it's about time that government reinvests in its cities and if we're going to go and tout cool cities, and if we're going to tell the world that we're a great place to do business, and to live and to raise a family, you've got to shore up your cities and this is just another way to get government in on that act.