Here we go again in Lansing, with a twist.
A Republican senator from West Michigan sets up a showdown echoing the right to work fight. The new fight could be called the right to litigate, as Chad Livengood puts it in The Detroit News.
He reports on an "attempt to free attorneys from mandatory bar association dues."
Senate Majority Floor Leader Arlan Meekhof introduced a bill last week that would make dues to the State Bar of Michigan optional, mirroring the right-to-work law making union dues optional that GOP lawmakers passed in December 2012. . . .
State law requires the nearly 41,000 attorneys actively practicing law to pay the state bar association $305 a year, $110 of which covers the cost of discipline enforcement within the profession. Under the legislation, the disciplinary regulation fee would still be required, Meekhof said.
“I call it freedom to practice,” Meekhof told The Detroit News. “It would give attorneys a way to voice their disagreements with the bar association, a logical extension of right to work.”
Eighteen other states have voluntary bar associations for attorneys, the senator from West Olive (Ottawa County) tells the Lansing bureau reporter.
Meekhof acknowledges the bill is partly a response to the State Bar of Michigan’s calling for disclosure of so-called “dark money” in judicial races, which he worked to enshrine in secrecy through a new law Gov. Rick Snyder signed last month.
Livengood quotes four attorneys., including a Republican, who oppose the bill. He also presents a response from State Bar of Michigan executive director Janet Welch, who says in a statement that "a mandatory bar association is a great, no-cost benefit to Michigan’s taxpayers and the most cost-effective way to regulate the legal profession and protect the public.”
-- Alan Stamm
