Commentary: Grand Rapids must reclaim checks and balances in government

This week, our nation will mark its 250th anniversary — an extraordinary period in history that resulted in the Declaration of Independence followed by the U.S. Constitution. Across the country, we will hear renewed attention to the founding principle that power must answer to the people, and that no official — however well-meaning — should be trusted to govern without checks on that power. It is an appropriate moment for Grand Rapids to ask whether we are honoring that same principle here in our hometown.

For more than a century, Grand Rapids has operated under a City Charter that our residents adopted and amended only with their vote of approval. Our charter inherently addressed why concentrated, unchecked power is dangerous, and why authority has to be distributed and kept accountable to the governed. Similar in spirit to our nation’s founders, the framers of our city’s charter set out to establish a structure that provided for limitation on the powers of government officials so that they could not decide for themselves how much authority they ought to have.

In Grand Rapids, well-defined checks and balances were built into our city’s financial structure amongst three key officials: a City Treasurer that collects tax money, a City Manager that builds a budget showing how to spend that money and an elected City Comptroller that pays those bills and accounts for all city funds. The authority under the Comptroller’s independence was not an accident of drafting. It was a fundamental point. The framers of our city charter established these financial duties under an elected comptroller reporting directly to voters, as opposed to an unelected city manager. This system has been preserved for over a century until now.

In 2025, Grand Rapids officials took unprecedented action to transfer the elected Comptroller’s duties into a newly created division controlled by the unelected city manager — cutting the Comptroller’s office budget by more than three-quarters in the process. The charter mandated duties assigned to the Comptroller now operate under the control of the city manager — overturning a century of sound financial governance in Grand Rapids without the public’s approval.

Under Michigan law, a city charter can only be changed by a vote of the people. It is the public who live under the rules who get to change them — not a small number of people inside city hall. After all, the concept that governments derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed is a foundational pillar of our nation, emphasizing that government authority is only justified when it aligns with the will of the people.

Why didn’t city officials seek the public’s approval to transfer the Comptroller’s duties? As far back as 1969, city officials have proposed transferring the elected Comptroller’s duties to a department controlled by an unelected City Manager. Voters rejected it — 81% to 19%. When given the choice, the people of Grand Rapids insisted that whoever accounts for the public’s money and issues the checks should answer to the public directly, not to an unelected city manager. If Grand Rapids city officials believe the Comptroller’s office duties should be controlled by the city manager, there is a lawful path to pursue that: place it on the ballot as prior city officials have and let our voters decide.

Whether city officials believe their actions to dismantle the Comptroller’s office had good intentions is beside the point. Our nation’s founding documents were not written because every act of the Crown was malicious — they were written because the founders understood that good intentions are not a substitute for structural accountability. Power that isn’t checked by design will eventually go unchecked in practice, regardless of who happens to hold it at the time. If we accept that checks and balances in our city charter can be removed without the voice of the public, we’ve forfeited a fundamental pillar and the very spirit of our democracy we’ll be celebrating this year.

America’s 250th anniversary will be aimed mostly at Washington and the national story. Self-government though isn’t only a national idea — it’s a local habit, practiced or now worse — neglected in places like Grand Rapids, where fundamental changes were instituted in our city government without the public’s approval and in defiance of previously proposed charter changes rejected by voters.

Our founders trusted Americans to govern themselves through durable, written rules rather than the discretion of whoever holds power. Grand Rapids leaders must afford their own residents this same trust. We have inherited both an extraordinary nation and community here in West Michigan, built and nourished by generations of visionary leaders before us — we are responsible for preserving it. Celebrating the spirit of what makes America so special calls upon us to defend those same principles of democracy here in our own community.