As crisis looms for Michigan rural townships, bills to help sit idle in Lansing

Michigan relies on local governments a lot, but Lansing isn’t paying attention to growing problems
Two bills meant to help township woes are languishing in the Legislature
Townships are still performing their mandated tasks well, but officials warn of impending crisis

A wave of problems facing Michigan’s rural townships is barely causing a ripple in Lansing.

Townships are struggling to find people to serve in the elected and appointed positions and facing increased financial strain from population and business declines.

Two bills aimed at easing those struggles are gaining no traction in the Legislature, and there appears to be little appetite for major reforms of a system of governance established before Michigan became a state.

Without intervention, some officials warn of a crisis in Michigan’s front line of government that manages elections and collects property taxes.

“Can we keep government close to people but also improve efficiencies of local government?” asked Sen. John Cherry, D-Flint, recently given an award by the Michigan Township Association.

“It’s a discussion we need to have in a serious way, but we haven’t had it to date.”

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Michigan has more local units of government with more critical responsibilities than almost any state in the nation, in a system created before the invention of the auto. The state’s 1,240 townships were plotted in the second decade of the 1800s when James Madison was president, and have mandated responsibilities first laid out before the Civil War.

As chronicled in articles in Bridge Michigan, some rural townships are now straining to fulfill their core duties. More than 75% of townships and villages report increasing difficulty filling mandatory elected positions, according to a recent University of Michigan survey.

That same survey found increasing financial strain in local governments, particularly in rural regions of the state.

While no Michigan townships have failed, some officials told Bridge they are holding on by a thread.

“We’re meeting our responsibilities, but it’s a mess,” said Linda Paradiso, clerk of Houghton Township in the Upper Peninsula.

A set of bills introduced by Rep. Bill Schuette, R-Midland, and Rep. Amos O’Neal, D-Saginaw, would appropriate $3.5 million to provide “back office” help with finance, human resources and information technology. Many township jobs are low-paid, part-time jobs that have become more complicated with increased state reporting requirements. If passed, the bills would potentially offload some work to private contractors.

“We ask a lot of our local elected officials, many of whom are working in a volunteer capacity,” Schuette said in written answers to Bridge. “The goal of this legislation is to help those units of government have the resources available to do their jobs efficiently and effectively.”

The bills, introduced in August 2025, have never had a hearing. Schuette suggested Democrats were to blame, while O’Neal pointed to Republican leadership in the House.

“Government doesn’t move every time you introduce a bill,” O’Neal said in an emailed response to Bridge. “When you believe something is important to your constituents, you keep making the case for it.”

A bill meant to address rural township job vacancies passed the Republican-controlled House in June but has not received attention in the Senate.

House Bill 5717 would allow townships to hire someone who is certified to run elections from outside the township if the clerk position is vacant or the clerk — who by law must be a resident of the township — isn’t certified to run elections.

Vacancies are a growing problem in rural townships. For example, no one is running for clerk — the position that runs elections — in Hawes Township in Alcona County; Day Township in Ingham County; in Fayette Township in Hillsdale County; and Courtland Township in Kent County.

Changes in election law, such as mandated early voting days, have added to the reasons part-time rural township clerks resign, said bill sponsor Rep. Jennifer Wortz, R-Quincy.

That struggle hasn’t yet raised concerns in the Capitol.

Former Rep. Jack O’Malley, R-Lake Ann, said he learned quickly when he joined the Legislature in 2019 that Up North issues were often on the back burner in Lansing.

“The vast majority of the House of Representatives is from urban and well-populated areas,” said O’Malley, who lives in rural Benzie County. “They really don’t get the rural problems we have. And the further north you go, the counties get more rural.”

No support for big changes

Eric Lupher at Citizens Research Council of Michigan has advocated for years for major reform of the township system, such as potentially merging small townships and moving some core responsibilities from townships to county government.

Without reforms, Lupher argues, there will be an inevitable crisis.

That’s not the view of the advocacy group representing the state’s townships. The Michigan Township Association supports Wortz’s bill to help townships fill clerk vacancies, but stops short of major reform.

Michigan’s township system “seems to be pretty effective so far,” said MTA Executive Director Tom Hickson. He pointed to a map on his office wall displaying the state’s 1,240 townships. “I don’t want to minimize what’s going on with these small townships in any way, shape, or form. Obviously, we want to help them. (But) if you look at the map over here, I’d say 99% of them don’t have these problems.”

The association, which offers about 60 training sessions a year to help local officials, has not “gotten very many calls, if any, on consolidation,” Hickson said.

Paradiso, the clerk of Houghton Township, told Bridge that officials there have had multiple conversations with the Michigan Township Association about the township’s wish to merge,, including one in which an MTA employee said had heard similar problems from other small townships that the organization does not “not have a ready response nor concrete plan.”

The director downplayed any job openings that may exist in state-mandated roles in townships, saying it “ends up working out.”

“They end up figuring it out because people pull together,” he said. “It’s really a beautiful story when you think about it — that people can support each other, come together, and unify for the sake of that community.”

O’Neal, the Democratic representative from Flint, said there are critical issues facing Michigan townships, but focus in Lansing typically is on “issues that generate headlines and understandably demand a lot of public attention, and as a result more technical issues … get overlooked.

“If we don’t do anything, I think the challenges facing rural communities will get worse,” O’Neal said “They deserve a state that takes their challenges seriously, invests in their future and gives them the tools to succeed.”

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