Prop 2: Follow the Money

01 — The story in brief

Five things already on paper

1. 1
   The ban is one-sided by design.

   It covers regulated utilities and contractors with $250,000 or more in government business. Unions, nonprofits, and individuals with no contractor ties stay free to give.

2. 2
   “Money out of politics” is funded by dark money.

   The Yes committee’s biggest 2026 checks came from New York, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. nonprofits that do not name their donors.

3. 3
   The coalition benefits.

   Michigan LCV spent a year building a “No Utility Money” pledge and scorecard. Its own PAC, a major donor to statewide Democrats, is outside the ban.

4. 4
   The No side has its own plumbing story.

   Most of the opposition committee’s early money went to the lawyer who runs both utilities’ dark-money groups.

5. 5
   The coalition’s tax filings look strange.

   One group reports $0 for six straight years. One group with no staff pays its sister charity $1.1 million. One group has no IRS filing of its own.

02 — The measure

What Proposal 2 actually does

Proposal 2 is an indirect initiated law, not a constitutional amendment. If it passes, the Legislature can change it only with a three-fourths vote of each house.

Sources: Michigan Advance voter guide; Bridge Michigan; Citizens Research Council analysis. The three-fourths rule is from a Manifold summary of the official rule.

How it got on the ballot

1. May 27561,282 signatures submitted. The requirement was 356,958.
2. July 24The Board of State Canvassers certified it 3–1. A random sample found 645 valid signatures out of 1,000. The approval line was 636, so it passed by nine sample signatures.
3. Aug. 6Protect MI Free Speech sued in the Michigan Supreme Court. It argued the board used a “best guess” standard and that the right line was 661.
4. Sept. 3The court denied relief in a three-sentence order. No vote split was reported. The Legislature did not adopt the proposal during its 40-day window, so it went to voters.

Sources: WTOP/AP, MIRS, Michigan Public.

A court fight is likely if it passes

The Citizens Research Council noted that a federal appeals court upheld a ban on federal contractor contributions. Prop 2’s ban is broader, and that gap is where a challenge would aim. The case the notes point to is Wagner v. FEC (D.C. Cir. 2015, en banc). That citation is the notes’ own, and the notes say to confirm it with a campaign finance lawyer before leaning on it. The Michigan Chamber has called the language overly broad and a First Amendment problem.

Sources: Michigan Advance; Hoodline.

03 — The line

Who is covered, and who keeps giving

The ban targets business money with a regulatory or contract stake. Labor money, nonprofit money, and unconnected individual money stay in.

The partisan question, stated fairly

Source: Bridge Michigan.

04 — Both campaigns

Two committees, two kinds of undisclosed money

Both campaigns lean on nonprofit money that does not disclose its donors. The Yes side’s money is national and progressive. The No side’s is utility-linked and hospital-linked. On each side, the money went straight to the committee.

The Yes side calls itself a bare-bones campaign and dares critics to compare its roughly $2.2 million with whatever the opponents raise. That $2.2 million is the 2026 total as of late April. The October reports, due around October 23, are the first full look at fall money, and they will settle the comparison.

Where the one-pager maps the money

Yes donors: Bridge, April 27, 2026, and Hoodline on Tides. No donors: Bridge, April 27; Bridge on Consumers and Blue Cross; Energy and Policy Institute, July 28. The check sizes and the company list are the one-pager’s map of those reports. Look the committees up on FollowMiMoney.com.

05 — DTE and Consumers

The PAC checks are the small money

The utilities’ PAC giving is modest. Their real political money moves through nonprofits that do not disclose donors.

DTE and Consumers PACs gave nearly $560,000 to 120 of 148 legislators over the last two-year session.

The dark-money groups

These figures are from the Energy and Policy Institute, a utility-watchdog group. Check them against the filings.

• Michigan Energy First, DTE-linked. DTE reported putting $8 million into it between September 2024 and August 2025. It had a $4.3 million balance at the end of 2024. It has received $51 million-plus since 2014, per ProPublica data cited by EPI.
• Citizens for Energizing Michigan’s Economy, Consumers-linked. With other groups, it spent more than $1 million in 2018 to unseat a utility critic in the state House. In 2026, CEME and a related group spent $270,000-plus on ads in Rep. Steve Carra’s Republican primary. Carra won.
• Eric Doster, a Lansing election lawyer, helps run both groups. He is also the lawyer paid $47,000-plus by the No committee.

In 2023, DTE shareholders voted down a proposal to disclose the company’s dark-money spending. The proponents cited Michigan Energy First by name. Both utilities say no customer money goes to political contributions, and DTE says it complies with all laws.

Under Prop 2’s disclosure rules, Michigan Energy First and CEME issue ads near elections would have to name donors. That may hit the utilities harder than the contribution ban does.

DTE Foundation money and the coalition

The only direct DTE money to a coalition member on record is $115,000 from the DTE Energy Foundation to the Michigan LCV Education Fund, from 2013 to 2018. It stopped after 2018. LCV has since become one of DTE’s loudest critics. No 2019–2024 grants to any coalition member turned up.

What was checked and came up empty:

• DTE Foundation, 2013–2024: no grants to Clean Water, MOSES, Michigan United, Detroit Action, Voters Not Politicians, Progress Michigan, Climate Cabinet, or Community Change.
• Consumers Energy Foundation, 2020–2024, and the CMS Energy Foundation: no grants to any coalition member, LCV included. Consumers’ 2018–2019 returns exist only as scans and were not checked.
• Tides: DTE’s foundation gives to the Tides Foundation every year, for example $80,000 in 2024 and $92,500 in 2023. No grant names Detroit Action, which was a Tides Advocacy project. A 2020 return lists $228,500 in future commitments to Tides at a Detroit address, 8220 Second Ave. Find out what organization is at that address before drawing any line to Detroit Action.
• Rate-case settlements: Michigan LCV and the other coalition members were not parties to DTE’s 2023 energy-plan settlement (U-21193) or Consumers’ 2023 settlements at the Michigan Public Service Commission. Signers included the Sierra Club, NRDC, Soulardarity, and the Attorney General. That settlement is what forced DTE to start publishing annual political-giving reports.
• No sponsorship of any LCV event by DTE or Consumers turned up.

Where DTE’s political money did go in 2025: $40,000 each to the Michigan Senate Democratic Fund and the House Republican Campaign Committee. Speaker Matt Hall was the top individual recipient, at $7,000, in a Michigan LCV analysis dated March 4, 2026. In the first four months of 2026, DTE gave $82,250 and Consumers gave $74,510 to lawmakers.

The story those records support is narrower than “DTE funds the coalition.” LCV took DTE foundation money for six years, and then it turned on the company. The open questions are when and why the grants ended, and whether DTE cut them off.

A related pattern, outside this coalition: DTE’s foundation has funded Detroit community leaders who then backed DTE at the MPSC, including $50,000 to the Detroit Association of Black Organizations in 2017. None of those recipients are Prop 2 coalition members.

Sources: DTE Energy Foundation Form 990-PF; ProPublica; Michigan Advance; Michigan LCV analysis, March 4, 2026; Metro Times, 2019. Search DTE on FollowMiMoney.

Sen. Darrin Camilleri and DTE’s chief lawyer

State records list $32,450 in personal contributions since January 2023 from JoAnn Chávez, employer DTE. DTE identifies her as senior vice president and chief legal officer. Most of it went to Camilleri-linked committees. If Prop 2 passes, giving like this from a utility’s top executive appears to be exactly what the ban covers.

Camilleri is the Democratic state senator from the 4th District, in office since 2023, and a state representative from 2017 to 2022. His candidate committee is “Darrin Camilleri for State Senate.” His likely defense is that he backs a ban precisely because the current system rewards this kind of giving. Get that answer on the record before treating the donations as the end of the story.

Questions the notes leave for him, for DTE, and for the Yes campaign are in the questions section. The pattern check still to do: other DTE senior officers’ personal giving since 2023, and which legislators they cluster on.

06 — The Yes coalition

Nine groups, mostly in pairs

The nine coalition groups mostly run in pairs. A 501(c)(4) can do politics. A 501(c)(3) is the charity. They share staff. Figures are from 2024 Form 990s on ProPublica. Overhead here means management plus fundraising as a share of total expenses. These filings are from 2024, before the 2026 campaign. They show how the groups operate. They are not a Prop 2 spending report.

What stands out, group by group

Progress Michigan. The c4 lists zero employees. It paid its own c3 $1.11 million in management fees, and its political expenditures were $1.35 million. Of that, $1.0 million went to the Millions of Michiganians 527 and $295,000 to Progress Michigan PAC.

MOSES Action. It reports $0 in revenue and $0 in expenses for 2020 through 2024. The MOSES c3’s Schedule O reports receiving $85,247 under a cost-sharing agreement with MOSES Action. The money runs from MOSES Action to the charity. The charity also books $389,000 of salaries on the “disqualified persons” line, which looks like a form error. Why an entity that reports no activity is in a cost-sharing deal is one of the open items.

Michigan United Action. The legal name is Michigan Peoples Campaign. Revenue jumped from $1.2 million in 2023 to $4.4 million in 2024, while expenses were $825,000. The c3’s Part IX shows $156,000 of officer pay, and Schedule O says the executive director earns $79,581. The two figures do not match. The unspent revenue may be multi-year grants. Ask before implying a motive. Whether it is being held for 2026 is an open question.

Detroit Action. It ran for years as a fiscally sponsored project of Tides Advocacy, now Beyond Impact, so its money sits inside a $65.8 million consolidated return. Its new c4 and c3 got IRS exemption in late 2024 and have no 990 on ProPublica yet. A missing filing may only be timing. Progress Michigan’s 2024 grant of $100,000 to “Detroit Action” was paid to Tides Advocacy’s EIN.

Voters Not Politicians. The c3 reports zero employees and books $715,912 as “shared employee cost.”

Clean Water Action. Its 42% overhead comes from a paid door and phone canvass staffed by 527 people, booked largely as fundraising. It lists a related for-profit, Citizens Campaign Inc.

Climate Cabinet. The c4 reported $360,862 in political spending and filed Form 1120-POL. It is hiring a Michigan lobbyist.

Michigan LCV. The c4 paid out $1.45 million in grants. The recipients are on Schedule I and are worth pulling.

Community Change. The co-presidents’ pay is national. It is context for the size of the organization. It is not Prop 2 money.

Board overlaps worth reporting

Progress Michigan’s c4 board, from its 990 plus affiliations listed by InfluenceWatch:

• Bob Allison, Michigan LCV deputy director. Confirmed on both 990s. Michigan LCV lists Robert Allison as deputy director at $108,670.
• Doug Pratt, Michigan Education Association public affairs director. InfluenceWatch. Confirm with him or the employer.
• Jennifer Root, SEIU Michigan executive director. InfluenceWatch. Confirm.
• Patrick Schuh, chair, America Votes Michigan state director. InfluenceWatch. Confirm.
• Steven Pontoni, Michigan Association for Justice executive director. InfluenceWatch. Confirm.

InfluenceWatch is run by the Capital Research Center, a conservative group, so the notes say to confirm each affiliation except Allison, who is already on both tax forms. Unions on the board of a coalition member are the hook: unions are the money Prop 2 leaves alone. Treat every name but Allison as reported, not confirmed.

07 — Limits

What not to overstate

08 — Still to ask

Questions the notes leave open

Documents still to pull

The pre-general campaign finance reports, due around October 23, are the first full look at both committees’ fall money. Confirm the exact dates on the Secretary of State’s filing calendar.

09 — Pass it on

The one-pager, made to forward

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