FLINT, MI — The City Council has rejected an ordinance that called for drug testing of elected officials after a city attorney warned it was “fraught with lots of problems.”
All seven council members attending a committee meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 8, voted against advancing the proposal, but several said they are prepared to support something similar once legal questions are resolved.
“This may not be a perfect document, but it’s definitely a necessary document,” council President Ladel Lewis said. “We are responsible for the city’s purse strings, so we must make sure that we are thinking clearly and lucid whenever we are dealing with the city’s business.”
Lewis, who represents Flint’s 2nd Ward, had requested the ordinance be added to Wednesday’s meeting agenda but ultimately joined her colleagues in voting against moving it forward.
The proposed ordinance called for prohibiting elected officials from using controlled substances while on city property or engaged in city business, required drug testing of elected officials involved in an accident while on city property or doing city business, and subjected the same officials to the same random or suspicion-based drug testing policies as other city employees.
Similar proposals were introduced but never approved in Flint in 2021 and 2023, and in 2014, the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about the constitutionality of another drug-testing ordinance proposed by then-councilman and current Mayor Sheldon Neeley.
Senior Assistant City Attorney Thomas Sparrow told council members on Wednesday that Flint’s Law Department had not reviewed the proposed ordinance and said it would take at least 30 days to review it, research legal issues, and potentially deliver a revision.
Some council members raised questions about how a drug testing expansion in City Hall would be administered and said they had concerns about potential privacy violations.
“I can say this without having looked at it … This proposed ordinance is fraught with lots of problems …,” Sparrow said. “This is a fairly complicated issue. There are several constitutional issues here.”
Through a city spokesperson, Neeley has not responded to a request for comment on the proposal, which 8th Ward Councilman Dennis Pfeiffer said would make Flint the only city in Michigan with such an ordinance.
Council members Candice Mushatt (Ward 7) and Leon El-Alamin (Ward 1) said Wednesday that they’ll be prepared to support a future proposal once it’s vetted by city attorneys.
“I am all for the drug testing. I’m fine with it,” Mushatt said, but “there are obviously some things that need to be hammered out.”
ACLU officials have said suspicionless drug tests of elected officials wouldn’t hold up to constitutional scrutiny unless specifically applied only to officials with jobs involving the public’s safety.