Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

A new ballot initiative in Michigan aims to restore voters' rights on land use decisions for industrial wind and solar operations.

Roger Johnson is with the group "Citizens for Local Choice," which says local control over green energy operations was stripped away by House Bill 5120 last year.

“Local government is designed to respond to what local people want, and we want to continue that, rather than having Lansing, or three appointed political folks make those decision,” he says.

Johnson says it's not about whether green energy is good or bad, it's about a local community's ability to decide whether they want it or not.

“We’re not going to sit and debate whether climate change is real, imagined, man-made, natural, that’s not our purview,” he says. “Ours is if Ann Arbor wants to ban plastic bags, that’s up to them. That’s a local decision.”

“Our argument would be if you want to put a nuclear waste dump in, you’re probably not going to be able to do that. When somebody gets told ‘no’ at the township, the village, the city level, then it’s appealed to the higher power.”

The group must first collect more than 350,000 petition signatures to put the issue on November's ballot.