Article courtesy of MIRS for SBAM’s Lansing Watchdog newsletter
The Senate Thursday passed new versions of nine bills Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed in July, reviving legislation that had spent roughly 18 months in “legislative limbo” while courts decided whether House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) had to send the original bills to the Governor.
The legislation passed both chambers at the end of the 2023-24 term, but was not sent to the Governor’s desk before the start of the new term and change in House leadership. Altogether, the reforms added more public safety workers to the State Police’s pension plan, required public employers to pay a larger share of employee health insurance costs, changed garnishment practices for residents in large debt and offered local millage votes to fund Detroit-area museums.
SB 1133, SB 1134 and SB 1135, which passed 27-8 Thursday, would add new corrections, conservation and other state safety hires to the Michigan State Police’s “Pension Plus” plan.
Under the bills, more state employees – with corrections officers being the largest group to be affected – will have access to guaranteed, monthly retirement payments in exchange for staying on the job.
SB 1136 would require public employers to cover at least 80% of their workers’ medical benefit plans, reversing the 80% cap on how much they should spend set under Gov. Rick Snyder. The bill passed, 20-15.
“I think we can work through any challenges we have with the budget, just like we worked through many other changes, and there certainly have been plenty in the past, and will be more in the future,” said Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids), the running mate to Democratic nominee for governor, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
Seven Republicans — Joseph Bellino Jr. (R-Monroe), John Damoose (R-Harbor Springs), Mark Huizenga (R-Walker), Jonathan Lindsey (R-Coldwater), Ed McBroom (R-Waucedah Twp.), Roger Victory (R-Hudsonville) and Michael Webber (R-Rochester Hills) – joined Democrats in supporting the expansion of MSP’s “Pension Plus” plan.
Damoose said the Department of Corrections (MDOC) is so understaffed that sometimes, while officers are walking to their cars after a long shift, they’re called back to work.
He said they’re exhausted, often working in a violent atmosphere as inmates see “they’re on their last whip.” He said all kinds of new labor laws would be passed if the prison system was a private company.
“A family I know well has a corrections officer who wakes up and goes to work every day at 2 a.m., hoping to get home by 6 p.m., often five or six times a week. Imagine what that does to his health. Imagine what it does to his marriage; imagine what it does to his kids,” Damoose said, later noting, “We passed these bills several years ago, and it almost ended up worse than doing nothing at all, because they got everybody’s hopes up, only to have them kicked to the ground once again because of technicalities.”
McBroom did attempt, through a failed amendment, to limit the expansion to corrections officers. With the Upper Peninsula containing six prisons, McBroom argued that making the pension benefits available to folks outside the MDOC “unnecessarily confuses the issue and takes away from the urgent need that we have in the Department of Corrections.”
The other bills included SB 1137 and SB 1138, revamping Michigan’s wage garnishment and bankruptcy laws for residents owing substantial debts. Together, they aim to ensure that debt repayments do not take away a person’s access to transportation for work, housing and welfare benefits.
The debt bills passed 21-14, with McBroom joining Democrats in support.
Sen. Sylvia Santana (D-Detroit)’s SB 1139, SB 1140 and SB 1141 would allow Detroit’s local museums to ask voters to support their operations with a 0.2 mill property tax for the next 10 years. The bills passed on a 20-15 party-line vote.
In his opposition remarks, Bellino said the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again while expecting different results.
“And yet here we are, doing the same thing over and over again,” Bellino said. “Bills with no future and no hope of being taken up down the hall (by House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township)). It’s pure political kabuki theater staged for the special interest groups.”
The 2023-24 bills were the subject of a legal battle between Senate Democrats and House Republicans. Hall argued that the new House body was not responsible for the bills left behind by the chamber’s previous leadership.
But when the Michigan Supreme Court in July determined Hall needed to send them to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, she vetoed the policy changes. Because too much time had gone by, she said the administrative burden of implementing the 2023-24 bills, with missed start dates and budget implications, would be “insurmountable.”
Last month, however, Whitmer did call on legislators to send her updated versions of the nine bills.
Brinks said she believes the bills from the 2023-24 term should have been signed when Whitmer received them this summer.
“I feel like there were remedies for those concerns, and wish that would have been the route taken,” Brinks said.
In July, Hall told reporters that he did not continue fighting the courts’ decisions, sending the old bills over “out of the kindness of my heart.”
“And I figured, either Whitmer signs them, which then she would have to negotiate with me because there was no way to pay for them, and then you could bring in property tax relief, you could bring in the hospital review board,” Hall said. “We could have negotiated on that, or she vetoed them, and in the end, she vetoed them.”
Hall said looking at the lawsuits he’s been involved in, he’s “won every single one of these,” sometimes winning “in very unconventional ways” while describing Whitmer’s vetoes.
Brinks did not sound optimistic about future negotiations with Hall before the end of this term.
“We’re certainly open to seeing if there’s a pathway for getting more legislation done that reflects the priorities of the people of Michigan,” Brinks said. “It can be a difficult conversation, as you’ve seen, with the House obstruction and division that we’ve seen them practice over this term.”
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