Under a bill approved by the Michigan House of Representatives on Feb. 12, 2008, a government commission would be created and empowered to devise a system of standards for "pay equity" between different occupations. This system would determine — to use just one of limitless examples — whether the work produced by a plumber is worth more or less than that of a nurse, and would also create a comparable wage for each type of job based on those findings. After devising such a system, the commission would then be required to report to the Legislature recommendations for laws that would impose its findings on Michigan employers.

House Bill 4627, the legislation that would create the commission, does not specify a limitation on its scope. Much of the committee testimony both for and against the bill implicitly assumed that the commission could and would (or should) devise a pay equity standard with jurisdiction over both public- and private-sector employers.

This was one of three pay equity bills written about in the November/December, 2007 Michigan Capitol Confidential: "Bills Would Put the State in Charge of Setting Private Salaries." Because the bills collectively have 49 co-sponsors and need only 56 votes to pass, the article rightly observed that the full House of Representatives might attempt to ratify some version of the pay equity concept.

As it happened, House Bill 4627 narrowly passed when one GOP lawmaker joined 56 Democrats in support, while 50 lawmakers — all Republicans — voted "no." The legislation has been sent to the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee, chaired by Sen. Jason Allen, R-Traverse City.

If it is ultimately ratified by the full Senate and signed by the governor, the "Commission on Pay Equity" will be comprised of 10 members, with one each from the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, the Michigan Women’s Commission, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, The Michigan Farm Bureau, the AFL-CIO union, the United Auto Workers union, the Michigan Small Business Association, the National Organization for Women and the Michigan Women’s Studies Association. The chair of the committee must be the representative from the Department of Civil Rights.

One of these organizations — the Michigan Farm Bureau — submitted a letter of opposition to the bill and the entire concept of pay equity. In the same sentence that acknowledged support for including the Bureau on the commission, the organization stated that this would not "alter our fundamental opposition with the legislation." That opposition was rooted in the Bureau’s belief that "a system that seeks to establish comparable value between different types of work will have serious negative implications for agricultural producers."

Likewise, the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce — business organizations that would not get a seat on the commission — also opposed the bill.

Several of the organizations that would get a seat on the commission submitted letters of support for the bill.

"Workers in female dominated jobs," according to the AFL-CIO endorsement letter, "are paid less than similar workers in jobs not dominated by women."

A letter of support from the National Organization for Women cited sex stereotyping and undervaluing of women as two of many reasons why women working in different jobs than men are paid differently. Attempting to counter the accusation that a government commission is ill-suited to determine the correct market wage for vastly dissimilar occupations, NOW suggested a point system that the organization believes could be used to value every job as objectively as when a shopper compares apples to oranges by weighing them, counting calories and adding up nutritional value.

The NOW example suggests assigning scores based upon how much each job requires of a worker in five categories: skill, responsibility, effort, education/training and working conditions. These are the same criteria that House Bill 4627 instructs the proposed pay equity commission to use. Using the NOW example, crafting a point system for each job category would be followed by the commission suggesting laws that would assure that jobs scoring the same would pay the same.

Writing in 2001 about a Minnesota law that imposed a pay equity system only on municipal government workers, Lawrence W. Reed, president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, critiqued its impact on the city of St. Paul: "$32 million in additional salary expense between 1985 and 1992, endless disputes about who is comparable to whom, and lingering uncertainty as to whether the city is in compliance with the law." He cites a University of Virginia study which found that the ensuing disruptions in the Minnesota labor market artificially cut wages for computer specialists and nurses, creating shortages in both fields. Reed pointed out that the outcome from imposing such a standard on both public and private employers would be to "arbitrarily and effectively abolish the role of supply and demand in the labor market."

The Michiganvotes.org vote tally for House Bill 4627 is below.

For additional information regarding this issue, please see www.mackinac.org/9448.

With gross spending approved at $42.8 billion, the fiscal 2008 state budget is the largest in Michigan government history (see "The Year of Living Expensively," January/February, 2008 Michigan Capitol Confidential.) But a sample of recent legislative actions indicates that lawmakers are poised to break this record yet again.

Left unfinished in the fiscal 2008 budget completed last fall was the allocation of mostly federal dollars to infrastructure improvements at dozens of airports across the state. An attempt to tie up this last loose end and steer federal dollars to the construction sites in time for the spring building season was written into Senate Bill 511 and unanimously approved by the Michigan Senate on March 20, 2008.

But before that happened, the airport improvement financing became the subject of controversy when Sen. Mickey Switalski, D-Roseville, sponsored an amendment that would have added pre-approval for an additional $1 billion in spending for state university and community college construction projects. This additional spending was supported by the governor, and Switalski argued that it would stimulate Michigan’s fragile economy by creating construction jobs.

This was disputed by some Republican senators who countered that a "broke state government" should not be making the problem worse by borrowing the extra money necessary to finance new projects. Two GOP senators voted with 15 Democrats in support of Switalski’s amendment, but it was narrowly defeated by 19 Republican votes in opposition.

Deficit spending was the subject of another proposal that was considered this March. House Bills 5865-5867 would authorize spending $60 million in borrowed money to establish the "Michigan Promotion Program," a multiyear tourism marketing and business development plan to be run by state workers.

Michigan already has a government-financed tourism promotion program. This marks the second attempt within a year at increasing its cost. The Senate rejected an amendment submitted in August 2007 that would have ramped up spending an additional $10 million (see "Extra Tourism Subsidies Defeated in State Senate," November/December,2007 Michigan Capitol Confidential.)

But this new attempt to increase state spending for tourism promotion has fared much better, in large measure because Gov. Jennifer Granholm specifically requested it in her 2008 State of the State message. Each of the bills passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities this spring. Only 11 of the 110 state representatives voted consistently against all three bills.

"We have to stop mortgaging the state’s future to deal with the short term," noted state Rep. Fulton Sheen, R-Plainwell, who cast one of the dissenting votes. "They should cut spending now, not have to cut twice as much later."

The following week, the Michigan Senate voted to unanimously approve Senate Bills 1223-1225, a $50 million version of the Michigan Promotion Program. Upon its return from a spring break , the full Legislature is expected to reconcile the minor differences between the two proposals and send bills to the governor for an anticipated signature.

Legislative activity in March also included early votes toward assembling the fiscal 2009 budget. The first version of House Bill 5804, which would fund the Department of History, Arts and Libraries, is just one example of future spending inclinations. The initial draft was approved by the House of Representatives on March 19. It would appropriate a gross spending level that is 8.1 percent higher than what the governor requested and 15.3 percent higher than the spending level for fiscal 2008.

State Rep. Dan Acciavatti, R-Chesterfield, the ranking GOP member of the House Appropriations Committee, characterized the first draft of the HAL budget as leading state government "down a path of structural budget deficits and devastating tax increases like last year."

The chairman of the subcommittee that wrote the HAL budget draft, Rep. Aldo Vagnozzi, D-Farmington Hills, countered that higher arts spending helps the economy.

One GOP state representative joined 58 Democrats voting in favor of this proposed HAL budget, which passed over the objections of 49 other lawmakers — all Republicans. The bill was referred to the Senate for further deliberations.

The Michiganvotes.org vote tallies for all of these legislative actions are below.

For additional information regarding this issue, please see www.mackinac.org/9448.