We Wish You a Merry Lame Duck

It’s early Christmas morning. The children rush downstairs, expecting Santa’s perfect handiwork, with presents arranged in a semicircle around a well-lit Christmas tree, all wrapped in bright colors and patterns.

Instead, they find a massive pile of jumbled toy parts: Lego blocks, dollhouses, race car tracks, tiny screws and several batteries. Some toys are broken. The games are missing parts. Sorting it all out will take days. Apparently, the elves went on strike, Mrs. Claus forgot to do quality control and Santa decided to leave a mess behind.

This chaotic scene mirrors the Michigan Legislature’s lame-duck session. Democrats, faced with losing the House to Republican control, tried to move hundreds of bills through the last days of session. They left a tangled mess of policy gifts for regulators, lawyers and policy advocates to unravel.

For two years, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan Democrats in the Legislature enjoyed trifecta control of state government. But Republicans flipped several House seats in November, and they will take control of the lower chamber in January.

House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, and Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, prepared for a vigorous lame-duck session. What they got was something else.

All lawmaking is messy. Contrary to the myth that careful, neutral experts fine-tune legislative language for the common good, the reality is more chaotic. The process of lawmaking often involves a push-and-pull to get votes, with horse-trading and last-minute amendments common features. Like a bad sausage that comes together from a variety of meats, legislation is assembled from many pieces, some less palatable than others. If that’s lawmaking on a normal day, lame duck is even worse, given its time limits and the pressure to take action.

Lame Duck 2024 was particularly chaotic.

The House struggled to keep a quorum. Republicans had left, and Democrats couldn’t afford to lose a single vote from their caucus. Incoming House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, demanded action on tipped wages and paid sick leave. Rep. Karen Whitsett, D-Detroit, was the 56th vote required for any legislation to pass. Tate needed her if he wanted to move any bills, but she withheld her vote because her priorities weren’t addressed.

On Dec. 19, Tate invoked a “Call of the House,” directing sergeants-at-arms to round up missing lawmakers. When this tactic failed, the House abruptly adjourned, leaving over 200 Senate-passed bills stranded.

Meanwhile, the Senate capped off its lame-duck session with a record-setting 29-hour marathon, sending dozens of bills to the governor’s desk.

The result is a jumble of poorly vetted bills. Issues with the tipped wage and paid sick leave laws remain unresolved. Whitmer’s desk is now filled with dozens of new bills. These proposals impose more regulations on public charter schools, shift health care costs for public employees onto taxpayers, and offer pension benefits to corrections and conservation employees — another burden for taxpayers. The bills awaiting the governor’s signature also expand regional public transportation systems, change the statute of limitations for some crimes, hike a tax on hotel rooms in the Detroit area and spend more money on failed corporate welfare programs.

Every outgoing majority rushes to pass priority legislation, so the lame-duck tactic itself isn’t new or particularly objectionable. But the pile of broken, incomplete, and haphazardly assembled policy “gifts” left by Michigan’s Legislature will take weeks to understand — and their consequences may be felt for decades.

As Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman is fond of saying, in governance ”there are no permanent victories; there are no permanent losses.” Michigan’s lawmakers can and will reverse some of these bad laws in time.

And that will be a gift.