Michigan senators hold hearings on 9 stranded bills

Democrats who control the Michigan Senate held a Jan. 29 hearing on how the nine bills stranded from the last session would have affected residents had they been signed into law. The senators followed this discussion by filing suit against the Michigan House, which is now controlled by Republicans.

House bills 4665, 4666, and 4667 were sponsored by Reps. Will Snyder, D-Muskegon, Amos O’Neal, D-Saginaw, and Jenn Hill, D-Marquette, respectively. The bills would allow corrections officers to join the Michigan State Police retirement system. Senators want the House to deliver these and six other items from the legally closed session to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for her signature.

The nine pieces of legislation remain in limbo due to the failure of the previous state House to forward them to the governor after the bills were passed in December. The motives for and methods of that failure remain unknown. That legislative season is now over, but Democrats in Lansing are pushing for the new Republican House majority to resurrect and forward these bills.

The committee also heard testimony on HB 6058. The bill would have required state departments and local governments to pay more for employees’ health insurance.

The public employer would have to choose between paying an inflation-adjusted capped contribution or at least 80% of the cost of a medical benefit plan, according to a House Fiscal Agency analysis. Based on current public health plans, the analysis said, every increase of one percentage point in contribution rates for public employers adds $5 million to $7 million in annual costs to taxpayers.

Three of the nine stranded bills — HB 4177, 5817, and HB 5818 — would have benefitted the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History as well as the Detroit Historical Society. They would have created a new governmental body that could request more financial support from Michigan's public treasury.

A House Fiscal analysis reports that the authority could ask Detroit voters to raise tax rates in the Motor City by up to 0.2 mills for up to 10 years. This money is intended to help cover operating and repair costs of the facilities.

The two organizations have received a combined sum of approximately $18 million from the state since 2022.

Under another bill, debt collectors would be prohibited from garnishing public assistance payments.

House Bill 4901, sponsored by Brenda Carter, D-Pontiac, excludes from garnishment income received from unemployment insurance, disability payments, workers’ compensation benefits or federal and state-earned income tax credits.

House Democrats did not send the bills to the governor’s office when they controlled the chamber in December. New House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, has not sent the bills but is “carrying out a thorough, comprehensive legal review of an entirely unprecedented situation to ensure the House acts constitutionally,” according to an official statement.

It’s unclear why the previous House under then-Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, did not send the nine bills to the governor. No elected officials or state employees have agreed to speak on the record to Michigan Capitol Confidential about this situation.

“It is either incompetence or intentional,” Patrick Wright, vice president of legal affairs at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told Michigan Capitol Confidential. “It is highly unlikely that the House clerk forgot how to process bills.”

Wright cautioned against speculation but allowed that the suppression of the bills could have been a deliberate choice.

The Democratic-controlled Senate filed a lawsuit Feb 3 in the Court of Claims, asking the court to order the House to present the nine bills to the governor.

“The Senate may sue,” said Wright, “but the senators shouldn’t blame Speaker Hall — they should be looking at their own party.”

“The Michigan Constitution,” Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks said in a news release announcing the lawsuit, “makes it abundantly clear: every bill passed by the Legislature is required to be presented to the governor — and no one — especially an elected public servant in legislative leadership — is above the law. Republican Speaker Matt Hall’s gamesmanship is not just disrespectful to the sanctity of our constitution — it’s an outright disservice to the residents of Michigan, the very people he was elected to represent. We will not let the constitution go ignored, and I want hardworking Michiganders to know that we’re in their corner.”

While the Senate Democratic lawmakers would like to approve the bill extending police pensions to corrections officers, a Mackinac Center analyst thinks it is a bad idea.

“When more people earn pension benefits in an already underfunded system, as legislators approved last year, this increases the likelihood that public debt will increase,” Fiscal Policy Director James Hohman told CapCon.