April 7, 1995

Legislative News

• Finishing with a 13-hour, late-night session, the Michigan House completed action on six budget bills this week and began its spring recess. In lengthy debate on Tuesday, lawmakers passed a $1.3 billion Department of Corrections budget while downsizing a proposed 19 percent pay hike for the director to a modest 3 percent raise. HB 4418 passed with several amendments on a 90-13 vote. A more-controversial-than-usual higher education budget passed 86-17 after hours of debate left it virtually unchanged. Kept in were extra funds for Michigan State, Western Michigan, and Grand Valley State universities, all recommended by the governor, as well as funding for the Indian tuition waiver program, an appropriation opposed by Governor Engler. With comparatively little discussion, a $43.9 million Department of Education budget was approved by a 90-11 vote margin. A Public Health Department spending package of nearly $639 million was passed 90-12, with executive branch funding cuts to regional substance abuse coordinating panels restored by the lower chamber. In passing HB 4415, which authorized a general fund budget for the Department of Mental Health of $1.6 billion, the House capped the director’s salary increase at a lower level than recommended by the governor. Democratic efforts to restore $10 million in funds for at-risk students to the $8.3 billion school aid budget failed, although add-backs in several other areas were approved.
• Spiffed up with some vote-catching concessions, MEGA returned to the House floor to a warm welcome in the form of a 68-35 vote for passage. Governor Engler’s hotly debated Michigan Economic Growth Authority would give tax credits to companies whose expansion creates job growth in the state. In exchange for their MEGA support on its second outing, Democrats got assurances that the administration will not push for reduced unemployment insurance benefits or for further cuts in the Detroit arts equity package. GOP enthusiasm for the governor’s initiative remains conspicuously tepid, with Speaker Paul Hillegonds (R-Holland) supporting the measure only after an amendment rolled back its legislative sunset from four years to two. SB 350, which creates MEGA, and its companion of implementing legislation, SB 351, will try for a similarly successful comeback in the Senate when that chamber returns from recess later this month.

Political News

• Michigan teachers got an additional spring break from a Michigan Court of Appeals panel that stayed the teacher strike statute pending further court proceedings. Legislation imposing pay cuts and fines for striking teachers and their unions was to have gone into effect April 1. An appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court is under way.
• Amid cries of foul by consumer advocates and enthusiastic praise by insurance code reformers comes insurance executive and free-marketeer D. Joseph Olson as the new head of the Michigan Insurance Bureau. Olsen, who was vice president, general counsel, and secretary of the Howell-based Citizen’s Insurance Company, replaces David Dykhouse, who resigned as insurance commissioner in January.
• Plans to identify and jettison unneeded governmental rules and regulations also include the establishment of a new state office to oversee the task. Michael Gadola, former deputy legal counsel for Governor Engler, will lead the battle against unnecessary red tape as director of the Office of Regulatory Reform.
• Unclaimed bottle deposits belong to the citizens of Michigan says the Michigan Supreme Court. The ruling reaffirms a 1989 law which states that the unclaimed deposits are the property of the bottled beverage buyer and that those funds could be used for environmental clean-ups in the state.