LANSING, MI – Everyone knows that “it ain’t over till it’s over,” as Yogi Berra, the master of the mangled sentence, said long ago. But in politics, it’s seldom ever really over.
And Michigan’s new leaders – younger, Democratic and female — started proving that almost from the moment they took their oaths of office on New Year’s Day.
Republican legislators, many defeated or term-limited out of office, indulged in an orgy of lawmaking in a two-week lame duck session after the election.
Their idea was to tie the hands of the incoming Democrats especially in some key policy areas. Some of their more outrageous bills, such as one stripping power from the attorney general, were vetoed by outgoing Gov. Rick Snyder.
But most became law. These included a provision to encase the highly controversial oil-carrying twin pipelines under the Great Lakes in a concrete tunnel. Both new Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel had pledged to shut it down during their campaigns for office.
There is widespread agreement that a major break in those lines, which were laid in 1953, could damage both Lakes Huron and Michigan so severely they might never recover.
The lawmakers also gutted two bills they had cynically passed earlier last fall. One would have increased the minimum wage for all workers — including restaurant servers and others who rely on tips — to $12 an hour within five years.
The other would have guaranteed all Michigan workers at least some paid sick leave. Republican legislators passed these bills only to prevent them from going before the voters in a referendum last fall; they feared the people would approve.
But if lame-duck legislators thought that was that, they were sorely mistaken. Mark Brewer, a wily labor attorney who knows Michigan’s Constitution inside out, discovered a loophole: If those groups supporting sick time and increased wages can gather enough signatures by March 28, the referenda will go back on the ballot in November 2020.
Perhaps more importantly, in the meantime, the higher wage rates – which also apply to restaurant servers and others who work for tips – will be restored.
Getting those signatures won’t be easy, especially as the lame-duck lawmakers also made it harder to get things on the ballot. The organizers will need a minimum of 212,530 valid signatures, with no more than 15 percent coming from any one congressional district.
While it wasn’t clear whether those supporting restoring sick time and the higher minimum wage would try that, they also have two other options. One would be to sue, claiming that the legislature’s action in first passing, then gutting the bills in the same legislative session was unconstitutional.
That is the position of a number of legal scholars, including Frank Kelley, who served as Michigan’s attorney general longer than anyone in history. Such a lawsuit would almost certainly reach Michigan’s Supreme Court, where Republicans have a 4-3 majority, but one where two GOP justices have demonstrated a willingness to follow their interpretation of the law, even when that angered other members of their party.
There’s a third option as well, which would just be to again collect signatures to put the measures back on the 2020 ballot.
While the GOP still has majorities, though much narrower ones in both houses of the Michigan Legislature, they know that any future attempts to gut such laws would meet with swift gubernatorial vetoes.
Meanwhile, there’s likely also no end to the debate over Line 5, the common name for the Canadian multinational energy firm Enbridge’s twin pipelines under the Great Lakes.
Governor Whitmer immediately asked Attorney General Nessel for a formal legal opinion on whether the lame-duck legislature’s hasty action creating a “Mackinac Straits Corridor Authority” to oversee building of the concrete tunnel is constitutional. Nessel happily complied – and immediately warned the new authority and Enbridge that they better not make any moves towards starting a tunnel.
“There are serious and significant concerns regarding (this act … the attorney general said, cautioning them not “to move forward unless and until these matters have been resolved.”
Those familiar with her thinking consider it all but certain that Nessel is bound to rule the legislature’s action improper, setting up a battle in the courts.
Meanwhile, Whitmer took other steps to show that it was a new day in Lansing. In recent years, Republican lawmakers have prevented voters from attempting to overturn controversial laws by adding token appropriations to them.
Michigan’s constitution prevents a statewide vote on money bills, because the framers didn’t want demagogues playing havoc with the budget process; only recently has this been used as a loophole for political purposes.
Whitmer let it be known that she will instantly veto any bills with inappropriate appropriations. Her administration has barely started, but unlike the last two governors, she was a veteran legislator with a vast amount of experience. And she’s letting lobbyists and lawmakers know it’s a new day in Lansing.
**What Rashida Tlaib might want to consider: The freshman congresswoman made headlines and waves last week when she not only proclaimed that “we” would impeach President Trump, but called him an extremely unprintable name.
Tlaib, a Palestinian-born Muslim, is in a way an accidental member of Congress. She won the Democratic nomination in her overwhelmingly black and poor district with less than a third of the vote, mainly because the black vote was split among three major contenders.
Many religious folks in her district may not like Trump, but hate that sort of language. If she faces a single opponent in next year’s primary election, she could be gone.
