LANSING, MI – Politically, everything in Michigan is finally settled, right? Democrats swept the midterm elections, winning every statewide contest except one seat on the state supreme court.
Democrats did keep their majority on the high court, and not only easily won the governorship, but majorities in both houses of the state legislature for the first time since 1982.
That is likely to mean sweeping changes — but there are still a lot of unsettled questions, beginning with: How far will the Democrats dare to go? They are bitter about a lot of things Republicans have done in the many years they’ve controlled the governorship and both houses of the legislature.
Chief among those were a sudden, unexpected and successful push to make Michigan a right-to-work state during a lame-duck session in 2012. That meant no worker can be forced to join a union or pay union dues even in jobs, like blue-collar automotive jobs, that have contracts with the United Auto Workers’ union.
That move was extremely unpopular — to put it mildly — among Democrats and especially their labor allies. Democrats cite studies showing that average worker pay tends to be lower in right-to-work states; Republicans counter that such states attract more jobs.
Nearly as unpopular as right-to-work was former Gov. Rick Snyder’s decision to tax retiree pensions, something even some Republicans opposed at the time. The new Democratic majority is almost certain to move to repeal this, but it isn’t yet clear what their plans are for replacing the lost revenue.
There are many other areas, from school funding to further protecting the rights of LGBTQ citizens, where Democrats want to make major changes. But they may have a problem:
Their majorities in both houses are tiny: 20 to 18 in the state senate, and 56-54 in the state house, and in some cases, Democrats won in districts that are moderate to conservative and may not be as willing to support some measures popular in, say, Ann Arbor.
Senator-elect Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Democrat from Bay City, is a prime example. A middle-aged mother of six, she defeated an incumbent Republican state senator in an area Democrats haven’t carried in years by a surprisingly large margin.
But she told the Detroit News “there’s not this overwhelming progressive mandate… if we end up too far on the left that’s out of touch with my district, I can’t follow.”
However, even she is eager to repeal the pension tax, and says right-to-work should eventually be “revisited.”
Will Democrats, in fact, overreach? I asked Bill Ballenger, author of the Ballenger Report and the dean of state political writers. He didn’t think so. “Some of the Democrats are pretty moderate, elected in swing districts they were lucky to win.”
They also know their history. Forty years ago, the last time Democrats captured control of the governorship and the legislature, the state was facing a huge deficit, and Gov. James Blanchard got the legislature to temporarily raise the state income tax.
Enraged anti-tax groups managed to recall two Democratic state senators and replace them with Republicans in January, 1984. The tax was eventually lowered, the deficit paid off, and Blanchard was reelected by a landslide four years later.
Since then, however, Republicans have always controlled the state senate — until now. None of the current crop of lawmakers were in the legislature then, and many hadn’t even been born.
Yet they know very well what happened. There are a number of less controversial moves the new Democratic majority is likely to make. The Snyder administration got the Michigan Legislature to lower the EITC, the Earned Income Tax Credit, a measure designed to help the working poor stay off welfare, from 20 percent to six percent.
That was hugely unpopular at the time, and Democrats, and even some Republicans, are ready to restore it. Michigan voters overwhelmingly enacted a sweeping constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights in the state in November, and the legislature is near-certain to repeal a now-obsolete 1931 law outlawing abortion. There will, however, likely need to be laws clarifying some aspects of how all this will work.
Democrats are also likely to enact laws guaranteeing full civil rights for gay, lesbian and transgender individuals. New gun control and ethics and education reform bills are also likely.
Both parties are also likely to collaborate on trying to fix bungled auto insurance “reform” policies which left many catastrophically injured persons in danger of losing their coverage.
There are certain to be other issues too –plus one thorny and baffling thing that has had little discussion. Until now, Michigan lawmakers have been limited to serving a maximum of three two-year terms in the house and two four-year terms in the state senate.
Now, a new constitutional amendment changes the total time they may serve from 14 to 12 years – but allows them, if they wish, to do it all in one house or another. The thinking was that it would give them more time to build relationships and get things done.
But what will that mean for several hundred term-limited legislators who served, say, the maximum three terms in the state house. Can they now come back and run for three more?
What about those who served the maximum two terms in the senate? How will be this resolved? “A lot of litigation, in my humble opinion,” Ballenger said. In other words, in the state and possibly, federal courts. All we know for sure is that when it comes to lawmaking in Lansing, this is certain to be a most interesting year.
Photo Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1081482
