The governor clearly never wanted the 9 bills to begin with 

Organized labor was outraged on Friday when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer killed nine bills that had been stuck in legal limbo for more than a year and a half. 

A couple of hours after the Michigan Supreme Court OK’d a lower court ruling that House Speaker Matt Hall must cough up this legislation he’s been sitting on since Jan. 8, 2025, Whitmer sent her veto letter. 

Her point: It’s been too long since they’ve passed. The state doesn’t need more years of legal wrangling to work all of this out. 

Among other things, the bills would have given teacher unions more flexibility to collectively bargain their members’ health insurance and allowed corrections officers (among others) to join the State Police’s pension system. 

A Michigan Education Association official expressed “shock and betrayal” in an email Friday night to members given the governor’s “longstanding relationship between her administration and organized labor.” 

Likewise, Democratic lawmakers were ticked off. They felt Whitmer’s reasoning was an excuse.  

“Congrats to the Governor and Speaker Hall,” said Rep. Kelly Breen (D-Livonia). “Together, they’ve accomplished a rarely achieved feat: Uniting all legislative democrats.” 

The rub stems from the lame-duck session in 2024 when legislative Democrats – knowing that Republicans and Matt Hall would take charge on Jan. 8, 2025 – hurriedly passed 118 bills, right up until Dec. 19.  

At this point, the story becomes strange.  

The Secretary of the Senate and House Clerk must run the final edits and checks on every passed bill. Then they’re sent to the governor’s office.  

Historically, this isn’t a problem. In 2018, for example, the legislative staff churned through nearly 300 bills through the Christmas holiday so Gov. Rick Snyder could address them before he left office Jan. 1, 2019. 

For reasons never properly explained, then-House Clerk Rich Brown said his staff couldn’t properly prepare all the bills by the time Hall was to be elected speaker on Jan. 8, 2025.  

At 11 a.m. Jan. 8, an hour before Hall was to be elected speaker, Brown sent all but the nine bills in question to the governor. He told me at the time that it was the best his staff could do given the tight time frame. 

When Hall took office later that day, his new clerk, Scott Starr, told him about these nine bills. Hall told Starr to hold them until he could run the legal review.  

How is it that (with one exception) since the 1963 constitution, the Clerk’s office couldn’t churn through all of the bills passed by one Legislature before the next one took over? 

And why was it that THESE nine bills didn’t make it? 

The bill numbers — 4665, 4901, 6055, 4117, etc. — don’t fall in any numerical order. They weren’t the final bills passed by the House or Senate back in December 2025. There’s no chronological reason for them, in particular, to be the ones left behind. 

It’s one of the greater Capitol mysteries that may only be answered in someone’s memoir at some point. 

The only breadcrumbs we have at this point are the fact that Whitmer never publicly advocated for any of them. They were all driven by labor or other influences. 

Whitmer never criticized Hall for sitting on the bills for the last 18 months. She never intervened in the lawsuit. The Democratic Senate sued the House. Whitmer never got involved. 

The public policy behind the bills could be viewed as problematic. 

Opening up teacher employee health care to collective bargaining likely would strain school district budgets. Expanding a pension system arguably creates long-term costs. Other bills would have forced a vote on a property tax increase to benefit a pair of local museums. Is that something state government should order? 

Two final nuggets. After the House adjourned sine die on Dec. 31, 2024, Democratic House Speaker Joe Tate, under law, was no longer the speaker. House Clerk Rich Brown was without a boss for eight days until Hall took over on Jan. 8. 

Who is one of Brown’s best friends when they served in the House together? Who presided over Brown’s 2023 wedding?  

Yup. The person who never said she wanted the bills to begin with. 

The current resident of the Governor’s Residence.