Legislature gives three cheers for session-long procrastination

Before we get too deep into how the state House completely imploded in the final days of its lame-duck session and how the Senate stayed up for 29 straight hours to pass what they could, let’s talk about how we got here.

It comes down to one word: procrastination.

The Democratic-led Legislature started 2024 resigned to the following game plan:

• From January until April, nothing productive would happen in the House. It was split between 54 Democrats and 54 Republicans until some special elections were held in Warren and Westland, bringing the Democrats back ahead by 56-54.
• From there, the Legislature would only have time to pass a budget by July 1.
• After the summer break, House members would be running for reelection, so it was all hands on deck to help the Democrats win.
• After the election, they’d come back in lame duck and pass a varying degree of stuff — a healthy amount if the Democrats retained the majority or a boatload of stuff if they didn’t.

What nobody planned on was a House member in such excruciating pain from back surgery that she couldn’t come to Lansing one week. They also didn’t plan on a second member protesting the absurdity of jamming through mass amounts of public policy days before Christmas.

Then, there was the mass walk-out from Republicans and all the rest, so here’s what we got:

The Michigan House of Representatives had enough members to do business for 55 days in the calendar year 2024, while the Michigan Senate did business for 69 days.

Let me tell you a story so you can fully appreciate how futile this is.

Two years ago, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and then-House Speaker Jason Wentworth did very little for half the year, my team at MIRS and I spent a week rummaging through pages of Senate and House journals.

Our goal was to find a Legislature that met fewer days than our full-time Legislature in 2022, even though lawmakers make a base full-time salary of $71,685 yearly.

What we found is that we had to go all the back to 1950, a few years before Michigan adopted a full-time calendar, before we found a Legislature that met less.

From 1947 to 1954, the Legislature routinely adjourned in May or June. Although considered part time, it still averaged about 78 session days a year per chamber.

In 2022, the House had a quorum 54 days and the Senate 62.

Again, this year, the House had a quorum 55 days and the Senate 69.

We have come to a point when lawmakers meet fewer days than they did when they were part time.

In 2022, the Legislature had some excuse. After months of getting publicly tarred and feathered in social media for being so strange, Shirkey was done. He figured he wasn’t getting anything from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, so why bother?

This year that doesn’t apply. This was the Democrats’ heralded “trifecta.” Whitmer was the governor, and the Democrats had majorities in the House and Senate.

Historically speaking, let me tell you how rare this is. Since the Republican Party began in 1854, the Democrats have held a trifecta four times for a total of seven years.

That’s it. Seven years (1891-‘92, 1933-‘34, 1983, 2023-‘24). Once every 25 years.

It’s not happening in 2025-‘26. The Republicans won the House majority, and the trifecta is gone.

So, the Democrats waited an entire year to try to pass an enormous agenda in three weeks: A water affordability plan, loosened labor restrictions, public protections for material health, workers comp reforms, consumer protection suits, expungements for some youth offenders, polluter pay laws, and dozens of other policy pieces.

But presumably fearing it wouldn’t be politically popular to pass their agenda throughout the year, the Democrats procrastinated so badly that they made it impossible to accomplish.

And there’s no next year. If history holds, the best we can say to the Democrats is, “Better luck in 25 years.”

(Kyle Melinn is the editor of the Capitol news service MIRS. You can email him at melinnky@gmail.com.)