September 22, 1995

Legislative & Political News in Review

• Ask not for whom the beltway tolls, it could toll for thee, according to a Detroit News story detailing state Republican legislative scrutiny of the highway booths as one alternative source of the estimated $12 billion in repair funds needed for state and county roads over the next decade. Governor John Engler’s kibosh of a proposed gasoline tax increase has left policy makers scrambling for other revenue to upgrade the state’s aging thoroughfares.
• Interest ran high in the Senate this week when a six-bill package revising lending rate ceilings passed mainly along party lines. The bills—HBs 1416, 1418, and 1419–22—remove the ceiling on credit cards entirely and boost the maximum loan interest rate on other debt from 22 to 25 percent.
• In a smooth sidestep that finesses divided legislative sentiment, the Michigan Strategic Fund Board voted Wednesday to award a $55-million grant for a new baseball stadium for the Detroit Tigers. Supporters claim legislative approval is not needed for this state contribution to the controversial new stadium’s financing. Opponents of the facility vowed to challenge the action, which contributes to an overall project cost estimated at $230 million.
• It was billed as the Governor’s Education Summit, but it may have felt less significant than that to the 1,200 mostly public school representatives who offered polite applause and private criticism to most of John Engler’s announced agenda. Identifying his priorities as more charter schools, more parental say in which public schools their children attend, and revamping the state school code, the governor backed away from his earlier call for wholesale code repeal and replacement.
• GOP candidate watchers will have a field day amid the fudge and foliage this weekend on Mackinac Island. The 21st Michigan GOP biennial conference brings presidential aspirants—U.S. senators Robert Dole, Phil Gramm, and Arlen Specter, among other hopefuls—to the island. As the Englers’ guest on Saturday night, Newt Gingrich will be the first U.S. House Speaker to stay in the governor’s summer residence. Mrs. Engler announced plans this week to seek nearly a half million dollars in private funds to renovate the eleven-bedroom bluff-top mansion, the leaks and loose bricks of which threaten to compromise its estimated market value of $1.5 million.
• The governor says he is isn’t running, but that hasn’t deterred a group of state lawmakers from forming a "Draft Engler" committee to raise enough money and generate enough momentum to induce the Beal City native with the ever-increasing national profile to become a 1996 presidential candidate. The group has a solid fallback position, too: Top-ranking state GOP leaders overwhelmingly give Engler the nod as their choice for the national party’s vice presidential nominee. Colin Powell, whose book-promotion tour will bring him to the Detroit area early next month, was a distant second choice in the informal veepstakes poll. 
• Don Koivisto says he isn’t switching. The Ironwood Democratic state senator told the Detroit Free Press that Republican "higher ups" have failed to persuade him to jump parties in order to challenge Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak as a Republican. Not only is Koivisto cool to the idea of working in Washington, D.C., he adds "I have no desire to even visit there."
• The human resources director for the Department of Transportation will take over Michigan’s top personnel job. The Michigan Civil Service Commission has announced that John F. Lopez is replacing Martha Bibbs as state personnel director; Bibbs remains with the department, responsible for its total quality management project.
• Longtime Department of State deputy directors Joseph Pawlowski and Phillip Frangos will retire in December and March, respectively, as part of Secretary of State Candice Miller’s departmental restructuring to reduce the number of freestanding bureaus and the number of executive positions.