October 13, 1995

Legislative & Political News in Review

• There were no partisan surprises in the Senate’s approval of revisions to the state Mental Health Code. Senate Bill 525 passed on a 22-15 vote, with Ironwood Democrat Don Koivisto the only senator breaking party ranks to support the bill. The first substantive changes in the code’s 21-year history were derided in debate by Democrats as reducing services to the state’s neediest patients, while Republicans criticized what they called bureaucracy-boosting amendments offered by Democrats.
• Characterized by the Lansing State Journal as a "team player who got picked for the wrong team," Michigan Department of Natural Resources Director Rollie Harmes resigned just 10 days after the effective date of his agency’s being halved by executive order. Insiders contend that division within the DNR is nothing new, as evidenced by the sudden resignation earlier this week of three top Harmes aides. Retired deputy director Michael Moore has been named interim head while the search for a permanent replacement begins.
• Nearly 100 corrections officers staged a capitol rally this week in support of armed guard towers at state prisons. A House bill introduced this week would require gun towers at all but lowest-security facilities. Maximum-security prisons already have them; at issue are 15 intermediate-level lockups, including the sites of a 1994 10-inmate escape and a 1995 riot.
• Gubernatorial hunting season opened last Sunday, in Lenawee County, when Adrian Democrat Jim Berryman unleashed his exploratory candidacy committee. The second-term state senator and former mayor says he is not yet committed to a 1998 gubernatorial run but is testing the water.
• Last month saw the lowest Michigan unemployment rate in three decades, according to figures released by the Michigan Employment Security Commission. The 4.8 percent jobless rating dipped below anything on record since the MESC began tracking the statistics in 1970.
• America’s oldest state fair will stay put, in Detroit, Governor Engler announced, ending speculation that the attendance-challenged event might move to Michigan State University (which had conspicuously failed to request the relocation) or rotate among counties. The 90-year-old event’s attendance and gross revenue both were up substantially this year, and a gubernatorial task force debating the fair’s future issued a split recommendation to Engler.
• The Michigan Supreme Court, in a ruling issued Tuesday, has given the state’s two busiest tribunals 30 days to develop court reorganization plans. Detroit Recorders Court—the jurisdiction on which encompasses the state’s highest concentration of felony cases—and Wayne County Circuit Court have been operating since 1986 under an administrative order that merges their operations by routing criminal cases to the Detroit court and scheduling civil cases at the suburban circuit court. Under the supreme court ruling, suburban criminal cases will be heard in circuit court.
• In response to the governor’s continued opposition to a gasoline tax increase favored by local officials to fund road improvements, the Michigan Township Association president predicted in the Detroit News this week that "Blacktop roads will turn into gravel roads." A three-year program providing $45 million annually for county roads expired this fall. Engler’s opposition to an election year gas-tax increase isn’t absolute, but he is on record as favoring a 70-30 revenue split benefiting state highways over county roads.
• Joined by seven Republicans who argue that the state should not pay a court-ordered settlement negotiated by the governor, this week House Democrats mustered a 50-48 majority to defeat SB 320, the so-called Nordhouse Dunes settlement. The $83-million judgment, reduced through Engler’s intervention to just under $60 million, increases by $25,000 in fines for each day it remains unpaid.