January 23, 1998

Legislative & Political Week in Review

• The legislature is back in session, having honored for the 150th time its constitutional mandate to reconvene at noon on the second Wednesday of January. The Senate has not held session except for a ceremonial swearing in of its newest member, David Jaye (R-Washington Township); across the Capitol corridor, House sessions have been brief and the business routine. The tempo picks up next week with Governor Engler’s State of the State address before a joint legislative session on January 29.
• Senator Jaye begins his term at the helm of a newly named Senate Committee on Hunting, Fishing, and Agriculture. The panel formerly was titled Agriculture and Forestry. A staunch supporter of gun rights, Jaye announced plans to introduce a 25-bill package expanding existing laws and policy on the acquisition, transportation, and use of firearms.
• Jaye’s vacant House seat has attracted a field of nine Republicans and two Democrats, which will be thinned out in a February 3 primary; the 34th House District seat will be filled following a special election for that purpose on February 24.
• In a presentation that combines hype with hypertext, the governor this week used electronic mail to announce a new jobs and technology initiative. "I come to you via fiber-optic networks, silicon chips, and powerful communications software developed by a growing information technology industry," reads Engler’s Internet message, the text of which, for the computerati, is punctuated regularly with audio clips. The governor proposes to form a nonprofit corporation, Michigan Technologies, Inc., to promote the state’s capabilities and reputation in high-tech industry.
• Michigan Republicans have shelved their efforts to attract the GOP national convention to Detroit in 2000. Following Governor Engler’s pitch last summer to the Republican National Committee, urging them to bring the event to the Motor City, planners grew doubtful that at its current pace, Detroit renewal could provide sufficient hotel, restaurant, and meeting space for the national event last held there in 1980.
• Michigan’ largest city did get the nod for next year’s national summit on urban redevelopment. Vice President Gore is scheduled to lead the four-day conference on cleaning up and reusing contaminated industrial sites.
• Grumbling from the federal government notwithstanding, Michigan Jobs Commission officials intend to proceed with the plan to split the MESA (Michigan Employment Security Agency). According to Gongwer News Service, Jobs Commission officials dismiss as "purely political" objections raised by the U.S. Department of Labor in a letter last month. The feds contend that Michigan’s proposed reconfiguration—moving the unemployment benefits operation to the Department of Consumer and Industry Services while assigning employment-services programs to local work-force development boards—violates federal law. "Their opinions are interesting, but they do not drive policy," a Jobs Commission spokesman said of the Labor Department’s objections, adding, "We’re comfortable that this is within our right to do as a state."
• Displaying measurably less comfort with that position, the Democrat-controlled House voted this week to reverse the MESA split by overturning one of the two executive orders disassembling the agency. House Concurrent Resolution 79 passed on a 57-49 vote. The Senate will have to concur with the House action in order to quash the reorganization, which is set to occur on February 2.
• Michigan deserves lots of credit. That’s the word from Standard & Poors, which has upgraded the state’s school bond rating to AA+. This highest rating in two decades is great news for state investors, who are watching to see if the two other major credit-research organizations follow S&P’s lead. A higher rating enables the state to borrow money at lower interest rates.
• The $1-billion road-repair program announced the by the governor last week should go a long way toward answering motorists’ complaints—about 1,600 miles, actually. That’s the estimated length of highway scheduled for repair under the project, along with nearly 250 bridges. The funds are double the amount earmarked for repairs during the last fiscal year.