March 6, 1998

Legislative & Political Week in Review

• More term-limited House members are making plans. Rep. Jessie Dalman (R-Holland), has announced her candidacy for the University of Michigan Board of Regents; board nominations are made at the state political party conventions in the fall. Dalman's sunset-side colleague, Rep. Paul Baade, hasn't said what he would like to do at the end of his term-limited service in the House, but he has said what he won't do: He has decided not to challenge incumbent 32d District Sen. Leon Stille (R-Spring Lake) for the upper chamber seat.
• A former state representative, Susan Grimes Munsell (R-Howell), will challenge U.S. Rep. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing) for the 8th Congressional District seat. The contest to serve that district spawned a wildly expensive and contentious contest in 1996 in which Stabenow wrested the seat from Dick Chrysler in his first reelection bid, a feat Munsell hopes to duplicate. Of the race that pits these longtime state legislative colleagues and frequent allies, Munsell told the Lansing State Journal, "I'm sure she wishes I wasn't running. I wish she wasn't running. And our mutual friends wish we weren't putting them in this position."
• Congressman Vernon Ehlers (R-Grand Rapids), the first and only research physicist in Congress, has "vaulted to the center of a national firestorm over cloning," according to a front-page story in the Detroit Free Press. Two U.S. House bills he introduced last year—to ban human cloning and block federal funds for such research—are gaining support in the wake of recent sheep cloning studies. Cloning supporters observe that the research could help find a cure for such afflictions as cancer, Alzheimer's, or Lou Gehrig's disease. Ehlers increasingly is becoming identified as a leader of the political faction arguing that human cloning violates the right to life when a clone dies during the research process.
• As the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Congressman John Conyers (Detroit) would be the key defender of President Clinton if impeachment proceedings were launched in Congress, observed a page-one profile of the Detroit congressman in the Detroit News. "Clinton's troubles could be the platform Conyers needs to jump-start his career," the News opined, noting that the 33-year House veteran has had problems in recent years with overspending on staff salaries, which necessitated layoffs in his office in 1996 and 1997. The News also reported that so far Conyers has only $17,000 in hand for his reelection campaign this fall.
• Excavation began this week on a groundbreaking maximum security correctional facility near Baldwin. When completed, in 1999, its 480 beds will be one of the nation's largest youth corrections facilities as well as the state's first privately run prison.
• Sixty-eight percent of respondents to a recent poll say they'd feel less safe if they knew others were carrying concealed weapons in their cars or on the street. The poll was occasioned by the nine-bill package, currently before the House Judiciary and Ethics and Oversight committees, that would increase availability of concealed weapons permits. Sixty-one percent term the legislation a "bad idea," and a majority (53 percent) believe crime will increase, not decrease, under the proposed new statues. Proponents of the measures complain that the survey of 600 state residents failed to accurately convey that the bills have such safeguards as setting a uniform standard for county gun boards to follow in issuing permits and maintaining zero tolerance for permit holders found intoxicated while carrying a concealed weapon. Last week, the attorney general and the Prosecuting Attorneys Association sent a letter to legislators detailing their objections to the legislation.
• In a ruling this week, the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld the legislature's power to dissolve Detroit Recorders Court. The dissolution, with reassignment of recorders court judges to Wayne County Circuit Court, was the most controversial element of the 1996 court reform that also produced the new Family Court Division of circuit court. The appellate judges ruled that lawmakers did not exceed their constitutional authority in enacting the reforms.