May 29, 1998

Legislative & Political Week in Review

• Attorney General Frank Kelley will not run again. On Wednesday he ended several weeks of speculation by announcing that he will decline to run for another term. Kelley is the longest-serving attorney general in the United States, having been appointed to the position in 1960 and elected every term thereafter. Losing Mr. Kelley on the ticket could be bad news for the Democrats, although there is no shortage of potential candidates; the Democrat front-runners appear to be Macomb County prosecutor Carl Marlinga and Wayne County Sheriff Bob Ficano, and interest has been expressed by state representatives Laura Baird, David Gubow, Joe Palamara, and Nick Ciarmitaro. The three Republican hopefuls—state Rep. Frank Fitzgerald, Scott Romney, and John Smietanka—are suddenly more hopeful.
• State officials continue to receive good news on state revenue. Each January and May, the Senate Fiscal Agency, the House Fiscal Agency, and the Department of Treasury (representing the governor) meet to agree on revenue estimates for the current and next fiscal years. Last week this consensus estimating conference agreed on higher revenue estimates for FY 1997–98 and FY 1998–99. For the current fiscal year, general fund–general purpose and school aid fund revenues now are estimated at $17.2 billion, $37.1 million above the January estimate. For next fiscal year, the estimate is $17.7 billion, $12.2 million above the January projection. The good news can be attributed to a sharp increase in personal income tax revenue, which more than offset large declines in single business tax and sales and use tax revenue.
• With tongue firmly in cheek, Rep. James Agee (D-Muskegon) has a counterproposal to Governor Engler’s plan to cut the state income tax rate 0.1 percentage points each year from 2000 to 2005. The Muskegon Democrat suggests that the state should cut the income tax by
  1/250 every year for the next 250 years, beginning in 2000. Explaining "We need to quit relying on Michiganians to fund Michigan," the representative argues that Michigan’s great-, great-, great-, great-grandchildren would save approximately $30 trillion due to the cut. The representative ardently defends his unique plan, contending that while it may be similar to the governor’s, it saves taxpayers more money.
• To the likely disappointment of many lawmakers ready to "limit out," the Michigan Supreme Court has upheld the state’s term limit law. The law, which will force out more than half of the 110 members of the House of Representatives this fall, has faced legal challenges since its 1992 inception. Opponents to the law now have exhausted the options for blocking term limits by fall, and the November 1998 elections will mark the end of service for as many as 64 representatives. While term limits are a done deal for the 1998 election, the issue may resurface down the road—term limit opponents say they may take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
• The Michigan economy continues to bring good tidings. April ushered in record high employment in the state (more than 4.8 million people) and record low unemployment (176,000). The latter figure is the lowest since 1970 and nearly one percentage point below the U.S. rate.
• The odds were long on there being two controversial ballot proposals on the November ballot, and the Coalition to Repeal Proposal E couldn’t beat them. The group, which wanted to repeal the 1996 ballot OK given to casinos in Detroit, couldn’t muster enough signatures to bring the issue back before the electorate; 247,127 signatures are required for a spot on this ballot (8 percent of the total vote cast for all candidates for governor in the previous election), but petitioning groups try to collect many thousands more as a cushion against duplicate signatures, incorrectly circulated petitions, and so on. More successful were Merian’s Friends, a group supporting assisted suicide, which gathered 380,000 signatures and almost certainly will have enough certified to guarantee a place on the ballot for the question of whether it should be allowed in Michigan under strict guidelines. Feeling is strong on this issue, and both supporters and opponents are gearing up to inundate voters with their point of view between now and November.