November 5, 1999

Legislative & Political Week in Review

• The House Tax Policy Committee held hearings this week on proposed constitutional amendments (HJR B and HJR G) that would require a three-fifths vote in each chamber of the legislature in order to increase taxes. If these resolutions are approved by two-thirds of the House and Senate, they will go on the ballot in November 2000; if approved by voters, they will make Michigan the fifteenth state with a supermajority requirement for raising taxes. With revenues pouring into state coffers at a record pace, virtually no one in Lansing is talking about raising taxes; however, the supermajority provision would ensure that tax cuts initiated by Governor Engler would be nearly irreversible in the event of an economic slowdown.
• The Senate Finance Committee reported out SB 48, which requires that farmland under production be assessed at its value as farmland, not at its potential development value. The bill is supported by agricultural interests and by antisprawl advocates because it will help farmers resist pressure to sell their land for development. The details of the bill, however, may prove nettlesome. For example, Sen. Chris Dingell (D-Trenton) suggested that the state should be able to recapture some foregone taxes once farmland goes into development, but bill sponsor Sen. Leone Stille (R-Spring Lake) disagreed. The bill and the proposed constitutional amendment (SJR M) to which it is tie-barred will be taken up next by the Senate Farming, Agribusiness, and Food Systems Committee.
• The fallout continues from the East Lansing riot that followed MSU’s loss to Duke in the NCAA Final Four earlier this year. The House Criminal Law and Corrections Committee this week reported out SB 525, which provides for anyone convicted of rioting at or near a state college campus to be banished from all state higher education facilities for up to two years. The House committee was somewhat more sympathetic to rioting students than their Senate counterparts, however. Under the House version of the bill, banishment would be at the discretion of the judge rather than mandatory, as the Senate had provided.
• With the Right-to-Farm Bill (SB 205) almost certain to become law, environmentalists are taking another tack to prevent expansion of so-called "factory farms" in Michigan. The Sierra Club, the Michigan Environmental Council, and the Michigan Land Use Institute have filed a petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to revoke state primacy on federal Clean Water Act standards. According to the groups, the state has failed to enforce federal standards with respect to large animal farming operations, although state officials vehemently disagree. Ken Silfven of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality insists that revoking state primacy will actually lower Michigan’s standards for emissions from factory farms.
• Republican senators were positively gleeful at the passage of SBs 810–814, which place into statute standards that the state supreme court used to redraw legislative districts in 1982. The so-called "Apol" standards, which encourage compact districts that cross as few jurisdictional boundaries as possible, generally are considered favorable to Republicans because they don’t maximize minority representation. In addition, the bills would prohibit the use of statistical sampling for the purpose of redistricting; Democrats claim that without statistical sampling, the census undercounts poorer voters.
• Although the $50,000 he has raised for his leadership PAC over the past three months pales next to George W. Bush’s multi-million dollar effort, Rep. Andrew Raczkowski (R-Farmington Hills) hopes it will give him a similar leg up in his quest to succeed Chuck Perricone (R-Kalamazoo Twp.) as Speaker in 2001. None of his potential rivals has raised even one-tenth as much. Raczkowski, the current majority floor leader, will use his leadership PAC money to assist Republican candidates in the 2000 elections, hoping that those who remember his early financial support will be more favorably inclined toward his candidacy for Speaker.