Dems tout taking on ’40 years of pent-up policy priorities,’ GOP leaders say they’ve been left out

Michigan’s legislative leaders on Thursday sat down at the Mackinac Policy Conference to reach across the aisle, discussing bipartisanship and efforts to find common ground in reshaping the state’s economy.

For the first time in 40 years, Michigan Democrats hold a trifecta —taking control of the House and Senate and maintaining the governorship — which has allowed them to pass a number of their key policy goals in the first quarter of this legislative term, including strengthening LGBTQ+ rights, repealing the 1931 abortion ban, repealing Right to Work, rolling back the so-called pension tax and more.

But that’s drawn strong criticism from Republican lawmakers. 

While the leaders — House Speaker Joe Tate (D-Detroit), Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids), Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt (R-Porter Twp.) and House Minority Leader Matt Hall (R-Richland Twp.) — noted their shared love for Michigan as common ground and stressed the importance of give and take in the legislative process, Republican leaders criticized Democrats for their policy agenda earlier this year.

“I’ve been extremely concerned with some of the early legislative things on some of the union giveaways and other things. But as we go into [Fiscal Year 2024] budget negotiations and some of these other areas that I think we can find some landing spot,” said Nesbitt.

In addition to repealing the state’s Right to Work laws, Democrats also restored the practice of prevailing wage, which had both been enacted when Republicans controlled state government last decade. While the moves were praised by labor leaders, they angered Republicans and business groups, like the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.

“The challenge going back through the first part of this year is that there wasn’t much yearning to actually find that bipartisan compromise,” Nesbitt said. “My hope is that over the following few months that you can change that and figure out how to govern in the middle,” Nesbitt said.

Brinks responded by acknowledging the partisan nature of Democrats early policy moves, but said this was to be expected, given the political environment.

“We started with 40 years of pent-up policy priorities as Democrats and so of course, we hit the ground running and we’ve checked off a bunch of things on our list initially,” Brinks said.

“Building those relationships is an important part of what we are working on doing now… even when things get really tough and we have those difficult conversations and we disagree on things either within our parties or across parties or across chambers, it’s really important to remember that we all care about the people that we are serving in the state and we want to put those practical solutions first,” Brinks said.

Republicans also criticized some of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s economic development initiatives announced at the conference, calling for work on policy sooner rather than later. 

“We’re not our predecessors. So there’s things that we can work together to solve that maybe couldn’t have happened in the past,” said Hall. “That’s why I would say rather than kicking the can down the road for some council to solve our problems, why don’t the four of us get together and try to work through some of these problems? I think we can solve them a lot faster.”

Hall previously released a statement criticizing Whitmer’s announcement of the bipartisan “Growing Michigan Together” Council, calling it a  “heavily-skewed, partisan commission” and a “Trojan horse for new taxes.”

Nesbitt offered his own criticism of the governor’s economic development plans.

“What the governor rolled out this week is that it seems like a list of 20 talking point issues, and you can pick out a few things that you could probably agree with, but there’s no definition of what they actually include,” Nesbitt said.

“My hope is that we can pick out a few of those items and see where we can find actually real negotiations and bipartisan consensus,” he said.

Despite their disagreement with some of the efforts announced, Republican lawmakers found common ground with Democrats on policies that supported research and development, as well as the redevelopment of brownfields, or properties that have been abandoned or remain underused due to pollution.

“We’ve got some things that we can hit the ground running working together and I think each of us have to add to that list,” Hall said.

Nesbitt also shared hopes that lawmakers could find a bipartisan solution to resolve issues in permitting.

“Over the last few years under the current administration it has become a lot tougher to get permits. I hear from private sector investors and businesses that have a real challenge of getting these permits in a timely fashion,” Nesbitt said. “My hope is that we can work together to find better certainty on some of these permits.”

“I had a company with a $140 million investment in southwest Michigan, that they were four months delayed in their investment without a dime of state dollars because [the Michigan Department of Transportation] was delaying a permit for a curb cut. … I think we can do a better job of allowing businesses and private sector to actually invest and grow jobs in the state of Michigan and permitting can go a long ways in that certainty,” Nesbitt said.