Here we are, not even two weeks into the recent year, and Michigan State is showing politically that it is turning back to the normal side of things.
We would call this a miracle for this situation.
This follows some momentum at the end of 2024 that will hopefully continue.
I talked about this here: Democrats in the Michigan House of Representatives fail to pass FOIA reform in the state in the lame-duck session
We are almost done with 2024, but here in Michigan we have a lame session of the state legislature that lasted longer than usual but didn’t accomplish much. Still, it could have, and it would have been pretty damn frigid and useful to the citizens of the Great Lake State.
A central issue was reforming the Freedom of Information Act. When I say “reform” what I mean is that we cannot control the Governor and Legislature because they are currently EXEMPT from such laws. They could have changed that, but chose not to.
Democrats currently control the governorship with Gretchen Whitmer, the state House with Democratic House Speaker Joe Tate, and state Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, also a Democrat.
They all choked on this common sense idea of being crystal clear to the taxpayers of this state.
Now that Republicans control the House in Lansing, they want to shake it up a bit, and the committees that oversee other branches of government are poised to quickly investigate alleged wrongdoing.
Longtime Michigan political guru Bill Ballenger thinks it’s a pretty big deal, and he says it right HERE:
In previous sessions, the House had to vote to give committees subpoena power on each individual topic. However, a draft of the recent rules would still give the oversight board the ability to “take oaths, issue subpoenas, and examine books and records of persons, partnerships, corporations, governmental units, and political subdivisions.”
A longtime Michigan political analyst, former Republican lawmaker Bill Ballenger, said Hall’s oversight plans were bold and appeared to be “unprecedented.”
“It’s time for the Legislature to aggressively assert itself in a variety of ways and stop the complicity and complicity that it has done for too long with various governors and the executive branch,” Ballenger said.
The recent Speaker of the House of Representatives is ready to take office as soon as possible.
Republican House Speaker-elect Matt Hall plans to give the Republican-led House Oversight Committee sweeping recent subpoena powers and appoint six separate subcommittees to review the actions of Michigan government agencies.
The expansion of the House panel’s subpoena powers — included in draft House rules obtained by The Detroit News on Tuesday — would represent an expansion of the House’s investigative capabilities as Republicans take control of the House and a period of divided government in Michigan would initiate. The move follows two years in which Democrats controlled state government from the governor’s office and state legislature to the offices of the attorney general and secretary of state.
I agree with Bill that this is a good move and really a pretty big deal.
Michigan is a state where lines are constantly being drawn and blurred before and during elections. In the 20-plus years I’ve been watching what’s going on in Lansing, very few Republicans have taken on Democrats or even Republicans who are doing the wrong thing.
The two main examples that Republicans should have issued subpoenas and investigated situations that required a thorough investigation were Whitmer’s handling of COVID and the 2020 election, when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the state.
The 2020 election result and the handling of it was such a disaster that all parties involved missed the deadline for those who WANTED to find out the truth to fight those who wanted to create a stir on social media. A lot of time was wasted and evidence that could have proven or disproven the facts was most likely destroyed.
Michigan still has a LONG way to go to become a truly purple state (Trump won the 2024 election with 80,000 votes out of five million cast, and he won in 2016 with even fewer votes), and a big test will be how the Republicans behave will beat gubernatorial race in 2026.
Republicans trying to investigate corruption with recent tools is a good start and keeps everyone straightforward to aid fight corruption across the board.
