As Michigan lawmakers fight, bipartisan transparency and public safety bills flounder

More than 1,300 bills have been introduced between the Democratic-led Senate and GOP-led House this year. Just 12 have been made law.
That leaves policies like phone bans in schools and public records reforms in the lurch as leaders blame one another for a bill “impasse”
As of Monday, the GOP-led House has passed just four Senate bills; The Democrat-led Senate, meanwhile, has passed eight House bills

LANSING — From government transparency reforms to school cell phone bans, major policy initiatives spearheaded by legislative Democrats and Republicans alike have been effectively frozen for months in Michigan amid an ongoing budget standoff between legislative leaders.

That’s led to a blame game —not just over who’s at fault for missing a legal deadline to finalize a budget, but also who’s to blame for hundreds of other bills that have been stuck in limbo.

As of last Monday, legislators in the Republican-led House had introduced 797 bills this term, according to state data, passing 157 of their own proposals plus another four bills that originated from the Senate.

By comparison, lawmakers in the Democrat-led state Senate had introduced 506 bills this year, passing 147 of their own and eight from the House.

All told, at least 304 bills have passed out of at least one chamber this year. Only 12 — about 4% — have reached Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desk for signature, marking the Legislature’s slowest start in decades.

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House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, has downplayed the pace, arguing that recent approval of bills to ban deepfake pornography shows there is “no impasse.”

“There never would have been a gridlock if Senate Democrats would just move our bills,” he told reporters after approval of the legislation, which Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law this week.

Democrats have pointed fingers at Hall, whose chamber did not even propose a full budget until nearly two months after a statutory deadline to finalize one. If they weren’t doing that, “surely they could pass some of the 120 Senate bills that sit before them,” state Sen. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, said recently.

“Some of them passed with Republican votes. Some of them passed with Republican sponsors,” Moss said. “Some of them passed out of our chamber unanimously, but these people don’t want to govern.”

Lawmakers certainly have plenty they could be doing: 143 Senate bills are awaiting what could be final votes in the House, while 149 House bills are awaiting action in the Senate.

With a little over a month remaining for the Legislature to avoid a state government shutdown by finalizing a budget before Oct. 1, here are some of the stalled proposals that have passed at least one chamber with broad, bipartisan support.

Government transparency reforms

One of the first package approved by the Senate this term would open both the governor’s office and Legislature to public records requests under the Freedom of Information Act. It has sat in the state House since receiving bipartisan Senate approval Jan. 29.

Michigan remains one of only two states that fully exempts the governor and lawmakers from the public records law that applies to most other state and local government officials.

Since at least 2011, lawmakers have proposed expanding the law, but a proposal has never passed both chambers.

Hall, in January, told reporters they were “not going to see fast action on the FOIA stuff” in the House. Instead, he pointed to other transparency proposals he has pushed in the House, including a plan make legislative pet spending project requests public before budget votes, and another that would require a two-thirds vote for any bill to pass in a lame-duck session.

Another part of the House transparency package — three bills that would create a two-year “cooling-off period” before lawmakers can become lobbyists after leaving office — passed the chamber in February with at least 96 votes each. The Senate Oversight Committee, however, has yet to hold a hearing on the legislation.

“I think those are bigger issues than FOIA,” Hall said earlier this year.

The two-bill package to reform Michigan’s FOIA processes was referred to the House Government Operations Committee in January, where it has yet to receive a hearing after passing the Senate in a 33-2 vote.

A public safety trust fund

A bipartisan package that would devote $115 million in annual sales tax revenues to a new Public Safety and Violence Prevention Fund passed out of the Republican-led House in 104-4 votes back in April but has yet to be taken up by the Democrat-led Senate.

If passed as written, the state Treasury Department would put the money into four smaller funds, including:

$72.0 million to local units of government for public safety, violence prevention, or improving clearance rates
$40 million, or the remaining balance of the $115 million, to counties that apply for safety funding. Award money would be proportional to a county’s total number of employed law enforcement officers
$1.5 million to the Crime Victim’s Rights Fund
$1.5 million to the Department of Health and Human Services for a violence prevention grant program

The annual funding would be distributed to Michigan communities based on their local crime rates. No single local unit of government could be awarded more than $18 million in total.

If cities fail to decrease their crime levels, the dollars could be reduced and given to other communities under the legislation, sponsored by Rep. Alabas Farhat, D-Dearborn, and Rep. Mike Harris, R-Waterford Township.

“This should not be a partisan issue,” Harris told Bridge Michigan in April, when Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan vouched for the plan. “We’re really trying to work on this. … If this is good policy, let’s get it across the finish line.”

The two-bill package still awaits a hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, talks into a microphone. — House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, has said the creation of a dedicated Public Safety Trust Fund remains a top priority for his caucus. (Jordyn Hermani/Bridge Michigan)

Banning cellphones in schools

A push to restrict cellphone use in Michigan schools is underway in both the state House and Senate, but competing approaches and partisan politics have so far blocked final passage.

House Democrats last month voted down a GOP proposal to ban phone use during instructional time, breaks, lunch and recess at elementary and middle schools, and during instructional time at high schools.

Devices used for special education programming, instructional purposes or medical reasons would have been exempt from the ban.

Sponsoring Rep. Mark Tisdel, R-Rochester Hills, said he believed last month’s failed vote “had nothing to do with the merits of the bill.” Instead, he said, “House Democrats decided to play games and vote no.”

He pointed to “no” votes by Democrats like Rep. Noah Arbit of West Bloomfield, who had called the bill “good legislation” before voting against it because it is “not the state budget.”

“The bill is dead,” Tisdel said. “Zero Democrats voted for it, so there is zero chance of this getting done before the start of the school year.”

The Democratic-led Senate in May approved a separate and less stringent proposal to regulate cell phone use in schools.

Sponsored by Sen. Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia, the legislation would require school districts to adopt policies that “seek to limit” cellphone use by students in class.

That bill passed the Senate nearly four months ago in a 28-9 vote, with support from several Republicans. It has yet to receive a hearing in the House’s Education and Workforce Committee.

Safety supports for daycares

A three-bill package that would allow child care centers to install temporary door locking devices — to be used in emergencies, such as an active shooter situation — passed the state Senate unanimously in March but has yet to receive a hearing in the House Regulatory Reform Committee.

The bills build off a 2020 law that allows temporary door locking devices or systems to be installed in schools. Child care centers not located on school properties were unable to benefit from the construction code change.

The Senate package, crafted by three Democrats and one Republican, would change state construction, fire and child care codes so that care centers unaffiliated with schools could also install the locks.

“There is no reason for the House not to be moving on it,” Moss, the Southfield Democrat and one of the package sponsors, told reporters last week. “Who exactly benefits by leaving our youngest children exposed to a mass shooting?”

State Sen. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, in the House Chambers. — State Sen. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, told reporters last week he believes Senate bills with bipartisan support aren’t getting committee hearings or votes because House Republicans “don’t want to govern.” (Jordyn Hermani/Bridge Michigan)

Gun safe storage tax breaks

Hall, the Republican state House Speaker, has said Senate-approved bills to ban “ghost guns” and bump stocks are “dead on arrival” in his chamber.

But the House has advanced some bipartisan gun safety legislation.

A two-bill package led by state Rep. Brad Paquette, R-Niles, and Rep. Natalie Price, D-Berkley, would permanently reinstate a sales and use tax exemption for firearm safety devices — such as gun locks or safes — that expired in 2024.

A Democratic-led Legislature first created the tax exemption in 2023 to complement a safe storage law that requires adults to keep guns locked or in a safe in homes where a child may be present.

It was part of a larger package, approved after a mass shooting at Michigan State University, that also created Extreme Risk Protection Orders — a “red flag” law — and mandated universal background checks.

The new bill to extend the sales and use tax break passed the House with broad and bipartisan support in March, with one bill approved in a 96-11 vote and the other in a 95-12 vote.

While the Senate Civil Rights, Judiciary and Public Safety Committee held a hearing on the legislation later that month, the Democratic-led panel has yet to advance the bills to the Senate floor for a full-chamber vote.

“If the state is going to require gun owners to purchase these devices, the least it can do is ensure we’re not paying taxes on them,” state Rep. Karl Bohnak, R-Deerton, said after the legislation passed the House this spring.