Michigan legislators avoid Lansing in 2024, rarely meet as to-do list grows

• The Michigan House and Senate has, to date, the fewest number of voting days since Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took office in 2018.
• Democrats say that’s in part the fault of Republicans stonewalling in the House, but also because many big ticket items were tackled in 2023.
• Republicans, meanwhile, say they’re not to blame for the lack of voting days in the House, noting Democrats hold the gavel this year.

LANSING — The state Senate met for votes on Tuesday, an increasingly rare phenomenon at the Capitol, where lawmakers are spending less time and passing fewer bills than prior years, according to a Bridge Michigan review. 

Democrats who control both chambers of the Legislature in June passed a record $83 billion budget, but they have not acted on proposed transparency reforms, environmental cleanup legislation or long-discussed school safety measures, among other things. 

All told, lawmakers in the state House have spent 66 out of nearly 180 non-holiday weekdays in session so far this year. They've held votes on 43 of those days — none since June 27.  Senators, meanwhile, have spent 75 session days at the Capitol, 52 of which were voting days. 

A slow pace is not uncommon in an election year, when lawmakers traditionally take time away from Lansing to campaign for their own re-election. And this year is no exception. 

But observers also blame an early year stalemate in the state House, where Democrats temporarily lost their voting majority, and party infighting over the state education budget that led two top Democrats to resign their posts on the caucus campaign committee. 

Some have even questioned why lawmakers deserve full-time pay — $71,685 per year, plus up to $10,800 in expenses — despite the appearance of part-time work. 

“Imagine having a job where you only have to show up four months out of the year, and yet you're paid for an entire year's worth of service,” said Norm Kammeraad, who in 2018 mounted a failed campaign to have Michigan’s legislature scaled back to a part-time one.

“Only in Michigan's Legislature can you receive something like that.”

Voting by the numbers

As of this week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had signed 122 bills into law — and because of the election season, lawmakers are tentatively planning only 20 additional session days this year, per the public House calendar. 

That's a noticeable slowdown from 2023, when the Democrat-led House met 98 times for votes on 76 of those days and the Senate met 101 times for votes on 82 of those days. That year, which marked the first Democratic trifecta in decades, Whitmer signed 321 bills into law.

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Among them: repealing Michigan’s Right-to-Work law, rolling back restrictions on abortions and the facilities that provide them, expanding the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit and codifying into state law discrimination protections for LGBTQ residents.

This year, beyond passing a state budget, critics contend the Legislature has passed fewer bills of major significance. However, Lansing observers expect a busy lame-duck session if Democrats lose their House majority in November.

Democratic leadership has pushed back on criticism over this year’s pace, telling Bridge they accomplished a large number of priorities in 2023 and — in the House, at least— were faced with Republican roadblocks to start this year.

Rep. Abraham Aiyash, a Hamtramck Democrat and House majority floor leader, said it was “important to contextualize” why the House has met so few days, somewhat placing the blame on House Republicans in the process.

House Democrats lost two of their own members to mayoral elections in late 2023, bringing their 56-seat majority to an even 54-54 split with Republicans at the start of this year. That lasted until mid-April, when two Democrats regained those seats, giving the party back its 56-54 seat majority.

While the chamber waited for the special elections, the House met for votes just 23 times between January and April 2024. By comparison, the Senate met 32 times during that same stretch.

During the 54-54 seat split “we had session days where Republicans were literally voting against their own bills,” Aiyash contended, adding there was an “utter unwillingness to engage in a serious matter and govern for several months by the Republican caucus.”

That’s “comical” to Rep. Bryan Posthumus, R-Canton Township and minority floor leader. He said Republicans were ready to work on bipartisan bill packages during the lull between January and April but were rebuffed by Democrats “in an effort to play a game of politics and try to make us look bad.”

“They’re the ones with the gavel,” Posthumus said. “They’re the ones with the majority.”

Michigan Legislature, by the years

In the Michigan Legislature, days are broken down between session days and quorum days. The former simply means that lawmakers are in Lansing and doing tasks, including holding committee hearings or introducing legislation, but not necessarily voting in either the House or the Senate. 

Quorum is where enough members of a legislative chamber are present and able to vote on bills and resolutions. In the House, quorum means at least 56 representatives are present. In the Senate, that number is 20.

Michigan is just one of 10 states to have a full-time legislature, or one that meets year round, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

The bipartisan organization also lists Michigan as one of four states — others being California, New York and Pennsylvania — to have a legislature with a “well-paid, large staff” due to districts being bigger and sessions being longer.

In "a perfect world," lawmakers would be "in the district where they belong, representing us and meeting with us on the bulk of their time,” said Kammeraad, who led the 2018 petition drive for a part-time Legislature.

Having a full-time Legislature, he argued, encourages politicians to act “in a manner that protects only themselves and does not consider the general public.”

During Republican’s last trifecta in 2018 under former Gov. Rick Snyder, the House and Senate met a respective 80 and 71 times for votes. But that year was something of an outlier for the vast number of signed bills, with Snyder approving 690 before leaving office.

In the years since, the House held votes on 91 days in 2019, 61 days in 2020, 90 days in 2021, 54 in 2022 and 76 times in 2023. In the Senate, there were 97 voting days in 2019, 80 in 2020, 89 in 2021, 62 in 2022 and 82 in 2023.

Across those years, the highest number of bills signed was 402 in 2020, followed closely by the 321 bills signed in 2023, when Democrats took control of both legislative chambers and were able to work closely with Whitmer. 

Rosie Jones, press secretary for Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, said that Democrats are concerned with “both quantity and quality of legislation” they’re sending to Whitmer’s desk. 

Having not had a trifecta in decades, Jones said that writing legislation to strip older laws from the books or enact tax relief “requires a tremendous amount of work.”

“We’re really proud of addressing some major legislative issues that have gone ignored … and I think that we have made the case to the public that we’ve been able to accomplish a tremendous amount in the two years that we’ve had the trifecta,” Jones said.

Dems say ‘important legislation’ is coming

While Democrats were able to check the box next to a number of issue topics they highlighted as priorities when taking the helm in 2023, others seem to have fallen to the wayside.

That includes enacting transparency reforms for lawmakers becoming lobbyists, opening up the governor and legislature to public records requests, making polluters pay their share in clean-up costs, implementing school safety efforts recommended in the aftermath of the Oxford High School shooting, and more.

Some issues are moving in the Senate — such as the ongoing fight surrounding how much the state pays into its educator retiree pension system, and whether to codify a Voting Rights Act into state law— but with the House having not met since June 27, those bills have not advanced to Whitmer.

A lack of House session or quorum will also impact how soon the Legislature could address the recent state Supreme Court ruling regarding sick leave and worker wages, which restaurant and business owners say is sorely needed.

Whether that will come to be, Majority Floor Leader Aiyash was tight lipped, only telling Bridge the chamber would “have session in the fall” and would “vote on important legislation before the election.”

“We have a full agenda, and I think we are going to be looking at ways to most effectively work on the things that people care about,” he added.

Meanwhile Amber McCann, spokesperson for House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, said the chamber’s focus in September would be on “taking up budget implementation bills” without going into specifics. 

Outside observers, however, have been urging more action in Lansing. 

“There is no better time than now to pass important democracy and transparency reforms that have been awaiting action in the legislature,” Quentin Turner, executive director of the grassroots activist group Common Cause Michigan, said in a Wednesday statement. 

“The people of Michigan are calling for these reforms and they are watching.”