LANSING, MI (WKZO AM/FM) — Michigan House Representatives and Senators worked overnight and well into Friday morning before wrapping up for this session, passing on dozens of bills, most of them routine, and a few of them sparking controversy.
Governor Snyder has been pressing lawmakers to find someway to fund environmental clean-ups and road projects now that bond money is running out.
What State Senators came up with overnight was to take a house bill, gut it and instead take the new revenue coming into the schools from internet sales, and redirect it into cleanups and roads.
House Members who had sponsored the original version stood up to speak against the modified senate version, saying taking money away from school students, given the current financial problems many school districts face is just wrong.
Kalamazoo Rep. Jon Hoadley says it’s the lottery all over again. He says the money spent on internet purchases today would have gone to local purchases otherwise, and that money belongs to the schools.
Especially when it’s the industries and drivers who benefit from the roads who should pay for the roads, and the industries that pollute that should pay for industrial cleanups, and not the state’s children. It passed 56 to 51 and is likely to be signed by the Governor.
The Michigan Senate and House approved a package of legislation that will open up online betting on all sorts of casino games, will allow fantasy sports like FanDuel and DraftKings to operate in Michigan, allow you to pull up horseraces on your cellphone and bet on them, and will open up charitable gambling. A couple of the bills were sponsored by local Representative Brandt Iden of Oshtemo.
It includes just about everything but sports gambling, but you can probably bet that it may be proposed next session.
Hoadley says there was some pork in the final appropriations bill to distribute unspent and unanticipated revenue, but most of it will go to roads and other worthy projects and the rest will go into the rainy day fund.
Some of the items that sputtered and died before final votes was an 11th hour measure to pass No-fault reform and a bill that would have created a separate elections commission that might striip the new Secretary of State and Attorney General of their authority to pursue campaign finance reform.
