LANSING – Governor Rick Snyder enjoyed remarkable success in the first six months of his term at winning quick approval of his agenda from the Legislature, but the last nine months have seen his priorities move at a different pace with lawmakers now balking at many of them.
The start of 2011 saw an avalanche of major new laws, from the one enhancing powers for state-appointed emergency managers overseeing troubled local governments and school districts to the most sweeping overhaul of taxes in a generation. New laws making it easier to fire teachers and increasing the number of charter schools, both sought for years by Republicans without success, finally came to fruition.
Now Snyder is seeing legislative work on his agenda slow with major proposals to raise revenue to fund road repairs and create an exchange where residents can comparison shop for health insurance going nowhere. Still, Snyder is enjoying a strong rate of success with the Legislature.
“I think he’s done remarkably well,” said Dennis Cawthorne, a founder of the Kelley Cawthorne lobbying firm in Lansing who has been a fixture in the capital city since serving in the state House from 1967-78, the last four years of which as the Republican leader. “He’s had a substantial agenda that he’s managed to move with surprising speed. His track record so far in the Legislature I think is very good.”
Snyder of course has the considerable advantage of Republicans holding not only the majority in the House and Senate, but by overwhelming margins at 26-12 in the Senate and 63-47 in the House. Unified control is a rare opportunity in modern times. Since the Senate and governor switched to four-year terms starting with the 1966 elections, it has happened only in the 1967-68 term (Republicans), 1983 and part of 1984 (Democrats), 1995-96 (Republicans) and 1999-2002 (Republicans).
Even with that advantage, Snyder has rolled up a remarkable number of legislative wins.
“If you can get two-thirds of your program through even a friendly Legislature, I think that’s pretty remarkable,” Mr. Cawthorne said. “I think his record is probably as good as John Engler’s and that’s saying a lot because Engler was a very astute political operative.”
Doug Roberts, who worked in the administrations of Democrat James Blanchard and Republicans William Milliken and John Engler, credits Snyder’s focus – and the GOP Senate – for much of the administration’s legislative success.
“The Senate has 26 Republicans. Even during the Watergate debacle (for Republicans in the 1970s), the Democrats only had 24. So this is a huge number,” said Mr. Roberts, who now directs the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University. “Also, (the governor) didn’t say ‘Let’s wait (on big items).’ He said, ‘Let’s do it now.’ There’s an enormous amount being accomplished.”
Key to the Snyder agenda has been the use of a mechanism afforded to the governor in the Constitution: the ability to submit to the Legislature “special messages” on any given topic that he seeks legislative action. Former Governor William Milliken frequently delivered special messages, but until Snyder took office in 2011, subsequent governors largely ignored the tool.
Snyder already has issued six such special messages – on local government, education, health and wellness, infrastructure, talent development and public safety – with a seventh planned for the fall on the environment and energy. They have carried the bulk of the Snyder agenda although some major issues – notably Snyder’s proposed major overhaul of taxes and construction of a new bridge to Canada – were made without the use of a special message.
Republican majorities in the Legislature quickly lined up behind most of the proposals outlined in the first two messages, local government in March 2011 and education in April.
On local government, the Legislature passed and Snyder signed legislation overhauling allocation of revenue sharing aid to local governments and requiring negotiation of new collective bargaining agreements with public employees when local governments enter into a service sharing agreement, among other significant changes.
Snyder then mostly cleaned up on his education special message. The Legislature supported tying school funding to meeting a series of best practices such as how much school employees must pay for health care, mandating school districts adopt anti-bullying policies and substantially changing teacher tenure to make it easier to fire bad teachers. Snyder proposed charter school expansion in certain areas with failing schools, but the Legislature went further and completely removed the cap on the number of charter schools public universities can authorize.
Bill Rustem, a top Snyder aide who has been on the scene in Lansing going back to his days as a staffer for Milliken, said the climate was perfect for moving on the local government and education reforms.
“These are issues that have been teed up among particular Republicans for a long time,” said Rustem, Snyder’s director of strategy. “There was kind of a pent-up demand for dealing with the issues.”
And it was long before the 2012 election began factoring into the Legislature’s thinking. The House is up for election in November, and Democrats are mounting a furious effort to win back control from Republicans, who have a 64-46 majority.
The one major setback on these two issues was Snyder’s call to essentially end school district borders so that any student could attend any school regardless of where he or she lives. Opposition swelled quickly in suburban school districts, especially in the Detroit area. By the time legislators pared the idea back to allow school districts to determine whether they had the capacity to allow schools of choice, the idea had become politically toxic.
“A lot of local, parochial politics got in the way,” Rustem said.
The fall saw more setbacks for Snyder. Besides the Senate dropping his proposal to authorize a new bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, the legislative response to his proposals on health and wellness, transportation and recruiting and retaining talented workers to the state was tepid at best.
The Senate passed Snyder’s proposed online exchange where consumers could comparison shop for health insurance, but the House, where Republicans see the proposal as part of the controversial federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, have said they will not act on it until the Supreme Court rules on the statute in June. Snyder’s proposal to ban smoking on state-owned beaches has gone nowhere. The same is true of Mr. Snyder’s proposals to change how the state taxes gasoline sales and hike vehicle registration fees to raise $1.4 billion for roads.
But legislative resistance on those issues is hardly shocking, Rustem said. Asking for new revenue always is difficult, and the exchange got caught up in the charged political atmosphere surrounding the federal health care law, he said.
“These are not easy things to get done,” he said.
And the 2012 election is approaching.
“I’ve been around enough election years to know you don’t get anywhere near as much done in an election year as you do in a non-election year,” Rustem said. “It’s just the way it is, the way it has always been and the way it will always be.”
Snyder enjoyed a resurgence of legislative action this spring. The Legislature backed most of his proposals on public safety and after a year of work also passed legislation expanding the number of online charter schools. And it passed a mandate on insurers that they cover treatment for autism. Still, Rustem has heard the criticism that Snyder’s agenda is grinding to a halt in the Legislature.
“It’s crap,” he said.
The test for a governor is not what he or she accomplishes in the first 100 days, six months or year, but entire
