Michigan now has three candidates for governor–who is the newest? There was an inauguration and protests, and listen to our fascinating interview with Rep. Peter Lucido–only on the Friday Morning Podcast!
Michigan now has three candidates for governor–who is the newest? There was an inauguration and protests, and listen to our fascinating interview with Rep. Peter Lucido–only on the Friday Morning Podcast!
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Representative Lucido should clarify that only a portion of the U.P. is in the central time zone. His comments make it sound like the whole U.P. is in central time. It sounds misleading.
Mr. Ballenger, I’m off-subject here but something you said on “Off the Record” struck a chord. It was something to the effect of a representative used to not having to “ask permission” to introduce a bill. I wondered if that leads into a sense that a speaker of the house views the house as their own personal fiefdom (my words, not yours and probably a little incendiary.) Believing the speaker controls what gets voted on, how often does the speaker allow a vote for something they do not support, but the majority of their own party does. How many times have past speakers voted against the majority of their party:
Tom Leonard: TBD
Kevin Cotter: 0
Jase Bolger: 9.5 average
Andy Dillon: 16.5 average
Craig DeRoche: 29
Rick Johnson: 50.5 average
The trend isn’t good, is it? I got the numbers from the michiganvotes.org website. Now I’ve got to go look at the Senate numbers.
On the 1/27/17 “Off the Record,” the conversation was really about whether individual members of the Michigan House and Senate must “clear” any bills they want to introduce with the Speaker or Majority Leader (or Minority) Leader before they drop them in the hopper. It never used to be that they did; today, it appears there is a trend toward “command and control” from the top leadership, i.e., an individual member shouldn’t take action (like introducing a bill) without getting approval from the top.
Then there is the application of the “Hastert” rule, which is whole ‘nother thing. That’s when the leader, representing the majority caucus, does not allow a vote to be taken by the whole House or Senate unless a majority of HIS majority caucus supports the proposal. Otherwise, he could be putting bills up for votes where the minority opposition could combine with a minority of members in the majority caucus to get bills passed that most of the majority doesn’t like …