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1) "journal statement" [by Admin003 on November 15, 2008]
Senator Brater asked and was granted unanimous consent to make a statement and moved that the statement be printed in the Journal.

Senator Brater’s statement is as follows:

I want to express my appreciation to both the good Senator from the 22nd District and the 24th District for working with us on this bill. It is a good bill to try to divert electronics from our waste stream. Electronics do contain a number of toxins that we do want to keep out of our groundwater and out of the earth in the state of Michigan. It is an extremely good bill in terms of the idea of recycling electronics.

I do have some reservations about this bill. I know that there is funding in the bill for this specific program. The problem is, just to remind my colleagues, that the Department of Environmental Quality is severely underfunded and the fee that supports the solid waste division is expiring this year. It needs to be not only renewed, but increased in order to cover the costs of running the solid waste program.

Although there is a fee in this bill to cover the cost of this new program, there is not ongoing guarantee of support for the division in which this program rests. In other words, it’s like saying we have the money here to renovate our kitchen, but we don’t have the house to put the kitchen in. That is what we are basically doing with this bill today.

I am going to support this bill today. I do thank all the members for the work that has gone into trying to arrange a compromise on it in terms of the funding. But I do ask my colleagues to keep in mind that in order to be consistent with voting for this bill today, we are going to have to find support for renewable and, indeed, increase the fees to support the division that is going to run this program

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2) "journal statement" [by Admin003 on November 15, 2008]
Senator Cassis, under her constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the passage of Senate Bill No. 897.

Senator Cassis’ statement is as follows:

I stand before you to take a little bit of a different approach on this matter. Certainly, recycling is extremely important, and we realize the hazardous nature of some of the components that today we are trying to deal with. But I do have some questions. Why are we creating a new fund and a new bureaucracy within the Department of Environmental Quality? Especially, since we have no idea how much this program is actually going to cost.

I also have to add that, as you know, if it looks like a rose and smells like a rose, it’s a rose. In this case, if it looks like a fee and smells like a fee, it’s really a tax. As you know, these things are passed on to the consumer. I think there are much better ways of handling the issue. As a matter of fact, the private sector already has programs that exist to do exactly what you are trying to put in place in the Department of Environmental Quality. Dell, Hewlett Packard, Apple, Samsung, Cannon, Panasonic, Sony, and Garmon—the free market, my friends, is working here. Now we are going to tinker with it?

Why is the state getting involved when many of the leading consumer electronic manufacturers, as I have just mentioned, have already implemented recycling programs. I really have to scratch my head. It is extremely perplexing and tends to defy common sense why a company like Dell, without offering any explanation, would advocate in favor of setting up a government bureaucracy. Are we missing something?

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3) Brigette Doyle [by Anonymous Citizen on November 13, 2008]
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