Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the House on February 17, 2009

The vote was 81 in favor, 27 opposed and 2 not voting

(House Roll Call 255 at House Journal 0)

Click here to view bill details.

 

Reps. Meekhof and Haines, having reserved the right to explain their protest against the passage of the bill, made the following statement:

“Mr. Speaker and members of the House:

While I support the grants in this appropriation, this bill does not include any direction as to how the department will allocate the funds or where the funds will be allocated, nor does it include any guarantee that the funds will go for the purposes as originally intended. I cannot support this legislation until there is more transparency and more safeguards in place.”

 

Rep. Genetski, having reserved the right to explain his protest against the passage of the bill, made the following statement:

“Mr. Speaker and members of the House:

I respectfully vote ‘no’ on HB 4308 because this supplemental represents 26 million taxpayers dollars being spent without a detailed and specific list of where the money is going.”

 

Rep. Agema, having reserved the right to explain his protest against the passage of the bill, made the following statement:

“Mr. Speaker and members of the House:

While I support the grants in this appropriation, this bill does not include any direction as to how the department will allocate the funds or where the funds will be allocated, nor does it include any guarantee that the funds will go for the purposes as originally intended. I cannot support this legislation until there is more transparency and more safeguards in place. The money for the vets home should be spent on vets, not mandated improvements. Too often the vets basic care suffers but they have a nice building. Put the money in staff and food- that’s an improvement.”

 

Rep. Kurtz, having reserved the right to explain his protest against the passage of the bill, made the following statement:

“Mr. Speaker and members of the House:

While I support some of the needed programs in this bill I can not support the spending of stimulus money to prolong our structural deficit. Instead of fixing the problem at hand we are putting off fixing our state’s budget for another day. The ARRA money was intended to create jobs for American workers and portions of this bill will increase our dependence on government unemployment. The ARRA created long term debt and it should be spent on long term projects.”

 

Senators Switalski and Sanborn, under their constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the passage of House Bill No. 4308.

Senator Switalski moved that the statement he made during the discussion of the bill be printed as his reasons for voting “no.”

The motion prevailed.

Senator Switalski’s statement, in which Senator Sanborn concurred, is as follows:

I rise to speak and give a “no” vote explanation on this important bill. This supplemental is a very important bill. It has a lot of good things in it, but, for me, it has one fatal flaw. That is a federal formula that establishes the distribution for the energy-efficiency community block grants. We had a lot of discussions about this in committee, and as it turns out, the way the formula works, the county that I hail from, Macomb County, suffers grievously under this distribution formula.

Let me just outline how it suffers. In monies to counties, Wayne County gets $4.9 million, Oakland gets $4.9 million, Ottawa County gets $2 million, Genesee gets $2.6 million, and Kent County $2.7 million. As the third-largest county, you would expect Macomb to come in at around $4 million, maybe $3.8 million—some high threes somewhere in there. But Macomb comes in at $746,000. How can this be? I share the same reaction as you, Mr. President. How can that be? How can Macomb be the third-largest county and get $700,000 while five other entities—three of whom are far lower in population than Macomb—get over $2 million.

Well, there are vague reasons, the formula, such that if you have some significantly-sized cities in your county, those are subtracted out. But let me just say to you that looking at the dollars that go directly to cities in Wayne County, the cities are getting $13.7 million; the cities of Oakland County are getting $6.4 million, and the cities of Macomb County are getting $5.5 million. It’s a fair and equitable distribution, in my opinion. But when you put the two together, how can the counties of Oakland, Wayne, Kent, Genesee, and Ottawa be getting $2 million and $4 million and Macomb only gets $700,000?

Well, Macomb happens to have some large cities that get subtracted out, and it turns out to negatively impact the county amount. Now is that fair? Is that equitable? I would say it is random and makes no sense at all and is completely unfair; just because Macomb has two of the largest cities in the state—Sterling and Warren. Is it better that other counties like Wayne and Oakland have a larger number of medium-sized cities? They are still getting more than us in city distribution. So it is random and unfair and arbitrary. That is not how a federal formula should work.

If it were in my power, Mr. President, I would change the federal formula by an amendment, but it is federal formula; we can’t change it. So I would only ask that the federal formula be changed to something more equitable, that if they are using it on anything else, they stop using it and that they come up with a better formula.

So as a protest to this unfair distribution, I must vote “no.”

 

Senators Switalski and Sanborn, under their constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against concurring in the House amendments to the Senate substitute to House Bill No. 4308.

Senator Switalski moved that the statement he made during the discussion of the bill be printed as his reasons for voting “no.”

The motion prevailed.

Senator Switalski’s statement, in which Senator Sanborn concurred, is as follows:

I just want to reiterate that the House amendment did not fix the fundamental flaw in this bill, which is basically that the federal formula leaves Macomb County getting hosed (“mistreated”: Senator Sanborn) by about $2 million. So I can’t in good conscience vote for it. I understand that it is a bigger bill, it has a lot of good stimulus things in it, and members may want to vote for that. I appreciate that, but I must register my protest at the treatment of my county by the federal formula. So I will be voting “no.”