Emergency Financial Manager bill on the verge of passage

LANSING — With over 1,000 union members and supporters on the lawn, and hundreds packing the Capitol dome chanting “kill the bill,” the GOP-controlled state Senate pushed the controversial Emergency Financial Manager legislation to the precipice of passage on Tuesday.

The chamber is expected to pass the legislative package Wednesday morning. Following passage, the bill will go to a conference committee of both chambers to hammer out differences in legislation passed in each body. Both bodies will then vote on the conference committee legislation. It will then go to Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who is expected to sign it.

Unions and others oppose the legislation because it would give broad new powers to emergency financial managers, who are appointed by the state treasurer. Those powers include the ability to nullify collective bargained agreements, imposition of new agreements for those bargaining units which will have effect for as much as five years after the EMF leaves office and the ability for the manager to dissolve local governing bodies of schools and cities. The EMF would also have the power to eliminate any local ordinance or law he or she decides to eliminate.

Critics argue that the deep cuts in school funding and revenue sharing proposed by Snyder and Republican legislators could push many cities over the brink into bankruptcy, dramatically increasing the number of cities under the control of state-appointed emergency managers that will, after the passage of this bill, have unprecedented and — many argue — unconstitutional powers.

Democrats, who are outnumbered in the Senate 26-12, attempted to attach over a dozen amendments to legislation. The amendments were voted down on generally party line votes. One measure, intended to cap the pay of EMF appointees to no more than that of the governor, was initially approved by the chamber, but then on a reconsideration vote was shot down.

That move led Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing) to chastise the GOP leadership. She said Democrats agreed to the reconsideration after GOP leaders promised the vote was being opened to allow more Republicans to vote in favor. She was gaveled down by Sen. Mark Jansen (R-Grand Rapids) who was chairing the body’s committee of the whole meeting to consider the bills and amendments.

“Go ahead and gavel me,” Whitmer told Jansen to cheers from protesters in the Senate gallery.

The legislative battle highlights what union leaders say is an assault on collective bargaining.

“We are Wisconsin on the installment plan,” says Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO. “Collective bargaining in Michigan is dying a death by a thousand cuts.”

Messenger asked Gaffney, in an exclusive interview, if Gov. Rick Snyder was being honest with his claims that he is interested in bargaining with unions, or if he was really playing a tactical game of “good cop, bad cop,” allowing the legislature to play the bad guy to his nice guy.

“He’s both. There’s no other way to answer that question,” Gaffney said.

Gaffney then lists a litany of seemingly contradictory statements and actions by Snyder and his administration. He points to public statements that he does not believe Right to Work is a priority for his administration, but then says he would sign it if it makes it to his desk.

On the one hand, Gaffney points out, Snyder says he wants to work with unions, but then supports legislation such as the emergency financial manager bills or the plan by the House to gut project labor agreements which require a prevailing wage be paid for all construction contracts.

Gaffney also points out that it was Snyder’s administration — under the direction of Maura Corrigan, director of the Department of Human Services — that stripped legal recognition of the child care worker’s union.

In the end, Gaffney said, Snyder is going to have to make a decision about who he is politically. He points out that Snyder appeared to many to be a William Milliken Republican, even garnering the former GOP leader’s endorsement, but Gaffney think most voters are beginning to realize that they may have elected a right wing ideologue, rather than a moderate Republican.

But that could change, Gaffney says.

“I think it (the assault on collective bargaining) can be stopped by the governor deciding he wants to govern from the center, not the far right,” Gaffney says. “He needs to quietly, behind the scenes stop the right wing, or he has to publicly say he will veto those bills.”

Without that action, Gaffney says voters will “revolt.” That revolt will be supported by union members and nonmembers who support unions, he says, and will come if the GOP-dominated state government steps over a proverbial line in the sand. He says that is what happened in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana where anti-union legislation has drawn huge protests to the respective capitol buildings.

That time, Gaffney says, is near for Michigan, too.

“Some of us,” he says of unions, “are already over that line.”