Tipped Wage, Sick Time Pass House
Bills preserving a lower tipped minimum wage and making changes to the Earned Sick Time Act sailed through the House on Thursday with several Democrats joining Republicans in support.

"There was bipartisan support, so that encouraging," said Rep. Bill Schuette (R-Midland), who chaired the select committee on the bills (editor’s note: this story has been changed to correct Schuette’s party affiliation). "Now the ball is in Leader Brinks’ and the governor’s court, and I’d hope they would follow the bipartisan example that we set in the House."

HB 4001, which keeps the tipped minimum wage at 38 percent of the minimum wage, cleared the House in a 63-41 vote.

Rep. Peter Herzberg (D-Westland), Rep. Tullio Liberati (D-Allen Park), Rep. Carol Glanville (D-Walker), Rep. Will Snyder (D-Muskegon), Rep. Karen Whitsett (D-Detroit) and Rep. Angela Witwer (D-Delta Township) voted with the Republican majority. All the Democrats who voted in favor of the legislation served on the select committee.

The only Democrat to serve on the committee who voted against HB 4001 was Rep. Matt Longjohn (D-Portage), though he voted to report it out of committee. He also voted against HB 4002 on the floor, though he voted to report it out of committee.

Rep. Brad Paquette (R-Niles) voted against the legislation.

"Everybody is their own shade of red," Schuette said. "I think there are some people who had concerns about raising the minimum wage at all."

Schuette said that the bill demonstrated his caucus was willing to introduce legislation with compromise.

"There has been a version of legislation that was introduced that would just put everything back to how they were," he said. "We’re introducing commonsense legislative fixes the problem that protects small business and our workers."

HB 4002, which makes scales back the paid sick leave law set to take effect February 21, passed 67-38.

Rep. Tyrone Carter (D-Detroit), who also served on the committee, voted in favor of the legislation, along with Rep. Noah Arbit (D-West Bloomfield), Glanville, Herzberg, Liberati, Rep. Amos O’Neal (D-Saginaw), Snyder, Whitsett and Witwer.

Schuette said House Republicans have not discussed putting an appropriation on the bills to make them referendum proof.

There have been discussions with members of the Senate on the legislation, though, Schuette said. He expressed hope that the Senate would move quickly to pass the legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids) made it clear she had no intention of just passing the House’s version of the legislation. The Senate has different concepts on the issue in SB 8 and SB 15.

"I believe we can achieve a balance that ensures that workers have strong rights, employers are able to run their businesses, and that the spirit of the initiative petition – which received hundreds of thousands of signatures – is upheld," she said. "The bills we have in the Senate are much better for workers, and we are continuing to focus on those. But I want to be clear: I will not rubber stamp a plan that takes earned sick leave away from a million Michiganders."

The House plan exempts all employers with fewer than 50 employees from the requirement to provide one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked with a minimum of 72 hours per year. The Senate plan is a smaller change to the law set to take effect. That law says employers with less than 10 employees only have to provide a minimum of 40 hours in paid leave plus 32 hours of unpaid leave.

Under the Senate Democratic plan, the threshold would rise to those employers with fewer than 25 employees having the 40 hours paid/32 hours unpaid minimums.

House Minority Leader Ranjeev Puri (D-Canton) said he was looking forward to more robust discussions with the Senate legislation.

Although there was bipartisan support on both bills, Democrats put forward several floor amendments that were rejected. Democrats proposed five amendments for HB 4001 and eight amendments for HB 4002 .

"We’ve seen an abundance of amendments that came out for ways that can improve upon the disastrous bills that were offered today, so … if we could have meaningful discussion, we’d love to engage in that," Puri said.

Puri said that he could not account for why House Democrats didn’t take up the legislation last term when they were in the majority and could have facilitated those discussions themselves.

"I think the sooner we would have addressed this, the better off we would have been, but we obviously can’t change what happened in the past," he said.

He also said he didn’t think there was a need to pass legislation before February 21, when the current laws go into effect.

"We should be working toward a solution that is not fitting a political narrative," he said. "This law has been put into seven states around the country. There’s not been instances of widespread layoffs in any of these states. There’s not been thousands of displaced workers in these states because these laws have been implemented."

Schuette, on the other hand, said the House bills struck a better balance for workers and employers.

"I’m an optimist," he said. "We’re going to keep full pressure all the way down."

Several groups reacted to the House passing the legislation, with those who opposed the legislation coming down hard against Democrats who voted in support of it.

"Today, in a bipartisan fashion, the Michigan House of Representatives caved to corporate lobbyists and betrayed Michigan workers by voting to gut the state’s minimum wage and paid sick leave laws," Sam Inglot, executive director for Progress Michigan, said in a statement. "The majority of Michganders support the increase in the state’s minimum wage laws, the elimination of the subminimum wage, and the implementation of paid sick leave for workers across the state. HB 4001 and HB 4002 strips workers of a well-deserved and overdue raise and strips too many workers of paid sick leave they need to take care of themselves and their loved ones. We urge the Michigan Senate to reject changes to the laws and allow them take effect as intended on February 21."

David Worthams, director of employment policy for the Michigan Manufacturers Association, said passage of the bill reining in the sick time law is a crucial step toward addressing the "onerous and nonsensical challenges" the law poses. Besides the requirement to provide one hour of paid time off for every 30 hours worked, employer groups have decried the law’s apparent prohibition on employers providing a block of sick time to workers at the start of the year, requirements for employers to log hours worked and sick time accrued, prohibition on employers requiring advance notice of employees using sick time and more.

"The changes proposed in HB 4002 are necessary to ensure that manufacturers can continue to operate effectively while maintaining fair, competitive and sustainable paid time off policies," he said in a statement. "Whenever there is legislation that passes in such a bipartisan nature, it shows that there is clearly an issue that must be addressed quickly because it has such an impact on Michiganders across the state."


Regulators Approve $217M DTE Electric Rate Hike, Just Under Half of Utility’s Request
The Public Service Commission said it sought to balance the utility’s need for increased revenue for infrastructure improvements and to ensure the hike will have positive effects on customers prior to approving of a rate increase for DTE Electric Company.

DTE Electric was granted approval of a $217.4 million rate increase on Thursday, with the rates effective February 6, 2025. The vote by the commission was 3-0.

Thursday’s order was about 48 percent of the $456.4 million the utility had requested in March 2024. According to the PSC, an average customer using 500 kilovolts of electricity per month can expect a monthly bill increase of $4.61, or 4.65 percent.

Several key items approved by the PSC will allow DTE Electric to spend on infrastructure upgrades.

One approved upgrade is to its 4.8 kilovolt system that serves Detroit and some of its suburbs, as well as Ann Arbor and parts of the Thumb region. That includes using more durable materials for its power poles and pole replacements.

Commissioners also approved $87 million for the utility’s accelerated tree trimming program, which will help it increase the frequency of tree trimming to reduce vegetation near power lines.

DTE Electric was also granted an extension of its Infrastructure Recovery Mechanism through December 31, 2026, with spending capped at previously approved 2025 levels. PSC members denied the utility’s request for what it called a substantial increase in that funding area without evidence it considered and incorporated the findings of the commission’s recent third-party independent distribution system audits where appropriate.

Also approved were costs for DTE’s breaker replacement program and its projections relating to pole and pole top maintenance and modernization program.

Further costs approved include upgrades to DTE’s system in and around downtown Detroit which are experiencing reliability issues due to aging equipment. Expanded substations, new substations and retiring old ones are planned, as well as decommissioning old underground cables and rebuilding miles of cables that have prompted safety and reliability concerns.

DTE’s low-income utility bill assistance credit was also increased from $40 to $50 per month for enrolled customers whose household incomes are at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level.

In a statement, DTE Energy Company said its customer monthly bill reduction will offset the PSC’s rate review order.

"Our customers demand and deserve reliable energy. DTE Energy is continuously improving our operations and driving down costs to keep energy affordable," the company said. "Combined with DTE’s recent customer monthly bill reduction in the power supply cost recovery factor (PSCR), today’s order from the Michigan Public Service Commission means residential customers will not experience an increase in their monthly bills."

Other costs were rejected in the order, including $258,000 in corporate jet travel.

Also rejected was a request to recover the costs of customer power outage credits caused by what the utility called public interference, such as vehicle crashes, contact with animals or weather including wind, ice or lightning. The PSC said the utility will need to work with commission staff on a procedure for the recovery of outage credits through more limited circumstances including customer or transmission system operator negligence.

Commissioners each spoke prior to the vote on balancing the need for revenue for needed infrastructure upgrades and ensuring they make sense for the utility and its customers.

"Investment is necessary," Commissioner Katherine Peretick said. "However, it’s our job to make sure that these investments that are proposed by the company are the right ones, that they’re reasonable and prudent, and that they’re bringing value to the company’s electric customers who are paying for them."

Commissioner Alessandra Carreon had similar remarks.

"The commission will continue to scrutinize spending proposals to ensure benefits to customers by relentlessly reviewing record evidence to discern for reasonableness and prudence," Carreon said.

Commission Chair Dan Scripps said in recent years, the PSC has been "obsessively focused … on reducing the number and duration of customer outages."

Scripps said the order approved Thursday would help bring customers closer to seeing results from those efforts.

"We’re seeing the results of that investment, seeing improvement in the overall reliability, a reduction in the number of minutes that customers are without power, the number of customers experiencing repeated outages over the course of the year," Scripps said.


DeBoyer to Chair House Oversight Committee
Rep. Jay DeBoyer (R-Clay) will chair the House Oversight Committee, House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) announced at a press conference this morning. Last November, DeBoyer nominated Hall to be the House Republicans’ nominee for House Speaker during their closed-door caucus.

Hall said the “robust” Oversight Committee will dig deeper into Auditor General reports with “sweeping subpoena power" in order to get to the bottom of cases in which departments may be possibly breaking or ignoring laws. During a press conference, Hall did some name-dropping.

“The (Department of Health and Human Services) is a huge monstrosity in government that needs significant oversight in many places,” Hall said.

Hall said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson was, during his tenure as Oversight chair, one of the most uncooperative department heads when it came to testifying or sharing information willingly. 

Unlike prior sessions, this Oversight Committee will have six subcommittees digging into the state bureaucracy, which Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes said she fears is the start of “weaponizing the government – wasting taxpayers’ hard-earned money in the process.”

“Hall and his Republican caucus are serving themselves and their political agenda, instead of the constituents who voted for them,” Barnes said. “Rather than come together with Democrats to get things done for Michigan, they are clearly positioning themselves to play partisan games.”

During the press conference, DeBoyer brought up Benson’s press availability Wednesday, which was held inside a government building, since she was turning in paperwork to form her gubernatorial committee. Critics of hers have wondered aloud if, under Michigan’s campaign finance law, a candidate can campaign inside a government building. Section 57 of the Michigan Campaign Finance Act states that as long as every candidate has an equal opportunity to conduct their campaign business inside a publicly owned building, it’s fair game.

DeBoyer was a county clerk for 12 years and said he finds it ironic that Benson held her kickoff event in the Austin Building.

“If three weeks ago Aric Nesbitt would have announced on the floor of the Senate that he was running for governor, everybody standing here would have lost their mind,” DeBoyer said. “Jocelyn Benson would have said that he’s in violation of campaign finance (law). Dana Nessel very well may have called him a criminal.”

Hall mentioned economic development projects as another investigative priority of the committee.

“Are they spending our tax dollars according to the law or not? And if they’re not, we’re going to expose it, and we’re going to hold them accountable,” Hall said.

Later in the day, Minority Leader Ranjeev PURI (D-Canton) said he thinks there is room for discussions on transparency, but he’s waiting to see if the committee just becomes weaponized to have political discussions. 

When asked what the committee’s boundary will be to prevent an investigation from becoming a witchhunt, Hall said that the worth of the investigations will be proven by the facts. He said Democrats call names or question motives, but when he was chair, every time he had it on good authority that there was a problem in a state department, there ended up being a problem.

“These department heads are great salesmen, and maybe they convince some of you sometimes. I know they even convinced me sometimes,” Hall said. “And then you feel stupid for believing these people. But they’re great politicians and salespeople.”

When it comes to misuse of tax dollars, Hall said bureaucrats forget that the money they are spending is not their money, and that the state House has a responsibility to make sure that money is spent wisely according to the law.

The committee will also have a tip-line website where, specifically, government employees can report misgivings of departments when they encounter them at work.

“It’s a shame when we find out about things in the media,” DeBoyer said, adding that he thinks the idea of a tip line will address those issues before it gets so bad that the media is writing about it. “In the end, this isn’t a ‘gotcha game,’ this is about changing the behavior of government to better benefit the taxpayers.

“What I would like you to do is hold us accountable,” DeBoyer said, addressing the reporters in the room.

DeBoyer was the St. Clair Clerk since 2011 when he was selected by the 31st Circuit Court judges to fill the unexpired term of Marilyn DUNN. He was elected to a four-year term as the Clay Township supervisor in 2008 and elected for a first term in the House in 2022.

A lifelong resident of St. Clair County, DeBoyer graduated from Algonac High School in 1988 and attended St. Clair Community College from 1989 to 1990. He has been a small business owner since 1994, specializing in engineered lumber. He is married and has two adult children.

DCD OUT AND ABOUT:

Senator Mat and Jake German were proud to host and meet Border Czar Tom Homan at a private event recently with the Brighter Michigan PAC.
Mat and Jake were also happy to attend film director Alexander Wraith’s recent premier of "TWEED."  Mr. Wraith looks forward to making more films in the State of Michigan and it was great to hear about his upcoming projects and interest in filmmaking in the state.





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