Michigan’s marijuana tax revenue would be gutted by lame duck bill
Lame duck alert — you should be fuming mad that Republicans in Michigan’s state legislature don’t give a damn about the will of the people. Elections have consequences, the people of Michigan have spoken and they knew what they were voting on. Yet Republicans are doing everything they can to subvert this month’s election results using a number of extremely shady legislative tactics:
(i) Disingenuously walking back adoption of the voter initiated minimum wage referendum, the first time a legislatively adopted referendum has been repealed the same year it was enacted. This was solely intended to keep the issue off the November ballot, with full knowledge the GOP legislature would gut the law in lame duck.
(ii) Introducing bombshell legislation intended to curb Secretary of State-elect Jocelyn Benson’s powers over campaign finance and circumvent Attorney General-elect Dana Nessel’s role as chief law enforcement officer in the state. It’s a blatant power grab that ignores the election results. The GOP state legislature is trying to give itself standing in cases that should be within the charge of the AG, hobbling the AG’s constitutionally assigned role (and, by extension, Governor elect Whitmer, whose interests Nessel will frequently represent). Republicans say it’s about “good government,” but it’s really a slap in the face of voters and the Michigan constitution.
(iii) Attempting to block major portions of recently passed voter referendums; namely, Proposal 3 (voting rights) and Proposal 1 (marijuana legalization). Republicans think they can completely ignore the will of the people less than a month after Michiganders voted in favor of these ballot measures. It’s disgraceful and anti-democratic.
And now they’re trying gut wetland protections.
These types of anti-democratic actions would’ve been unthinkable 20 years ago, but we’re suffering through an era where crucial democratic norms are trashed for partisan gain. The only hope is that Governor Snyder vetoes a number of these bills. I don’t forsee him opposing the minimum wage debacle due to his strong tires to the business community, but maybe he will have enough decency and respect for his successors to uphold the election results by vetoing the others.”