If you invest one minute of your time, you can help Bipartisan Freshman Caucus members Bill Rogers and Tim Bledsoe force the issue on term limits and budget reforms.
Call or email House leaders today. Tell them to get off their hands and move forward with important budget and term limits reforms. The easiest way is to just click on their names below to automatically send a letter demanding action.
House Speaker Andy Dillon — 517 373 0857
Majority Floor Leader Kathy Angerer –517 373 1792
10 Comments
We need to revise term limits to make government function more effectively. With the shortness of the current limits, freshmen are limited to learning where the washrooms are and how the place works. With luck and effort, they can be contributing to the work of the legislature for their next two terms, but in their last term, they are lame ducks and hardly listened to. There is no time available to learn how to work effectively with their own party, much less the other party, so partisanship is maximized and cooperation is minimized to a significant extent. We need to make the legislature work better together, and I believe that extending terms to 12 years will be an effective contributor to this cooperative effort we need to get the state moving again. I also applaud the thought that pay stops if the budget is not done on time. We also should look into the effects of dropping lifetime benefits, beyond normal retirement contributions while in office, similar to what one can expect in the private sector. If one leaves company employment after a 12 year stint, their benefits no longer increase, and they are entitled to only what has accumulated during their tenure. Government service should be the same.
The basic inability to do the job you were hired for—run our state with a workable budget which is passed in a timely fashion—is unacceptable. Plain and simple, if I ran my business that way, I’d be out of a job.
I urge you to move forward on budget reforms and term limit reforms. I applaud the bipartisanship of this effort, and hope to see it come to fruition.
Move on term limit question! 12 yrs in the House and 12 years in the Senate are good limits to ask the voters to approve. Assure the budget is approved by June 30th each year.
The Michigan legislature as it has operated since I moved to Michigan ten years ago can only be said to mirror a totally dysfunctional hateful alcoholic family. Neighboring Indiana which typically has politically divided legislature houses seems to manage rather nicely with a part-time legislature that doesn’t endow itself for life with health insurance. Getting accurate timely information about what is happening when in the Michigan legislature remains a problem. The inaction of the legislature on the issues of budget and term limit reforms indicates a childish disregard for the interests of Michigan citizens.
Move on term limit issue!! Assure budget approval by June 30. Best yet, make a 2 year budget so something besides just passing a budget gets done!!
Increasing the term limits to twelve years in the House and twelve years in the Senate would allow for the retention of some institutional memory and increase the probability of developing some bi-partisan working relationships. Hold the legislature to passing the budget by June 30 with a day’s pay deduction for any day past that date.
As a former legislator in the Michigan House, I served with many, who,because of their longer time of service in the House were willing and able to mentor their newly elected colleages. This appears to be sadly missing today.
12 years in each house would be much preferable to the current term limits. As a former legislator, I appreciated having colleagues with years of service mentoring the newbys. I also believe June 30 for final passage of the budget, which is the date school districts and communities have their budgets in place is logical and should be encouraged with a day’s pay loss for every day missed after the June 30 target.
I do not support this major overhaul of the health care system. You should do this step by step
Sorry about the earlier post – thought I was still on John Dingell’s site