(Anna Liz Nichols photo) A view from the gallery is shown after Republicans in the Michigan state House walked out of the chamber amid conflict over legislative priorities on Friday.

Michigan state lawmakers are in the last week of the legislative session after lawmakers spent all last week burning the midnight oil as political divides between and within political parties set fire to certain legislative efforts.

It’s the final days of a two-year Democratic trifecta in Michigan where Democrats have enacted policy changes such as embedding LGBTQ+ rights into the state’s civil rights laws, expanding election rights, instituting sweeping gun safety policies and repealing Right to Work.

Republicans will be taking the gavel with a 58-52 majority come January, so Democrats had more than a month after the November election to strategize how to push their final efforts across the finish line.

But a 56-54 majority for Democrats in the state House failed to guarantee a path forward for several pieces of legislation last week after House Republicans walked out of the chamber around noon Friday demanding action on Michigan’s minimum wage laws and earned sick leave.

Unless the Legislature adds more dates to its calendar, which according to leadership seems unlikely, the time window for certain bills has ended.

The Michigan House sent several pieces of legislation over to the Senate for its approval, after the constitutionally mandated five-day layover rule between chambers.

Before House Republicans left the House floor Friday asking Democrats to take action to save tipped wages and amend earned sick time policies that are set to take effect on Feb. 21 at the direction of the Michigan Supreme Court, the parties came together on a few efforts.

Last week started with a bipartisan school safety and mental health package passing the House, where lawmakers regaled that there are issues that supersede politics. Another package aimed to alter language used for human trafficking victims and offer various legal protections and expungement opportunities passed the House with some bipartisan support.

Several gun safety bills progressed through both chambers in the Michigan legislature with the House sending over firearm disposal bills to the Senate on Thursday as the Senate sent over bills to ban ghost guns and bump stocks.

But as Speaker-elect Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, and other Republicans looked at House Democrats’ agenda which included criminalizing sextortion, allowing undocumented residents to have drivers’ licenses and easing the name change process and codifying other options for LGBTQ+ Michiganders on state IDs, members of the caucus said they had had enough for the year.

“These guys are focused on the wrong issues. So I think the people of Michigan, they don’t want their politicians doing this, which is why they elected Republicans to take over the House next year, so they’ll focus on the real issues that people care about, like keeping their jobs,” Hall told members of the media Friday.

Hall said Republicans have plans for January in order to pass efforts to achieve their goals for tipped wages and paid sick leave, as well as other efforts that could have been bipartisan.

Effectively half the state was left without representation on votes for more than 50 bills Friday while Republicans were gone. Hall said he believes constituents will look favorably on what Republicans did as it showed support for the business community.

Despite the lack of opposition, House Democrats didn’t take up several measures by the end of Friday including bipartisan Senate bills to subject the Governor’s office and the Legislature to Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. Decimated public trust and transparency in government has plagued Michigan for years as a 2015 report from the Center for Public Integrity ranked Michigan worst in the nation for government integrity.

Legislation known as the “homeless bill of rights” which would have specified rights to emergency medical attention and non-discrimination protections for Michigan’s unhoused population was put up on the voting board and failed to get all Democrats’ approval, with Reps Alabas Farhat, D-Dearborn, and Karen Whitsett, D-Detroit, not voting.

With all the support Whitsett has gotten for the issues important to her community, sponsor for the homeless bill of rights Rep. Emily Dievendorf, D-Lansing, told media after the failed vote that they wished Whitsett would’ve supported other folks’ communities.

“I would like to think that my supporting Representative Whitsett’s community and her bill to fund the needs of a senior center could be reciprocated in supporting homelessness in my community, but more so I wish that we could all recognize that this is an issue in all of our communities, that this helps all of us, and it is not a trade when we’re voting on helping folks access their most basic needs,” Dievendorf said. “It is truly just ensuring that those who are suffering, struggling the most in Michigan get the attention they need, and that we don’t always prefer the policy interests of those who have the most power.”

Whitsett pointed the finger at her fellow Detroiter House Speaker Joe Tate for some of the chaos of Friday, telling Gongwer News Service Sunday that the best thing to happen for House Democrats under his tenure is for the party to lose the majority.

“The only thing that came out of this was he was the first Black speaker of the House. Nothing else,” Whitsett told Gongwer. “We had been sitting there, and sitting there, and sitting there…We’re voting on bills that had never been through committee… put my foot down, because they were trying to confuse people on bills. People didn’t read anything. Amendments were popping up, and people didn’t know what the amendments were. It was crazy.”

Everyone can’t get 100% of what they want all the time whether they’re a Democrat or Republican, Tate said to media after session. But he said Democrats came to work while Republicans didn’t act in the best interest of the state by walking off the job, favoring playing political games that left their constituents voiceless in the halls of government.

In response to Hall telling media earlier that Tate didn’t put legislation to preserve tipped wages and paid sick leave bills on the voting board because he lacks the courage to stand up to labor groups and risk bipartisan legislation passing, Tate said there wouldn’t have been 56 votes, a majority, for those efforts.

“I’m not going to have Leader Hall lecture me on courage when he didn’t show up to work,” Tate said.

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