Bid for part-time Michigan Legislature dies for lack of signatures

A proposal to convert Michigan’s Legislature to a part-time body died this week for lack of enough valid signatures to get on the November ballot.

“We came so close,” said Norman Kammeraad, one of the organizers of the Clean Michigan Committee, which was seeking a constitutional amendment to make Michigan’s Legislature part time, ending the legislative session on April 15 each year and cutting lawmakers' pay roughly in half.

The group collected about 325,000 signatures, Kammeraad said, but 40,000 of those were collected last summer before the language of the ballot proposal was changed and those signatures had to be thrown out. The remaining 180-day window to collect the necessary 315,654 valid signatures from registered Michigan voters included the winter months.

“We ran out of good weather,” he said. “We were getting 20,000 signatures every two weeks from our field efforts, but the weather killed that.”

The organization tried to get the necessary signatures through the mail, "but we couldn’t collect them fast enough," Kammeraad said.

More: Part-time legislature group seeks signatures by mail, ads

More: Lt. Gov. Brian Calley jumps on part-time Legislature bandwagon

Lt. Gov. Brian Calley started the effort last May, but turned over the reins of the petition drive to other people in November. The committee raised $1.3 million, most of which came from a non-profit – The Fund for Michigan Jobs – which doesn’t report its donors. As of the end of January, the committee had a balance of $17,693 and spent most of its money trying to collect signatures, much of it by mail in the last few months.

Proposals to make Michigan a part-time Legislature state have been introduced in nearly every legislative session, along with efforts to put it on the ballot over the years, but none of the initiatives have gone anywhere.

That won’t stop the group from trying again, Kammeraad said. They’ll regroup, log all the signatures that they were able to gather and start again later this year.

“These PACs (political action committees) are buying legislators to gain access to the purse, which is money that comes from us,” he said. “The institution that I’m looking at now is filled with people who are trying to cover their own jobs.”

The ballot proposal was opposed by several influential groups, including the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 10 states, including Michigan, have full-time Legislatures. The rest are either part-time or have a hybrid system. In Michigan, lawmakers are paid a $71,685 salary, with a $10,800 expense allowance, down from a $79,650 salary and a $12,000 expense allowance in 2002.

Contact Kathleen Gray: kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal.