6 laws in 6 months: Michigan’s divided Legislature off to slowest start in decades

• Michigan lawmakers have passed just six bills in six months, making it the slowest legislative start to the year in the last two decades
• Republican leaders defends the pact, arguing for quality over quantity. Democratic leader alleges obstructionism
• Partisan gridlock came to a head as lawmakers missed a budget deadline written into state law

LANSING — Michigan’s newly divided Legislature is off to the slowest start in two decades, sending just one bill a month to the governor’s desk through the first half of the year, according to a Bridge Michigan review. 

Legislative records show the six bills approved so far by both the Democratic-led Senate and Republican-led House are by far the fewest in the past 20 years. 

The next lowest total was in 2007, when a divided Legislature sent 31 bills to then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s desk before July 1 — more than five times as many as this year. 

Republican House Speaker Matt Hall of Richland Township is defending the pace, arguing quality matters more than quantity as the Legislature works with Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. 

Lawmakers should not “measure ourselves by how many public acts get done,” Hall said in late June. 

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But that’s just an excuse, according to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks of Grand Rapids, who argued the Legislature’s recent failure to finalize a state budget by a July 1 deadline is proof that lawmakers are struggling to accomplish even legally required tasks.

“The ongoing painful budget negotiations are a good illustration of why it has been so challenging to get bills to the governor’s desk this year,” Brinks said in a statement to Bridge. 

“Obstructionism is not a policy agenda, and Michiganders expect us to find common ground,” she added.

The Legislature began its annual summer break on Thursday, adjourning without passing a budget in a blow to Michigan schools, which have been forced to finalize their own spending plans without certainty from the state.

Lawmakers could return for a rare summer session day, currently set for July 15, according to both House and Senate session calendars. 

Here’s where things stand in the meantime.

By the numbers

The dearth of bills signed into law so far this year underscores ongoing tension between the Republican-led House and Democratic-led Senate. 

The two chambers have struggled to work together since Democrats lost their House majority — and by extension, a legislative trifecta —  in November. At times, lawmakers have resorted to partisan bickering and name-calling.

The six bills they have agreed on this year include:  

• In February: A two-bill package altering pending court-ordered changes to Michigan’s minimum wage, sub-minimum wage and sick leave laws
• In May: A two-bill package extending lawmakers’ deadline to file personal financial disclosures, due to issues with the online filing program known as the Michigan Transparency Network (MiTN)
• In June: A bill letting schools waive up to 15 additional days of instruction from their calendar year, without penalty, in response to winter storms earlier this year that heavily hit northern Michigan
• And, also in June: Legislation enabling the Michigan Department of Corrections to transfer ownership of the Detroit Detention Center to the city itself

Former Republican state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop agreed with Hall that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to writing and passing bills. But it “does not seem like there’s a lot of bipartisan discussion going on” in the current Legislature, he acknowledged. 

Bishop oversaw the Senate in 2007, which worked with a Democratic-led House to send 31 bills to Granholm by July 1. The next slowest six-month start? Whitmer’s first year, 2019, when a GOP-led Legislature sent her 41 bills. 

“I was standing on my head back in the day … because things were so in flux,” said Bishop, who led the Michigan Senate from 2007 to 2010, when a divided Legislature twice failed to finalize a budget by the start of the new fiscal year, prompting brief government shutdowns. 

As Bishop and Democratic-House Speaker Andy Dillon grew more comfortable together, they became more productive. They led Legislatures that finalized 168 bills through the first half of 2008, 51 in 2009 and 109 in 2010.

“I think it’s important that government moves slowly and deliberately,” Bishop said, before adding: “I know that’s a double-edged sword, because too slow and too deliberate is considered a logjam, and a lack of productivity — but that’s what the system is set up to do. I don’t have an issue with it.” 

There are other opportunities for bipartisanship in Lansing, where lawmakers from both parties are considering bills to limit cell phone use in schools. 

Senate Republicans and Democrats recently united on a bill to try and help Mackinac Island regulate ferry prices.

Blame game

Both Brinks and Hall told Bridge separately they were proud of their work so far this year, though that seemed to be where agreement ended. Officials from both major parties have routinely traded blame.

Each chamber has approved several bills that have little chance of passing in the other, including House proposals to bar transgender girls from playing sports in schools and cut off funding to so-called sanctuary cities, and Senate legislation to ban bump stocks and promote the rights of property renters.

Asked about the slow pace so far at the Capitol this year, a spokesperson for Whitmer deferred comment to the Michigan Democratic Party. 

“At some point, you have to have multiple good actors to pass legislation,” Chair Curtis Hertel told Bridge on Wednesday. “I think it’s pretty obvious who the problem is.”

Hertel, a former state senator who later worked as Whitmer’s legislative liaison, joked that there are more bills sitting in the House Clerk’s office “from last session that (Hall) refuses to send to the governor than bills from this session that have been sent to the governor.”

He was referencing nine bills that a Democratic-led Legislature passed in 2024 but — for reasons that still remain unclear — did not send to Whitmer's desk before last term’s end. When Republicans took over the House in January, Hall declined to transmit the bills to the governor, prompting a lawsuit from the Democratic-led Senate to sue over the matter.

But ask Sen. Jim Runestad, a Whitelake Republican and chair of the Michigan Republican Party, and he’ll tell you the problem is Senate Democrats.

“That’s just the attitude that they have, particularly in the Senate,” he told Bridge Wednesday, saying that rather than focusing on policy items like literacy reforms or child welfare, the chamber is “willing to spend countless hours debating useless resolutions for talking points rather than getting things done that really need to be done.”

Hall, the Republican House Speaker, has defended the legislative pace by noting work by the GOP-led House Oversight Committee, which has grilled state government departments over various regulations and subpoenaed Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for election materials, among other things. 

“There’s a lot of investigating going on,” Hall said. 

He also noted adoption of new House rules to reform the earmark process, also known as pork barrel spending, by requiring lawmakers to publicly disclose the projects they want to fund before any legislative votes. 

Hall has blocked other transparency legislation approved by the Senate, however, declining to hold a vote on a plan that would open up the Legislature and governor’s office to public records requests. 

“Look at what we’ve done on so many issues,” Hall said of the House GOP caucus. “People come up to me and say: ‘I can’t believe how unified the Republicans are and how you are able to advance legislation on so many issues’... I’m actually pretty proud of the work we’ve done.”