By Mary Pollock
The Michigan Legislature was not in session the last two weeks in November due to both the traditional break for hunting season and Thanksgiving. Nonetheless there was some activity.
BUDGET EARMARKS TRANSPARENCY NOW LAW
Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed two bills, House Bill (HB) 4429 and Senate Bill (SB) 596 (now Public Acts 32 and 33 of 2025 respectively), concerning appropriation “earmark” requests. Earmarks are those budget items requested by an individual lawmaker that direct State revenue to specific projects or organizations, usually local to the lawmaker’s district. Frequently these budget items were submitted at the end of the budget process, sometimes without sponsors identified, leaving little time for vetting the worthiness of the project.
Under the new earmark transparency and regulatory process laws, starting next year, House and Senate members will be required by law to submit earmark requests 45 days prior to the budget passing. The Legislature must post the request online and post updates on how the money is being used to provide oversight for the funding. Information published must include who sponsored the request, the intended grant recipient, the amount requested, and the public purpose.
The earmark transparency legislation was part of the deal negotiated by the House and the Senate during this year’s prolonged budget process that resulted in a very late budget in early October rather than by July 1 for schools and local government and September 30 for all other State funding.
HOUSE DEATH RECORD BILLS MOVE
Two House bills Michigan SERA supported in Committee hearing to modernize the death record process have been reported out of the Senate Health Policy Committee without amendment for full Senate consideration. HBs 4077 and 4078 passed the House 106-2 last April.
Together the bills should speed up the availability of a death certificate which is needed before a burial or cremation can be authorized, life insurance collected, or a will or estate plan settled. The requirement that physicians and funeral directors use the Department of Health and Human Services’ electronic system for death certification would allow loved ones of deceased individuals to receive a death certificate much quicker.
LEGISLATIVE PRODUCTIVITY LAGS
Governor Whitmer has signed 35 bills into law so far this calendar year. Since the full-time Legislature began in 1965, the Legislature has produced an average of 376 Public Acts a year according to analysis by the Michigan Information Research Service. The most was 747 in 2002, during Republican John Engler’s last year as Governor before Democrat Jennifer Granholm took over. The lowest number of bills signed into law was 168 in 2021, during the pandemic. The next lowest number of bills signed into law was 89 in 1856 when Michigan had a part-time Legislature.
In an interview on WKAR-TV’s weekly Off The Record, Speaker of the House Matt Hall (R-Kalamazoo) spoke proudly of the low number of public acts signed into law this year. When asked how many bills he thought might be passed before year’s end, he replied “I want to be under that 89.”
At this point, the Senate has passed 198 bills awaiting House consideration before the end of 2026. The House has passed 240 bills awaiting Senate consideration before the end of 2026. Some of them passed unanimously, some on a bi-partisan basis, and some with only one-party votes. Some are important to Michigan SERA. The House Speaker’s approach to use any action in the House as a bargaining chip for his priorities in other matters with weekly rambling press conferences has transformed the legislative process significantly.
MICHIGAN RETIREMENT BOARD NEWS
In response to my invitation to SERA members in this column to attend the quarterly State of Michigan Retirement Board meeting on November 13 at the Mason Building, two SERA members joined me. Thank you, ML and RR!
Not on the agenda, but should have been, was a response to our September 12, 2025, written request of the Board, copied to Director of the Office of Retirement Services Anthony Estell, to support our Scrap the Cap effort to improve the defined benefit retiree’s annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) with the Legislature and Governor. Just to make sure that Board members had received a copy of the letter, a copy was distributed at the meeting.
The COLA has been capped at $300 per year for retirees with a pension in excess of $10,000 per year since 1987 while inflation has been 176 percent since 1987. We estimate that this affects about 51,000 of the 60,000 State defined benefit retirees collecting pensions. The average State pension is around $24,000 annually. Together with a smaller Social Security amount and any savings, that is what State pensioners are living on today.
The State Employees Retirement Act, Act 240 of 1943, says the Board is to “provide the administration and management of the retirement system and the responsibility for making effective the provisions of this act.” When a problem of this magnitude is brought to its attention, an actuarial study projecting the cost of improvements is provided, and State dollars are already designated and available for State employee retiree benefits, action from the Board to ameliorate the problem should occur. After a reminder from the Office of Retirement Services liaison to the Board that no comment was required of Board members to our request, there was no Board discussion or comment about our letter to it.
The next meeting of the State Retirement Board is scheduled for 1:30 p.m., March 19, 2026, at the Mason Building, first floor conference room, 530 West Allegan St., Lansing. It is an open meeting available to all members of the public.
Contact the Governor
Your messages to the Governor about Scrap the Cap are important this month as the Executive Budget is being developed and finalized for presentation to the Legislature in February.
Simply say in your message “Please include an improvement in the State employee retiree annual cost-of-living adjustment. It has been capped at only $300 since 1987 and inflation has been 176 percent since then. It affects over 50,000 State employee retirees. An actuarial study was done of the cost to raise the COLA to the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly each year – less than $6 million the first year – available by reducing by that amount the annual contribution to our over-funded retiree health care account.”
By U.S. Mail: Governor Gretchen Whitmer, P.O. Box 30013, Lansing, Michigan 48909
Phone Message: 517-335-7858 (Constituent Services)
On Governor’s Webpage (which sends an email): https://somgovweb.state.mi.us/ContactGovernor
Thanks for all you have done in the past as a State employee and support for this change.
(Editor’s Note: Mary Pollock is the Lansing SERA Chapter and SERA Coordinating Council’s Legislative Representative. She may be contacted at michigansera@comcast.net.)