“Damn,” I thought to myself. “This guy wants to be fair.”
After our thorough presentation on behalf of Michigan optometrists to state Rep. Vern Ehlers, R-Grand Rapids, told us that he also wanted to hear from the ophthalmologists before he gave us a commitment to back our proposal.
In 1984, our expert, optometrist Richard Ball and I met with the newly elected Ehlers to give him the facts about our proposal. At that date, 48 states had enacted legislation to allow optometrists to use limited diagnostic pharmaceuticals. Ophthalmologists, or medical doctors, were just protecting their financial turf at the expense of the public, I felt.
At the same time, I respected legislators who wanted to hear from all parties before they made decisions that could affect their constituents. In this case, the representative wasn’t just any new legislator. Ehlers held a doctorate in nuclear physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and had been a physics instructor at Michigan’s Calvin College. He understood our presentation, but he wanted to hear what our adversaries had to say.
Scope of practice disputes can be among the most intensely lobbied battles in the Capitol, and this was certainly the case here. I personally put in hundreds of hours planning, educating and coaxing members of the state House Public Health Committee, whose Democratic Chair Rep. David Evans, of Macomb County, saw this as clearly a “no-win” situation for the committee members. Whatever the committee did, one group of professionals and one lobbying firm would be upset, and Chairman Evans realized it.
Inside of a week after our meeting with Ehlers, I received a call from Tom Cleary, the lobbyist representing the other side. Cleary was a veteran, well-respected lobbyist. “Fred, we need to work something out,” he said. I agreed to meet with him at 3 p.m. at Dimitri’s Restaurant, a time when very few patrons would be in the downtown Lansing restaurant. We both realized that the Public Health Committee members didn’t want to be caught in the middle of a heavily lobbied turf war among professional groups.
Cleary explained how his group felt. As I listened, I immediately thought about Ehlers’ statement that he wanted to hear from the other side before he made a commitment to back our proposal. I suggested to Cleary that we could propose that Evans create a special subcommittee of the Public Health Committee to be chaired by Ehlers. The only problem with that was Ehlers was a Republican, which in the mid-1980s was the minority party. Nevertheless, Cleary liked the idea, and sought permission from his client to seek an exception to the rule that the majority party always chairs committees and subcommittees. His client agreed, as did Democratic Committee Chair Evans.
In cramped quarters in one of the Michigan Capitol’s fourth floor committee room, Subcommittee Chair Ehlers opened the meeting with this statement:
“All right, we’re going to listen carefully to both sides, but I’ll tell you this right now; the most unreasonable side is going to lose.”
After that opening, it took the subcommittee less than an hour and a half to work out the details of a compromise narrowly crafted to meet the concerns of the MDs, while allowing optometrists a minimal degree of expansion of their scope of practice. The compromise then sailed through both houses of the Michigan Legislature and became law.
There were multiple winners as a result of this unusual process to address a tough problem. The health practitioners were generally satisfied with the change in the law. The Public Health Committee didn’t have to face unhappy interest groups. And, I believe that the public was well served by the change in the law.
It was truly remarkable that a freshman member of the minority party was given the gavel by the majority party to work through a tough challenge. I can’t recall of seeing or even hearing of a similar arrangement, but it stands as an example of a certain level of bipartisan cooperation in an earlier era.
My biggest takeaway, though, was acquiring an appreciation for the presence of two people, both of whom set high standards and each who are no longer active in the Legislature.
So, here’s to Tom Cleary, now deceased, who suggested a meeting with his opponent, which allowed for the development of mutual trust and creativity. I have deep respect for Cleary as he showed me a way to solve a problem that I could not have imagined before that episode.
And likewise to Ehlers, who died in 2017, with his simple statement to all who heard his voice, essentially that “the best idea wins.” An attitude like that makes one proud to be a participant in the legislative process.
(Fred Fry is a long-time Michgian attorney who served as a staff attorney for the Michigan House of Representatives and later as a legislative advocate for numerous clients.)
