After 26 years in the Michigan Legislature and an appointment as Michigan’s chief budget officer in the administration of Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm, I found myself serving as chair of the State Officers Compensation Commission (SOCC) – the board that has the unenviable job of setting pay for top elected officials.
I should add that I did not exactly campaign for the job. The then-SOCC Chair, former Senate Majority Leader Dan DeGrow, R-Port Huron, nominated me, a Democrat, as new SOCC Chairman since his term was ending.
I owe him one for that. Who would know that our successful across-the-aisle relationship would rest on one of the most fundamentals of human behavior – the timing of family “birth” days? After all, any family can tell you: babies rule!
Here we draw the comparison to how strict practical priorities drove agreements of the past, while today’s agreements seem bogged down in endless political, shall we say, discourse, or more plainly, political yammer.
SOCC was established in the Michigan Constitution of 1963. The commission’s seven members are appointed by the governor, and tasked with determining recommendations for the salaries of the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state as well as justices of the Supreme Court and members of the Michigan Legislature. Our recommendations must then be within a Joint Resolution approved by both Michigan’s House and Senate chambers.
During that time, I had been meeting personally with current legislative leaders in pursuit of crafting a resolution that would pass both chambers.
One key legislative leader told me not to recommend any increase for legislators. I didn’t mmediately disagree, but responded that legislators hadn’t seen any pay increase in 20 years.
When the discussion turned to raises for other state officers, I said that the one government office that deserved an increase was Michigan’s Attorney General. At that time, the Michigan Attorney General was paid $112,000 a year, an amount that just seemed inappropriate. My research found that no other attorney general serving in a major state was paid less than $112,000 per year. More than that, fully half of the attorneys in the Michigan AG’s office were paid more than $112,000 a year.
In these times, it is more difficult to make recommendations when some legislative leaders believe that only justices of the Michigan Supreme Court should see pay increases.
It’s also a sad state of affairs when even SOCC has become so political. There seems to be a fight over everything now. The leaders in government should spend their time determining how to make government function more effectively. Probably 80% of legislative action is really not political. Legislators spend more time assessing how to evaluate, debate, negotiate or whatever action is necessary to pursue that 20% that is political. It seems silly and embarrassing to fight over every possible issue.
Interestingly, DeGrow and I served on the SOCC together more than 40 years after we had started and completed our legislative careers. We always seemed to work well together despite our differences. I came from the city of Flint with very strong labor ties. DeGrow came from a much more Republican area in and around Port Huron. At the time we started our careers, and before we served on the SOCC together, two of the very biggest issues were unemployment compensation and workers compensation reform.
I never shied from the tough stuff, and the then-House Speaker Gary Owen, D-Ypsilanti, would often ask me to handle the negotiations of unemployment comp and workers comp knowing I would not only protect labor but also work toward legislation that would pass both the Democratic House and the Republican Senate.
In 1986, the major workers comp reform legislation, passed in 1981, was set to sunset. Republican Senate Majority Leader John Engler, ultimately Michigan’s 46th governor, named DeGrow as the lead negotiator to work out a deal with the House Democrats, then majority in that chamber. I was named to the same role for the House Democrats.
We all knew that we did not want to go back to the old workers comp tort system, which essentially established how a workplace injury occurred and assessed whether blame could be determined. So the task became reaching an agreement that both sides – Democrats and Republicans – could live with, and what Democratic Gov. James Blanchard would sign. DeGrow and I both trusted and respected each other. In today’s world of term limits and deep political divisions, however, that same kind of working relationship is all but impossible to achieve.
DeGrow and I finalized our negotiations through a most unusual circumstance. As it turned out, both our wives were expecting babies the following week. We told leadership that once we got the call from home we would be gone for at least three weeks. Hey, we knew the priorities. So we put together the key components that both sides should find acceptable and submitted our joint plan to our leadership.
Our joint message: “This is it. Our negotiations are over, and we are going home for new baby duty.” Soon after, the package passed both chambers, and the governor signed it into law. The earlier 1981 sunset on the workers’ compensation reform package was eliminated and needed changes favored by both sides were put into effect. Michigan ‘s workers’ compensation law still remains one of the best packages in the country for both workers and business.
Indeed, in this bipartisan agreement, it was clear: Babies rule.
(Bob Emerson is a Flint Democrat who served in the Michigan House and Michigan Senate for more than a decade and was state budget director under Gov. Jennifer Granholm.)
