Bills to be thrown out if not passed by end of session

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Two bills passed earlier this year by the state House could be on their death beds if they don’t soon receive the attention of Senate committees.

Any bill not passed by both houses by the end of the current legislative session Dec. 31 will die without becoming law. To have a chance at becoming law, the bills need to be reintroduced at the start of the next legislative session and begin the lawmaking process anew.

With a still incomplete state budget and less than two months until the general November elections, which will render many current legislators virtually powerless, these bills face an uncertain future.

One bill that could halt the merger of the East Lansing Secretary of State office, 400 Albert Ave., and the Lansing Secretary of State office, 108 S. Washington Square, was passed by the House in February, 71-36, and currently is waiting to be taken up by the Senate committee on Local, Urban and State Affairs. The merger would result in the closure of the East Lansing office in favor of an expanded SUPER!Center, potentially in the Frandor area. Several other Secretary of State branch offices throughout the state face similar closures and mergers.

The new bill would introduce formal criteria for the closure of offices and place a moratorium on branches’ closures until the criteria were met. This would create a procedure for consolidation that would include a method for calculating savings created, the branch’s proximity to public transportation and a demonstration that the move would increase efficiency, according to a House legislative analysis of the bill.

The Secretary of State has not properly examined the closure’s potential effects on citizens, particularly MSU students, said state Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing, a co-sponsor on the bill.

“It makes it very much more difficult for students to use the branch office and that will probably result in fewer students registering to vote locally, which is probably something the Secretary of State, a Republican, would support,” Meadows said. “There’s a lot of disserviced people who are going to be even more disserviced by this move.”

Some statutes are in place regarding the placement of Secretary of State offices, said Doug Novak, director of government affairs with the Department of State.
There must be at least one branch per county, plus one per city with a population above 10,000, Novak said. Although not required, there are many other informal criterion the Secretary of State takes into consideration when closing an office to meet a budget, Novak said.

“(These criterion) are not required by law, but in practice, we have to we take a look at what our appropriations are, and then what the law says,” Novak said. “We try to mesh the appropriations with what our law says we have to have.”

Jury duty

Another bill facing its demise would allow judges to excuse full-time university students from jury duty. The bill was passed unanimously by the House in April and currently is in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

By state law, high school students already are excused. There is no statewide law excusing students of higher education institutions, Meadows said.
“There’s no uniformity in the state,” Meadows said. “Some (judges) … allow students to just bail on it because they recognize they have other things they need to be doing, and then there are others (who will not).”

Meadows said he is confident that this bill still will pass, despite the little time remaining.

“I think it’ll be taken up because it’s just a common sense thing to do and I think there’s support on both sides of the aisle,” Meadows said.

Although state Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is not opposed to the bill, it might not be taken up by the Committee before the legislative session ends, he said.

“It depends on how quickly the budget moves and what our session schedule is now and between the election and what our lame duck session looks like,” Kuipers said. “(There are) just a lot of ‘what ifs.’”

If the bill is not passed before the end of the session, Meadows said he plans to reintroduce it to the new legislature.

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