EDITORIAL: Ann Arbor State Reps Must Focus on Bipartisanship
ANN ARBOR STATE representatives Sen. Rebekah Warren, Rep. Jeff Irwin and Rep. Adam Zemke left Lansing for their break with crucial work undone, including a solution to funding road repairs in Michigan. Republicans are primarily to blame for the fact that Lansing legislators couldn’t hammer out a plan to fix the state’s crumbling roads and bridges. However, Democrats pushed other tax concessions in return for supporting Sen. Randy Richardville’s road-funding plan.
Collectively, Warren, Irwin and Zemke left the bulk of their proposed bills stalled in committees. While, as Rep. Irwin has said, it’s no easy time for a Democrat in Lansing, Ann Arbor’s three state representatives have little to show for their past session in Lansing and over the past 24 months.
When she ran in 2010, Sen. Warren assured local voters she—not former Michigan House Speaker Pro Tempore Pam Byrnes—was the candidate to send to Lansing. Sen. Warren argued that as a state representative she had shown herself capable of bipartisanship. Over the past session (and the majority of her time in Lansing), we have seen little in the way of bipartisanship on the part of Ann Arbor’s state senator. The bulk of her proposed legislation remains in committee. The majority of her proposed amendments died, unsupported. Her ability to represent her constituents’ needs has been undermined by what has turned out to be a chronic inability to keep her campaign promise to have the skill to work with the state’s Republican lawmakers.
State Representative Jeff Irwin, a career public servant, moved from the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners to the Michigan House with Sen. Warren’s support. While he made no promises to work in concert with his colleagues across the aisle, he has done so on occasion. However, like Sen. Warren, the bulk of Rep. Irwin’s proposed bills this session have never emerged from committee and the bulk of his proposed amendments to bills have found little support among his Republican colleagues in the House. Like Sen. Warren, Rep. Irwin’s two years in the Michigan House have resulted in precious few legislative achievements.
From a resolution to declare September 29-October 5, 2014, as French-Canadian Heritage Week in the state of Michigan to a resolution to urge all Michigan citizens to observe Memorial Day and to recognize and contemplate the true spirit of the holiday, to a resolution to declare April 10, 2014, as Robotics Day in the state of Michigan, Rep. Zemke has spent the past session proposing legislation, the bulk of which has been referred to committee and introducing resolutions, such as the ones, above. Over the past two years, he has also introduced resolutions to urge the U.S. Congress to implement “fair and just immigration,” “to expand the use of Food Assistance Program dollars to include personal hygiene products and home cleaning supplies” and to “urge Congress to raise permanently the cap on new H1-B temporary work visas available to immigrant professionals.”
We believe our state representative must spend less time telling the U.S. Congress what it should do and more time finding ways to get his own colleagues in the House to work with him on what are important bipartisan issues he has championed, including alternative energy, tax policy proposals and legislation that would positively impact veterans.
Sen. Warren and Reps. Irwin and Zemke support marriage equality, environmentalism and economic justice. However, we believe it’s time for them to find common ground wherever they can with less progressive Democrats, as well as with Republicans in Lansing. We urge them to find threads of bipartisanship rather than craft resolutions urging Congress to act. We urge Ann Arbor’s state representatives to serve pragmatically—to work to find eventual political support for issues which impact their districts—starting with the roads and the Pall/Gelman 1,4 dioxane plume.