Two hot-button issues manifest in legislation are expected to work their way to Gov. Rick Snyder’s desk this week after being OK’d by the state Legislature on Tuesday.
The first bill concerns emergency financial managers — individuals or firms who are appointed by the governor to clean up financial troubles at insolvent communities across the state.
The bill heated up a partisan battle in the state’s Republican-led Legislature. Detractors say the legislation goes too far in allowing the state to dissolve local units of government and granting nearly unbridled powers to the financial managers to carry out their tasks, among other arguments.
Proponents, though, deem the legislation to be necessary in light of increasing economic troubles faced by the state and communities therein. Both sides point to a 1990 law that gives state officials the ability to intervene in troubled communities as an argument both for and against the legislation.
The second law — approved Tuesday by the state Senate — repeals Michigan’s decades-old item pricing law that requires most retail items be clearly priced.
During his State of the State address in January, Snyder called for an end to the law, saying it has cost consumers and retailers billions of dollars since its enactment in the late 1970s. Opponents claim the new law will remove consumer protections under the old law and cost thousands of jobs.
The new law requires prices be posted near items, but strikes the old requirement that every item be priced.
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