Representative Ranjeev Puri i the new House Democratic leader.

He's in the queue.

He'll join us in the conversation later.

But our lead story is lawmakers are back for the new year and what's on the agenda?

Around the water table, Craig Mauger, Jordan Hermani and Rick Pluta sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in par by Bellwether Public Relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpt.com And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Welcome to Studio C. Happy New Year, everybody.

Everybody who survived the holidays.

And as the old movie said, they're back.

Let's take a look.

A new Michigan House composed of 65 men and 45 women, mostly between the ages of 45 and over 65, met for the first time today under Republican House control.

The Democrats had control last year, but now the Republicans have 58 votes and the D's 52.

And according to tradition, the new Democratic House leade endorsed the nomination of Matt Hall to be the Republican speaker with a warning about, quote, petty politics.

Bipartisanship isn't just a buzzword, it's a necessity.

Representative Hall will be presented with the opportunity to reach across the aisle to find common ground, ensuring this chamber prioritizes pragmatic policy over petty politics and in keeping with the unity theme of the day.

All the Democrats joined the Republicans in supporting Mr. Hall to be speaker by a 110 to nothing vote.

Speaker Hall told everybod that with his party in charge, it would restore balance to state government.

That means there would still be a Democratic governor and a Democratic senator, but the Republicans would have a stronger voice this year than they did last year.

And so I just want to tell everyone here that was part of that.

You know, we did i and you were all part of this.

This is for you.

We've been the ones over here and the other.

But I'll just say this.

We did it.

And I hope you share in this today, because this is a long time coming and bringing balance back to state government.

But behind the scenes, the speaker broke a long standing tradition.

He is banning the governors legislative lobbyists from appearing on the House floor.

He's also created a host of oversight committees to examine the conduct of the governor's departments, The Democratic stat Attorney General, Dana Nessel, and perhaps Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

He made no reference to any of that in his short speech as he talked about working together.

However, one unnamed Democrat believes the speaker's ban on the governor's lobbyist was not a sign of unity, but, quote, petty.

And so it begins.

Well, there you go.

That was kind of a mixed bag from Mr. Hall.

Yes, indeed.

I mean, well, Democrats can't say that they couldn't have seen this coming.

I mean, if you want to talk about bipartisanship, let's just think back to last month when bills were being rammed through in the dead of night with only Democratic votes backing them.

So, I mean, you're kind o in the bed that you've made now.

That being said, yeah.

Hall does seem to be taking a very, very sharp attack on transparency, on oversight with respect to the current administration.

And we will have to see how that bodes for the relationships between Senate Democratic leader Winnie Brinks and Governor Gretchen Whitmer, considerin he will have to work with them in order to get any kind of Republican policy across the finish line this year.

I thin along with the fact that he did that, Speaker Hall is actually delaying sending to the governor bills that were adopted in the last session is a strong signal that he is going to use every lever and button of power available to try and get his way in the state House in ways that we have not seen for a very, very long time.

There are two sides in Matt Hall, and there have been for a long time two such you.

Well, two that I focused on for these remarks.

One side is the deal maker, Matt Hall.

He's made a lot of deals with Democrats over his time in the legislature.

He's taken moderate stances on firearm regulation and some other things.

And there's this other side that's this red meat give to the base of the Republican Party, very Trump like operator sometimes.

And it's this question of which side is he going to go with?

How is he going to operate or is it a combination of both?

Is it one hour he is the person trying to turn over tables in the capital and the other hou he's meeting with the governor and talking to her about how can we get economic development projects done, that he's he is the person now that's going to drive everything in the capital, it seems like.

And he is the guy that seems to love politics right now and wants to b there, wants to be messing with the Democrats, wants to change how Lansing is operating.

Look at the speaker, can d whatever a speaker wants to do.

I'm just suggesting in the in the spirit of the day, which is supposed to be unity, by the way, he was concerned that there weren' going to be 110 votes up there.

You know who is concerned about probably some of his own caucus members from the Freedom Caucus.

And he he has not confirmed this, but he tipped his hand when he said one of the legislators that had been sick said, I need you here.

And I thought, boy, that's a strange thing to say because you got 100.

Well, doing a little dig deep, the Freedom Caucu could have taken a walk on him.

So he's concerned.

He gave then in the House rules something that they badly wanted and something that was kind of unprecedented for how the Michigan House operates, saying, hey, your staff, the staff members of the individual members, they're under your guidance, not the speaker's leadership.

In the past, the speaker has actually been the person managing under the official guise of how the House operates, every employee.

And he said, I'm not going to be able to take away your staff if you do something I don't like.

The Freedom Caucus members, Josh Schriver, Jim DaSana they love this.

And I'm guessing that's part o the reason they voted for him.

But let's but, but, but let's not assume that Matt Hall doesn't have in min other ways to corral his caucus other than things like affecting office staff and privileges you know, maybe off the floor.

He can't, you know deny them the right to to vote.

That's in the Constitution.

But there are still a lot of other powers.

And they'll start wit sitting on a bill that you want.

Okay You go there and work backwards.

All right.

So first Bill's out of the chute.

They do deal with this ti thing and the Senate has a plan.

The House has a plan.

Read the tea leaves here for me.

Yeah.

So, I mean the biggest among them is one, we would still see a $15 minimum wage in both plans.

It does just differ by a year or so.

I believe the House plan would put it by 2029.

The Senate plan would put it by 2027.

The real sticking point here is wher we're at with the tipped wage.

The House plan, backed by Republicans, keeps the tipping wage of the status quo, which I believe is 38% of whatever the minimum wages right now.

That's $3.93 an hour.

The Senate plan would increase that to roughly 60%, I believe, of the minimum wage by sometime in 2030.

I believe it's 2035.

And that's kind of where we se the negotiation room for this.

And that's where we'll probably be able to find some common ground.

But Republicans seem pretty firm on keeping it at that 38% figure.

It looks like the tip folks like the House plan a little more than the Senate.

Yeah, the restaurant industry wants that 38% to maintain their moderate House Democrats are trying to find some path in between.

And there's a lot of peopl that we have not heard from yet.

The interest groups that put this issue before the legislature in 2018 who want that 100% still.

I think the UAW spoke out in lame duck that they wanted it raised to 100%.

And that's where we talk about changing how tipping works, changing how the restaurant industry works.

And we're going to have this huge fight now play out.

Is it 38%?

Is it 60 or does it stay at 100?

And no matter where you go, there's going to be a large faction of the political scene angry.

And I think in the argument that argument seems at least intuitively pretty strong, which is that this is something that was a petition campaign, that people signed them and that backed by heavy progressive donors.

I mean, there are some majo progressive players behind this, and they're not going to just watch the House Dem majority that they helped get there.

Hand this over to the Republicans and the restaurant industry, and that's going to be forgotten.

At the same time, though, what the one thing the restaurant industry has going for them is they've been really able to rally restaurant restaurateurs, workers to I mean, at the Capitol, we've had a number of demonstrations, people filling the halls.

I went to one backed by one fair Wage, which is the group that wants to do away with the tipped wage.

One was the place that I went to Cadillac Place in Detroit.

They didn't even know that this event was going on.

It got moved outside.

There were more reporters there than people.

And there was one person who had worked in a restaurant before, two lawmakers and basically the argument was, well, please, that's not very convincing.

They are really leaning on Winnie, the leader in the Senate.

The good state senator over in West Michigan.

Look at they got a lot of troops.

I think I think they're going to get something out of this.

I do.

And the good news is there's a deadline.

Lawmakers always work better if they can look over there and say, you know, we got to get this puppy done by February 21 or sooner.

Well, yes although they could conceivably go past that deadline and then come up with, you know, something else, because the you know, the minimum wage is going up in stages.

It's just every time it moves up in a different stage, then you lose a certain amount of leverage.

All right.

Let's talk about the governor for a second.

She's not endorsing in the governor's race.

Were you surprised by that?

No, I'm not surprised by it.

I mean, I think she's going to try to find a path to unify the party going forward, if that's possible.

And why would she get involved in this?

It's going to feature possibly her running mate, Garlin Gilchrist, and then possibly the secretary of state, who might be the earl front runner for the nomination.

So wading into thi would be extremely complicated.

Some might argue tradition.

Governors introduced the governors embrace their lieutenant governor is, as you pointed out, what was it that didn't work?

Has that really worked?

Not at all.

And I don't think it's an acknowledgment that Garland will if he gets into this start out, is probably the underdog in this race, whether it's against Pete Buttigieg, whether it's against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who's already out there touring the state, talking to voters.

You know, he would have work to do.

I'm not saying it's impossible for him to make this a huge race.

There is a lane for someone to be a challenger to Benson.

But I mean, he would have a lot of work to do and ground to make up.

And let's not forget, too, that in the general election that it's the pattern in Michigan has been that the successor to the governor of one party is from a different party.

And in cycles, we'll give you eight years.

Okay.

If you want, you can do it.

And let's try something else.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

And so that's got to figure into the machinations here.

You what do you do?

You know, Detroit Mayor Mik Duggan looming over all of this?

I mean, I mean, that' going to make it very difficult for Democrats to if he stays in the race, he will take some votes from the Democratic nominee.

And that's that's that's going to be a tough.

And she clearly, clearly did not want to get into the Duggan story.

But he basically said, I'm not going to be critical.

Well, her candidate for Democratic Party chair Curtis Hertel is critical of Mike Duggan.

Can the governor sit this thing out?

I mean, your guess is as good as mine, frankly, Duggan, the issue here with Duggan is he continues to run as an independent.

Which one, depending on how long the voters memories can be in this gubernatorial race, he's got a heck of a poin with looking back at lame duck and the dysfunction that happened there with House Democrats.

There's a commercial read to be done there that there is.

And so, you know, in which he was involved in I mean, his staff was right on this idea that this benefits him.

I don't quite understand.

I was told by an unconfirmed source he was stirring the pot to make sure it didn't work.

Well, I think he was tryin to get some bills that he wanted across the finish line, which put him involved in this whole this whole process, whether he was trying to cause disruption or trying to get these measures that were important to the city of Detroit through the through the end.

You know, those ar two different ways to view it.

But, I mean, he was involved in this.

He is a political player in the Capitol.

He's been there for years and decades.

And for him to say, hey, this dysfunction is crazy.

Well, he's been a part of it for a long time.

We will make the point about, you know, you know, he's he's a nonpartisan bi partizan, nonpartisan partizan, political, nonpartisan.

Up until a couple months ago, he was a loud backer of Joe Biden.

He endorsed Kamala Harris when she became the Democratic nominee.

And then after she lost, he said, oh, I can't believe how the system works.

I mean, those are the facts of the situation.

And by the way, onc there is a Democratic nominee, I mean, Gretchen Whitmer really has no choice at that point.

That's true.

But the the strategy from the Duggan people is they're not going to play the game.

I called him up on a story when we had Jocelyn Benson out here.

She never referred to him by name, but basic number, the firefighter thing, you got to go under the fire.

He might save some lives as a can.

You guys give me a comment?

Yeah.

They wrote back and said, basically, we're not getting drawn into this, which is an interesting strategy.

So none of the work that we do get one side, get the other side with him, we're going to get crickets.

I mean.

Well, and you see that, too with the Whitmer administration, with the Trump administration now incoming, they're taking a far more step back from being the fire throwers that they wer in his previous administration.

They're much more committed to workin with the Trump administration.

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if you do start to kind of see that swing because you do hear from peopl constantly how sick they are of just all of this fighting, this partizanship, please, let's get something done.

And then on top of that I mean, it's just not conducive when you when you think about actually getting something done, all of this arguing back and forth, it results in virtually nothing.

Again, if we go back and look at lame duck, so when you have a Republican state House that you've got to deal with and there is plenty of time once Trump is in office to start playing that role, let's have a pool.

When do we get the picture of Trump and the governor together in the Oval Office the over and under?

Don't answer that.

I'm I'm hanging somewhere around.

Never.

Really.

I think you'd be wrong.

All right.

Let's bring in our gues who is the new Democratic leader of the of the House, representative Are you with us?

I am.

I am.

Congratulations on your new job.

So how's life in the minority?

And it's a it's a transition.

Obviously, we're you know, just the first week in here.

But, you know, things move fast in Lansing, but I'm excite to take the take the helm here.

So is there anything that Mr. Hall did this week or prior to that that gave you pause?

You know, I like lik we were talking about earlier, I think, you know, again, it's the first week, you know, there's a number of of norms and tradition and precedent that I think ar commonplace in the institution.

Something gone very different.

You know, we're not trying to make overarching opinions as we are still in the first week here.

But but we're still kind of waiting for the cues of how this is exactly going to go.

Yes.

With all due respect, though, in your remarks, you didn't use the term petty politics.

And what were you thinking when you wrote that line?

Well, I think we should fray away from that.

You know, What's an example of that, banning the governor's lobbyist is that petty politics.

It's certainly unprecedented.

You know, And, you know, and I think, you know, as we were negotiating the House rules, you know, not getting a chance to actually do that in good faith and just kind of understanding that we are here to get stuff done, you know, and there's kind of multiple ways that these two years can go.

We can actually work together, come together for the for the people of Michigan, which is something I think, you know, we have always talk about or we can get drowne in partizan and petty politics that that seems to be more commonplace nowadays.

that that seems to be more commonplace nowadays.

To that point, you mentioned House rules.

Yesterday during a roundtable, House Speaker Matt Hall said that you offered some counter rules, one of which deal with as part of the House rules.

Now there are earmarks that need to be disclosed.

Who is backing them?

Where are they going to?

He said that your edition o House Rules that you put forward would have done away with that.

And I'm curious if one that that's true.

And two if so, why?

the House rules that we you know, the House rule that we came back with were just aligned with the House rules that I think were adopted last term.

And what would some updates respecting where they wanted to go this year?

You know, we're well awar that the dynamics have changed, that the Democratic Party is no longer in majority.

And so we obviously respect that cadence.

But the rules that we came back were no overarching changes that were any more really that drastic from the and really aligned with the rules that we had last term down here.

But that's that's one that was pretty roundly blasted when it came to light.

Why did you keep that i your proposed set of rules then?

The so I myself was not involve in that particular negotiation.

But I can tell you, you know, I don't think there's anyone that's open to some level o transparency for these projects.

You know, there's a difference between transparency and weaponizing.

But yes, I think there's absolutely a need for more transparency in government.

Should lawmakers be required t disclose pork barrel spending?

You know, these kinds of grants that go millions of dollars sometimes to projects within their districts, but people maybe aren't aware of who's sponsoring them or who exactly is the intended recipient.

Do you believe that they should be in?

I believe there should be a level of transparency you know, and my understanding that there is some of that already.

But, you know, in the sense there is.

And I think, yes, I think the more transparent we can be, the better.

So you say a level.

What does that mean, though?

I'm sorry.

If you could just give more of an example.

No, what I wa saying is I believe that there's already a level of transparency.

I thought some of these things are disclosed as a sponsor and where it's going.

And if it's not, then yes I think increased transparency is a good thing.

Leader Former Speake Tate's a member of your caucus.

There are a bunch of bills, nine of them, that are, you know, viewed as important to some of your constituents, some of the groups that support the House Democrats.

He did not ensure that those bills were sent to the governor for her signature.

Have you asked him, because he's not telling us why did you not send these bills?

And if so, what did he say?

You know, it's I think, you know, as we're kind of getting into this new role, there's kind of a lot that's thrown at you.

And so you quickly become an expert in a lot of things, you know.

And so in some of these conversations that we've had about the nine bills, I think it's you know, I don't know exactly kind of where the process broke down.

I know Hall is taking credit for it or Speaker Hall's i taking credit for it yesterday.

And some reporting they're saying he's not transmitting transmitting these.

From our initial conversations, we were told that everything was done.

It was very commonplace for some of these bills to not be transmitted by December 31st that the fact that some of them went into the new year is, again, is just more becaus of procedural issues of trying of presenting bills to the governor takes time and and this is kind of the normal run of business and so is my understandin that there's not a timing issue involved here.

But but something else about these nine bills.

How would you?

Did you ask Speaker Tate, if the bills why he didn't ensure the bills?

That was my question.

I'll just ask one more time.

Yes.

So I have no talked to Speaker Tate directly, but I have talked to his tea and we talked to him last year and we were told that, again, everything's following the normal procedure and that they have no reason to think that these wouldn't get done.

How would you engage wit the House Republican leadership if they sit on bill that were adopted by the House and the Senate and sent to the governor and are sitting in, you know, I guess the clerk's office, because they're not being sent over to the governor, What what would you do in the event that that's an indefinite course?

You know, I think that would be extremely frustrating and I think it would be just a clear violation of precedent.

And and there's actually some some legal concerns here.

And I and I know, again, you know, it' we're just a few days into this.

It's hard to make overarching opinions and statements and trying to understand what's happening.

There's a little bit of a gra area here because we're still.

Exactly you kind of figure out where the process broke down.

But I know in talking to stakeholders and talking to two legal expert and talking to our counterparts, you know, everyone's ready to kind of fight this to the highest levels, including litigation.

And so, again, for me, it's kind of understanding, fact, understanding what is and why things are happening here.

And then we'll be ready to obviously proceed.

And by any means necessary.

So you expect a lawsuit if he doesn't forward this to the governor?

I've talked to plenty who are interested in seeing that and going down that route.

Who?

Stakeholders I've talked to, you know, I don't think it's going to come internally from us, but engaging with, you know, various people in the Lansing community, you know, again, lik we're talking about litigation.

So I don't want to jump the gun here, but I can tell you have had multiple conversations of of those interested in pursuing litigation, if that's what it comes to.

Representative, did you use the language witch hunt to describe the speaker's creation of these oversight committees, to look at the governor' administration and other things?

Did you use that term?

I did in the sense where I don't think that governmen should be used as a witch hunt.

Again, like with everythin we are doing, it is really hard to make overarching opinions as we're two or three days into the term.

Well, what do we do?

Second, what is the difference between a witch hunt and doing your due diligence to see if tax dollars are being spent appropriately?

Well, you know, there's a there's a difference between transparency and using committees to to uncover that.

And there's a difference between weaponizing it and politicizing it.

And so, you know, all I'm saying is that I don't think there's anyone that's against more transparency.

But there I think there are people that are against weaponizing these committees to feed a political narrative or for political gain.

So Mr. Hall is just out to get the governor.

That's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm trying to say is I'm not I'm not here to make overarching opinions.

I'm saying that's not that's exactly what we should not be doing.

And that's what I hope that we don't do.

But when you are laying a foundation to this, that is something that could happen.

And so, you know, we again, we'r into the first week of the term, so there's a lot of uncertainty into how this is going to go.

But if you are reading the tea leaves, it's you know, you can see that we're getting set up for the possibility of those things happening.

When we go back to lame duck, you know, Karen Whitsett, Representative Karen Whitsett of Detroit got a lot of flak for skipping session.

Just curious where you're at with respect to conversations of potentiall kicking her out of the caucus.

You know, our relationshi with Rep. Whitsett is special.

I think this term is really not going to be different than how it's been in previous and previous terms, especially when we're in the minority.

You know, I have not served with her as I'm only in my my my third term.

I know she's been here for a term or two longer than me.

But, you know, her normal cadence in the minority has been not to really participate in the Democratic caucus to kind of sit out.

And so I you know, in the few conversations I've had with her, they've been kind of pleasant in nature.

And we've kind of reached a mutual understanding that she does no want to partake in the caucus.

And I think, you know, for the time being, for the short term that that works with the broader caucus of just a way that's going to work for everybody.

Do you consider he a member of the caucus or not?

She is a member of our caucus.

To follow up on that.

Representativ Peter Herzberg was also somebody who was blamed towards the end of term.

Where where are you guys out with respect to potentially punishing him?

And then I guess as a follow to that speaker Hall alleged that yo potentially in through committee assignments were using committee assignments punitively.

And I was wondering if it was with respect to either one of those two members.

Yeah.

Well, you know, it's funny you bring that up.

I have not submitted committee assignments and so I'm not sure where Speaker Hall is coming up with that.

We have a very independen committee on committee process and you have that I'm not involved in the independent bodies still collecting surveys and data just like they've done, you know, term after term here in Lansing.

And so and nothin has been submitted from our end to the Republican Party.

And so I'm not sure ho it's possible to punish members when that has not been done.

And so I think, you know, as we talk about norms and traditions, I think it is really important that we respect each caucus to make the decisions for that caucus.

But I am not punished anybody.

And so I think those are that that's a blatant lie.

Representative, do you have time to stay for overtime?

Could you do that or not, sir?

I can.

Okay, good.

But befor we put a ribbon on this thing, who are the stakeholders that wanted you to be in this leadership spot?

You know, it's actually interesting.

With.

With my leadership run was kind of abnormal.

I really kind of had an independent run that was very last minute, really didn't kind of cut any deals or or or privately, publicly talked with with many stakeholders.

I really engaged my caucus individually as 52 members and earned the respect of those those 52.

Mr. Leader, stand by We're going to do close credits.

We'll come back more of this.

You're having fun so far?

Yeah, I'm loving it.

Oh, that's the right attitude.

Go to wkar.org For overtime with the good leader from the Democrati caucus.

See, on the other side, production of Off th record is made possible in part by bellwether public relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com For more off the record, visit wkar.org Michigan public television stations have contributed to the production costs of off the record.