May 5, 2023 - Sen. Thomas Albert | OFF THE RECORD

(upbeat music) - [Tim] Thanks for tuning in.

Our guest this week is Republican State Senator Thomas Albert with his take on the School Aid Budget Bill.

Our lead story, "The hardening of the State Capitol from Gun Violence."

On the OTR panel, Kyle Mellin, Jordyn Hermani, and Emily Lawler sit in with us as we get the inside out.

"Off The Record."

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Production of "Off the Record" is made possible in part by Martin Waymire, a full service strategic communications agency, partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing, and public policy engagement.

Learn more @martinwaymire.com.

And now this edition of "Off the Record" with Tim Skubick.

- Thank you very much.

Welcome to "Off the Record" studio C. Little bit later on, the Senator will join us on the budget for K through 12.

But let's talk about safety at the State Capitol in keeping guns out.

For decades, the attitude under the dome was people don't have metal detectors in their homes.

And so why should there be metal detectors in the People's House and the Senate?

That was the attitude then.

The attitude has changed.

- There have been a lot of very public tragedies out there in schools and public buildings and malls.

- John Truscott was the vice chair of the State Capitol Commission when a more serious look at preventing firearms in the capitol actually began.

Metal detectors, however could have produced long lines at the Capitol like they do at airports.

But under the new technology that can be avoided, it'll be just like going to the store.

- People can walk through at normal speed and it detects it will go off if somebody has a weapon on their body and it will the technology helps law enforcement know who has the weapon and where it is.

- [Tim] 73% Of all state capitals have some method to keep guns out of the process.

And the decision today to ask for bids, well, it will be expensive.

- Given staffing and equipment, maintenance of the equipment that we are probably looking at $5 million.

- [Tim] In Addition to the walkthrough detection, the state also wants to install artificial intelligence and they're talking to Zero Eyes.

A company that does that.

That technology is now used in the Oxford schools.

However, this Republican lawmaker who chaired a house panel on school shootings says he opposes this proposal and if he can, he'll try to block it.

- This isn't the way to go about keeping us safe.

Making this a kind of a fortress isn't what we want our kids to experience.

- [Tim] Will you look at ways to try to stop this if you can?

If there's a vehicle to do that?

- I would.

- [Tim] The State Capitol Commission expects to see some bids within a week or so, as for attempts to block it, stay tuned.

So Emily, when you heard this story, what was your first thought?

- Honestly, it brings Michigan in line with a lot of other state capitals.

- [Tim] We've been an outlier for a long time.

- We have been an outlier.

You know, you walk into almost any other state capital and there's a security process to go for, certainly not like a TSA level security process, but most of them do put you through a process and make sure that you're not carrying anything harmful.

Similar to when I walk into the district courthouse.

Right?

I think it's a pretty standard procedure for getting into government buildings.

And really, I go back to the, I think it was April protest in 2020 where there were guns in the gallery.

I mean, there were multiple lawmakers who were visibly and vocally upset about that.

- Well, they said they feared for their lives.

- Absolutely.

- And you know, I think that's a fair assessment of sort of the mood and tenor of that day.

Obviously this could prevent something like that from happening in the future.

They've already taken some measures on guns, certainly, but I think this would be an added layer of comfort for some of the lawmakers who are just trying to do their job.

- I mean, Emily summed it up perfectly, like this will just bring us into line with so many other states.

I really don't understand the argument against it.

Honestly, I've not really heard a good one besides, "It's my constitutional right to carry."

You can't carry in many places in this country and your constitutional Second Amendment right can be a bridge.

For instance, when you go to jail, they don't give you a gun there.

So there are instances where you would just simply are not allowed to have firearms.

So this sort of weird take that, oh, by doing this, we're somehow making things just more tyrannical and cracking down.

I don't think it's that big of an ask to say, please don't bring your gun into a state capitol.

- Well in addition to the lawmakers, we have over a hundred thousand school kids that come through the building every year, Kyle.

- Yeah, that's true.

You know, guns in the Capitol certainly weren't restricted to that protest on 2020.

We've had gun day at the Capitol every year.

It was an annual thing-- - And school kids intermingling with, and some schools have actually canceled their trip.

to the capitol based on the fact that it was gun day.

- Yeah, that's true.

But what came to my mind when I saw this story is that we do have a change in leadership in the state capitol.

I mean, that's clear.

The Democrats are in charge now.

So it didn't really come as a surprise to me that this would be a result had the Republicans stayed in charge.

I don't think that that story that you ran would've been timely or accurate it, but it also says it, it also tells me where we are going kind of as a society and where the polling has gone on this particular issue.

Republicans no longer if they ever did before, certainly do not now have polling on their side as far as protecting your Second Amendment right.

To carry and to carry it in specific places.

They have lost that argument.

And this to me is further proof that they've lost the argument and that the public is overwhelmingly supportive of something like this.

- Except when it comes to assault weapons, those polling numbers are not up in the 80s.

It's a little closer to 50/50.

- Right as far as just a flat out ban.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

So, but don't count the NRA out of this debate.

- Well, no.

I mean, they're still still very powerful.

But I mean, when you take a look at all the different gun control measures that are put out there, it's really pretty astounding to see 70%, 80% people are just tired of guns and to they want to have some type of reasonable restrictions.

We have reasonable restrictions on speech and other things, other rights.

I think just extending that to firearms, which could actually kill another human being.

I think the polling is shown is very popular.

- Because the argument is what if we do this?

Oh, you're gonna make it a gun for, I've seen several people comment before on, on articles or a spouse publicly, you know, a person who wants to sneak a gun in is gonna do it anyways, and if you have no guns there, who's gonna stop 'em?

Well, the current operation of things isn't working.

We've seen that in Oxford schools.

We've seen that across the country with people getting shot for so much as ringing a doorbell.

So if we're not doing anything right now, clearly that is not working.

The capitol's trying to do something and we will see that bear out should it be installed.

- When this story broke, the first guy, I thought it was Senator Joe Schwartz because he was the one that really carried the flag that said this is the people's house.

But with all due respect to the good Senator, I think even he would concede that the climate that he spoke in 20 years ago is a day and night situation to what we have today.

Yes.

- Yeah, I really think the culture on this has evolved just dramatically.

Even in my time here, Kyle sent me to cover an open carry rally when I was an intern with Mers probably in 2010 or so.

- Did you pack?

- I did it, but I remember, it was funny 'cause I distinctly remember, you know, open carry rally, people have the guns strapped to them.

I'm interviewing them and a group of school kids came in and I remember the rally organizers saying like, "Hey, you know, kids are going in this building," "we don't wanna alarm them," "so let's just keep it outside this year, whatever."

And then, you know, two or three years later it was, "We're going in."

"We don't care if these kids are canceling their trips."

I just think that people have become really entrenched and that, you know, the pro-gun rights people perhaps rightfully are reading the tea leaves and just becoming really defensive and trying to, you know, hang on to whatever ground they have left.

And the capitol was, until recently one of those places.

- Alright, let's turn to the US Senate race Republicans.

They're gonna feel somebody, aren't they?

- Oh there will be a candidate, right.

- Are you available?

- No, I'm afraid not.

- You'd have to take a pay cut, right?

- Well yeah, I'd have to take, I'd have to take a complete pay cut.

I'd have to take, leave my job, but no yeah, the Republicans, they're looking for a top tier candidate.

They do have-- - What's a top tier candidate?

- Somebody who comes to the race with a level of funding or organization that would make them rise to the top of any type of name recognition poll.

And the two candidates that they have announced right now don't qualify for either, Nikki Snyder or this Hoover guy who's gotten in.

Neither of them have widespread name recognition.

In the case of Nikki Snyder, she ran for Congress a few years ago.

Didn't get the signatures for that.

Even though she's on the board of education, doesn't bring a lot of gravitas.

So neither of them, to the extent that either of them can sell fund right now, we haven't seen it.

And so the Democrats right now with Alyssa Slot can pretty much have the field to themselves right now as far as generating money and getting themselves ready to run a professional campaign next year.

- Well, not to mention competing against somebody like Elisa Slotkin, should that be, you know, Democrats top choice.

You gotta bring a lot of money to the table.

Not to mention you're running a statewide race.

So you have to bring somebody that is able to speak to all walks of life here in Michigan.

And we have seen that with the Republican party, you know, just the recent election picking unpopular candidates that spoke to grassroots base such as Christina Carmo or Tudor Dixon.

You're able to win your primaries sure.

But when it evolves to the rest of the state, the rest of Michigan isn't buying what you're selling.

So you need to find somebody that hits both of those marks and with such a divided state Republican party across the state right now.

I don't know if that's something attainable.

- Well, that is a key point.

And is it a problem for a guy like Mike Rogers?

- I gotta think about that.

- Yeah, the pause is it all?

- Yeah, I mean I think that obviously we're still on the hunt for a big Republican name.

I think we're still on the hunt for someone who can bring some name recognition, that would be one certainly.

But I'm actually kind of surprised that more people haven't jumped in this race, especially, you know, we saw how crowded that gubernatorial field was just two years ago.

I'm surprised that we haven't seen some names crop up, some more grassroots efforts from people.

It just, I'm not sure what's so intimidating about that seat to Republicans.

I it's the biggest prize on the ticket and so far they're not really, you know, coalescing behind anyone who, who they can field for it.

- Isn't it amazing though that there is nobody on the congressional side, on the Republicans in going down to state Senate who hasn't stepped forward?

I mean they are more interested in keeping their position so that they can become a chairperson later down the line than they are about running for US Senate.

And part of it's history, Tim, I mean the Republicans don't win these US Senate seats.

You gotta go back to Spence Abraham.

- Kyle, if we take the name Trump out of this debate, you've got a whole bunch of people who are in.

- Oh yeah, you're thinking that Trump's gonna be a drag on this ticket.

- Well if you have to get pats, the Trump people, okay, you gotta get that 32% or a portion of that.

Okay.

I think what's gonna happen is that some outside Republicans, the mainstream establishment will pick a candidate and put it up against whoever the new chair of the party thinks might, will be the candidate.

Am I close or not?

- I mean even that's gonna be a hard route.

I think, you know, I Kyle pointed-- - I outspend them.

You outspend them.

- Yeah but Kyle pointed to our history.

I mean, John James was an incredibly strong candidate who lost twice, right?

So I really think that it's a hard, seat for Republicans to win and frankly, the party's in a weakened state where they're not really, you know, in a position to sort of play kingmaker, organize those chits and get it all in order.

- Yeah, I mean I think in the end there will be some self funder.

I mean there's some talk about this tunnel guy outta Wall Street coming in and getting into the race.

The Republicans seem to be kind of retreating to self funders or people from the private sector, whether it's John James or you know, Kevin Rinke or Perry Johnson or somebody who brings cash to the table.

Rick Snyder, I mean these types of candidates, there's a lot of 'em, the Republican party people who've got a lot of cash who say, "Hey, I can do this."

"I can step up, I can bring money to the table."

And I just have a feeling that's what they're gonna end up with 'cause that's the most viable candidate, but against the seasoned politician like Alyssa Slotkin, God, it's tough.

- But that's also to just one part of the puzzle though again, like you can have all the money in the world, but if you are not a candidate that speaks to the broader Michigan population, it's as good as not having any money at all.

So you need to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

- I don't know, with the self funders, I think we're gonna have to wait for a Super Bowl ad.

(all laughing) - Well, that's where they come out.

Look at the clock is ticking.

I mean there is time to get into this thing and I think there's some talks privately going on behind the scenes to coalesce a behind a consensus candidate.

Mike Rogers is running for president.

Okay, so if, if that doesn't work out, which the chances are maybe no, it's not gonna happen and maybe this is a fallback.

I dunno, what do you think of that?

- No, I think that people would love to see Mike Rogers come back, but, you know, he was on this program earlier, he's gotta move back to Michigan.

I mean, that would be kind of a starter.

I think he's living in Florida right now, but he would be a dream.

I think he would be a good candidate.

I'm not gonna say dream, but good one.

- His resume in swats would be kind of close intelligence committee, so that might neutralize some of that stuff, but we'll see what happens.

Alright.

We'd recorded earlier because of his schedule as Senator Albert who's gonna talk about the school aid bill.

So let's go to that.

Senator, welcome back to "Off The Record."

Nice to see you again, sir.

Let's talk about the K through 12 budget.

What's the most onerous thing that the Democrats have stuck into that bill that you don't like?

- I heard there was a swimming pool for a school district in there.

That's pretty outlandish.

I would say probably the biggest thing I was, I wish we would do differently was the $160 million to buy free lunch for everybody regardless of whether or not their parents are millionaires or billionaires.

I think we should have done my great start readiness plan, which would've been a heck of a lot better than what the admin and what the Democrats are putting out.

The Senate Democrats would've helped provide a lot more opportunities for four year olds to get access to education.

- Senator, what's wrong with a free lunch for everybody and breakfast?

- You know, I have kids.

I understand how much be obviously easier and better not to pay.

The difference is, you know, if you look at my great start readiness plan, we move the per pupil funding up to $14,000 per kid.

That's up from $9,000 per kid.

And we move to five days a week and 36 weeks a year.

And this is all stuff that was said in committee hearings.

So this isn't necessarily my ideas, but I think they're good ones.

And it's just a, it's a zero sum game.

Where do you want to put your money to try to provide outcomes for kids?

I think it'd be better to put 'em toward four year olds rather than free lunch for everybody.

- Jordan.

- So it goes without saying though that, you know, these budget bills will need to go into effect immediately.

And when that happens in the house, that's not so much of a big deal.

But in the Senate it is.

Are you able to commit to Republicans giving these bills immediate effect, given the votes that we have seen on the budget bills as they've left the committee?

- You know, I think it's great.

When the governor started, you know, her term last year, it was all about bipartisanship and building bridges and working together.

And now that they have all three legs of the stool, it's about Republicans capitulating on their one last point of leverage.

You know, I, you know, I hope the Democrats just work with us, just work with us and let's not even worry about it.

You know, it's not like my cards aren't out on the table.

I wrote an entire budget from preschool all the way to higher ed, at least for the education portion.

My cards are out there, what I want to do is out there, what I think is better, better vision for the state of Michigans out there.

Let's work together and let's find a solution.

- Senator, what two things have to be in this budget for you to vote yes on it?

- Well, there needs to be some debt pay down.

Who knows what the economic conditions are going to be by the end of this year and next year.

The idea that we started with $9.2 billion of surplus funds at the beginning of this year, and we will have spent it all by the end of the year is ridiculous.

So I would say paying down debt and less spending overall.

- As far as debt.

Are you talking about long-term debt as far as like teacher retirement type debt?

- I'll be honest with you, Kyle, I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to paying down debt.

So there's plenty of it out there.

If somebody wants to pay down debt, let's have a conversation.

I'm there.

- Under the last two administrations, really for maybe the last six or eight years, there's been this focus on record breaking education budgets every single year.

I think that's the press release headline that I get.

Is that sustainable to continue breaking records every year?

Do you see that going forward?

- Yeah, I mean the interesting thing is the school aid budgets over 90% restricted funds from sales tax and there's property tax in there and comes from income tax.

So it's not discretionary.

So the reason why we've been seeing record breaking funding over the last, you know, eight years, nine years, is because we've had a very good pro-growth policies in place, which has led to more income taxes and more sales taxes and more property taxes.

When we do stuff like repeal right to work, we are not in an environment where there's pro-growth policies and you'll see state revenue starting to decline, which is what we've seen over the last two budget cycles.

If you look, the general fund is down $200 million a year to date from what the projections were.

So we're not on a very good starting path.

We can't take it for granted because no, it's not a given that those record fundings are funding for school aid will continue.

- Senator, the chairman of the committee, your friend Mr. Cavalier, said that there's a stigma attached to the kids who get the free lunch.

And so if everybody gets it, the stigma goes away.

Do you buy that kind of reasoning.

- Provide some evidence?

I love having a conversation with that.

Provide the evidence.

It's just a talking point.

There's nothing behind it.

There's no studies I've ever seen.

It's all anecdotal.

You know, whenever I have to propose any legislation in the legislature, I always provide the evidence and why I think it's a good case.

All I see is a talking point.

- The senator said that he has reached out to you and did give you a chance to have input.

Was it not enough?

- No, it wasn't enough, but I do, you know, give credit where credit is due.

I do appreciate the outreach he's provided.

I was very glad to see that the special education funding was fully phased in.

That was an, an initiative that I led last year and it was a two year program or pro, a two year initiative that increased special education funding over $200 million.

So that was something that was different between the Senate and the admin.

So I do appreciate that he made that move.

- The state's funneled a ton of money toward economic development incentives in the first quarter, I guess of this year.

You expressed some misgivings with how the SOAR process is playing out and maybe it's straying a little bit from its intent.

Can you kind of flesh out what your concerns are with that process?

- Yeah, we overpaid, especially when it comes to Marshall.

We overpaid by a level and a degree.

I have never seen in any state economic development ever, I'd actually like to see a case study on that if anybody's ever overpaid as much as that, if you look, we paid over $680,000 per job.

I cannot see a situation that we will ever see a positive return on investment for that.

So overall, you know, I kind of had the philosophy of before this that we have to be in the game.

Other states are in the game.

If we're not, we're gonna miss out.

And I'm just at the point now where it just takes judgment on who's making these decisions to make these investments or not.

And the governor's, I just, I fundamentally disagree because with her strategy, her strategy, just close the deal.

Don't worry about if it makes economic sense or not.

You know, governor Snyder talked about how instead of doing this kind of big game hunting, it's better to do gardening when it comes to economic development.

And I think he's right.

If we had better pro-growth policies in place, lower taxes, better regulations, that's what, and we have a decade to prove this.

That's what works in making our economy better, providing more opportunities for Michiganders.

- Didn't I, did I hear you correctly, Senator, that you crafted your own alternative budget?

Was that just for schools or was that like the entire budget?

- Yeah, sorry if I missed, if I overstated that it was for all the education budgets.

So basically preschool all the way up to higher ed.

- Alright.

So in crafting that budget, what did you put in there that you feel would improve education that isn't in what the governor proposed?

- There's a lot of things.

We did $2 billion to pay down the pension system, which will make the financial solvency of school aid in, it'll help long term, big time.

We did $50 million ongoing for school resource officers.

That is something that is extremely important.

The governor cut the school resource funding outta her budget.

So did the Senate Democrats, this is something we all need to get on board with because we need to make sure our kids stay safe.

We did over $250 million for school safety grants.

We did $300 million for learning loss and recovery.

Anything we can do to get our kids FaceTime with tutors or before and after programs, school, summer school, anything needed.

We got kids that are way, way behind it.

We gotta help them get caught up.

So those are just some of the top level things.

And I already talked about, you know, the preschool, the great start readiness and how my plan was different there as well.

So those are, are some of the big changes.

- So When Senator Kim Hillary was here last week, he did mention about the school resource officer funding and he did point to the fact that, you know, we don't necessarily want schools to feel like they have to use this funding simply for school resource officers.

Maybe they'd like to use it for mental health professionals.

And he also brought up the fact with regard to school safety funding, you know, that he wasn't a fan of metal detectors or officers right at the door because he didn't want children to feel as though they're entering sort of a prison or that they feel like they need to be scared when they come to schools.

However, to your point, school safety is obviously a major thing that needs to be improved upon in Michigan schools.

Given the recent shooting that we've seen at Oxford, I guess how do you see yourself balancing what Camary brought up with regard to mental health professionals and funding while also still being able to fund the things like school resource officers or metal detectors or the like?

- First off, it was what we've had the last last year was a grant, so nobody had to apply for school resource officer grants, but it was out there, a tremendous amount of communities did.

And it's so positive.

I've been in numerous schools, talked to school resource officers, and the kids have such great relationships with these officers and the departments pick who is like, best qualified and who the kids are gonna get along with best.

It's actually great for community relations and you just can't convince me that seeing a trained police officer in a school does not make kids feel more comfortable and safer in making a better learning environment.

I just fundamentally disagree with any type of alternative position.

And What's also extremely important is schools need to have comfort that this funding is ongoing and it's gonna be their year after year.

And when you strip it out or put it in some other line item, they don't have confidence that it's gonna be there again.

So they're not gonna make the commitment to do that.

So we just have to continue doing what's working.

That's something that's working.

Let's not change it.

- Senator, are you comfortable spending $5 million to harden the capitol to keep guns out?

- Yeah, that's the proposal that the Capitol Commission is looking at.

I haven't actually seen the proposal.

I know they're gonna look at what other states are doing.

So once they have the recommendation, I can take a position then what.

- What does your gut tell you?

Do you want to lock the thing down so that they're catching guns at the front door?

- You know, the capital is a unique place.

Obviously it can be a target.

So I'm open to having those conversations.

I just don't, I feel like there's a lot of different degrees in how you could provide that type of security.

So I just really wanna see what the recommendations are.

- Do you have a or what do you think of spending $20 million to pay off Highland Parks water debt?

- Yeah, like I said in the beginning, I'm open to having conversations for debt.

I have, there's debt all over the state.

I know we have many communities that are on the brink from certain, you know, from to different degrees and I don't wanna bail them out, but, you know, bankruptcy is expensive for the state either way.

So it's worth having a conversation on.

Maybe we wouldn't pay all of it.

Maybe we'd pay some of it.

You know, I'm open to those conversations.

- Senator, I just wanna clarify on Jordan's question about IE and basically what you're saying, you need something before you put an IE vote up, you're a no vote on IE today, correct?

- Yeah, I guess you could say that.

You gotta you gotta earn my vote just like anything else.

Let's have a conversation.

Let's have a bipartisan budget.

This shouldn't be that hard.

- So-- - I've negotiated two bipartisan budgets, so I believe it can be done.

I've shown it can be done.

Let's do it again.

- So your vote is up for grabs?

- Yes, sir.

I'm not an automatic no.

I wanna get to a yes and I've laid out what my path to a yes is.

- Senator, thank you very much.

We appreciate you having on this show.

I know you've gotta run to a committee meeting.

Thank you, sir.

We'll see you later.

Alright.

- Thank you.

God bless.

- Kate.

Next week more "Off The Record" right here.

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