The Michigan House just voted to reject the new Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. Why?
As a lifelong Rochester area resident, I vividly remember when in May of 2018 two of our district’s schools were shut down for high levels of mercury found in their drinking water. This episode was embarrassing, not just for our community, but for the state overall, particularly within the context of the Flint water crisis (which, to this day, out-of-staters ask me about) and the Detroit school water shutoff only months later. How can we — the state with a whopping 20% of the entire planet’s fresh drinking water at our fingertips — not be capable enough custodians of it to even bring it safely to our kids at school?
That is why I was relieved on Monday when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed Executive Order 2019-2, which restructured executive branch agencies to create the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. In addition to existing agencies that were transferred over, she established vital, necessary units like the Interagency Environmental Justice Response Team, the Office of Climate and Energy, and, most importantly, the Office of the Clean Water Public Advocate.
I was pleased. I was proud. Finally Michiganders would have a state agency to directly share their concerns with about the status of our drinking water.
But this Wednesday, I watched in profound disappointment as members of Michigan’s House of Representatives — including our own Rep. Michael Webber — voted along party lines to override the entirety of the Executive Order. I was shocked and, once again, embarrassed: Michiganders admit that we have a problem with our water infrastructure, even in Rochester Hills! How are we still not taking this seriously? I called Rep. Webber’s office and asked.
Rep. Webber’s legislative aide answered the phone and explained that the only issue Michigan’s House Republicans had with Gov. Whitmer’s Order was a small line eliminating a 12-person committee created in 2018 to oversee the former Department of Environmental Quality. He told me Webber “didn’t see her as having the right to do that” and that this was a “prime example in exercising our American system of checks-and-balances.” This intrigued me; surely the governor had the right to reorganize her own executive branch, right? Gov. Whitmer has asked Attorney General Dana Nessel for an opinion on the matter, but I wanted to find out more about what made this committee so special.
The Environmental Rules Review Committee
The committee (While he said there were three committees, he only referenced one specifically.) in question is the Environmental Rules Review Committee. It was established by the last legislature and signed into law by Gov. Rick Snyder on June 28, 2018. Rep. Webber voted yes on it. The committee has the immense power to effectively veto any environmental regulations created. Supposedly it creates more “public accountability” for environmental regulations, but its scripted membership screams otherwise.
What Webber’s aide failed to tell me is that of the committee’s 12 members, 9 are practically assured to be big money lobbyists. In fact, section 65(5) of the law explicitly permits lobbyists to be members! When an amendment was proposed in the House to prohibit “membership on the proposed panel by an individual who has been a lobbyist at any time during the past five years,” it was rejected.
What’s worse, these members don’t even have to live in Michigan! An amendment to require Michigan residence was proposed in the Senate, and Rochester’s former Sen. Marty Knollenberg voted with other Republicans against that requirement. A similar amendment was proposed in the House, again failing by voice vote. A committee composed of, potentially, all out-of-state lobbyists that could handicap our entire environmental regulating agency is a horrible thought for me. How could we entrust the environmental protection of our Pure Michigan beaches, forests, streams, and preserves to “special interest representatives” who don’t even call the Great Lakes State home? With this law, that is our reality. Or at least it was.
When Gov. Whitmer signed Executive Order 2, she got rid of this lobbyist veto group while adding innumerable goods to the state. I’m also not sure that I buy the argument that she “didn’t have the right to do that,” as the aide suggested. By my reading of the State Constitution, both Gov. Whitmer had the authority to delete the ERRC and the legislature has the ability to reject the Executive Order.
No one questions that the creation of the Clean Water Public Advocate is good and necessary for Michigan; even the aide whom I spoke with in Rep. Webber’s office agrees. However instead of trying to find a compromise, Republicans in the State House, Rep. Webber included, voted to undo the entirety of the Executive Order when they only had a problem with 0.7% of its text.
If this board of lobbyist regulators were really necessary for Michiganders, our lawmakers could have proposed it again, in exactly the same process as in 2018 and bring it back into law. It is unlikely, however, that Gov. Whitmer would sign such a bill, and the lobbyist regulator board’s original supporters do not have a veto-proof majority in either Michigan’s State House or Senate. So rather than give up their board momentarily and compromise on a more responsible voice for how some enterprises could possibly play a role in environmental improvement efforts, they voted to undo the entirety of the Executive Order.
They voted to undo the Office of Climate and Energy. They voted to uncreate the Office of Clean Water Public Advocate and the whole Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. They voted to dismiss the environment and clean drinking water as serious problems in Michigan that need serious solutions.
But I know they are wrong. The ERRC lobbyist regulator board is a threat to the environmental justice of affected school children in Flint, in Detroit, in Rochester Hills, and in many more communities with thousands more Michigan families. If you agree with me and you care about the future of Michigan’s natural beauty and resources, please contact your representatives in Lansing.
