The Michigan Legislature ended its spring recess and returned to the state Capitol on Tuesday to begin a sprint to get things done before the summer and fall campaign season begins in earnest.
Senator Sam Singh (D-East Lansing), the Senate majority floor leader, said people are focused right now on the cost of living and the agenda will reflect that.
“We’ll have legislation focused on auto insurance, on housing, on healthcare,” he said. “We’ve already done a number of items on some of those issues already, but we’ll continue to do that work. Affordability continues to be one of the top priorities for Senate Democrats.”
Representative Bryan Posthumus (R-Rockford), the House majority floor leader, also said he expects pocketbook issues to dominate the to-do list, including efforts to rein in property taxes and housing costs. But he said the window to get things done is small as elections loom.
“Gloves start coming off real quickly, and so the filing deadline comes up in the next week, I think,” he said. “So the idea is that sometime over the next month or two, we really have to hammer down and get things done and then it’s going to be campaign season for a lot of people.”
“I don’t think we have a tremendous amount of time to get meaningful things done,” said Representative Ranjeev Puri (D-Canton), the House minority leader. Puri has been a particular target of House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township), who has said Puri is an ineffective leader. For his part, Puri said Hall has poisoned the environment for bipartisan cooperation.
“Why the partisanship needs to continue to dictate how the House is run is beyond me,” Puri said. “There is still an opportunity to do meaningful work, but that takes two parties to come together to do that work together.”
In terms of lawmaking, 2026 has been a slow year in Lansing. Only seven new public acts have been signed in to law so far this year. Part of that dynamic is the House is controlled by Republicans and the Senate by Democrats.
At a stop in Kalamazoo, Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer said the Legislature has one job heading into the spring session.
“The budget. Full stop. Like, that’s the bare minimum,” she said. “We’ve got to get the budget done. We don’t want schools and municipalities to be wondering up until the last minute in the fall what they’re working with.”
That is, however, exactly what happened last year as budget negotiations dragged past the August 1 statutory deadline and past the October 1 constitutional deadline, leaving schools, local governments, and some state departments scrambling.
Whitmer signed the current budget seven days into the fiscal year.
But this year, lawmakers will want to get home to campaign. The stakes include control of the House and the Senate as well as choosing a new governor.
WMUK’s Michael Symonds contributed to this report.
