Speaker-Elect Hall Fights The Lansing Establishment To Bring Accountability And Value For Dollars To Michigan
These last two years in the legislature, Republican Leader and now Speaker-elect Matt Hall made it clear things needed to change. Lobbyists held too much power. Committees were disorganized. And Value for taxpayer dollar wasn’t prioritized. The Lansing establishment called the balls and strikes. That’s changing under Speaker-elect Matt Hall.
Lobbyists for any organization or any group – including the Governor’s lobbyists who often work the floor during important votes to sway members – are now banned from going on the House floor. All lobbyists are banned, period.
Remote committee attendance, which Democrats loved – is now a thing of the past. Speaker-elect Hall is removing that ability. Currently, members can attend committees and ask questions via Zoom. But they must vote in person. Now – ALL MEMBERS are required to show up to do their jobs.
The new House Majority under Hall will be granting the Oversight Committee subpoena power. Committees used to be granted this power on a case-by-case basis, but Oversight will receive it as a permanent ability so they can do their job and hold Lansing ACCOUNTABLE to taxpayers.
Below is the breakdown Speaker-elect Hall’s new majority is proposing, putting value for dollars centerstage, and most important, holding statewide elected officials like the AG and the SOS accountable for their actions:
- Weaponization of State Government
- This will look into the AG and SOS’s politicization of their offices, in addition to other departments and cases.
- Child Welfare System
- This will look into the multiple failures of DHHS to fix child welfare issues even after repeated failed audits
- Corporate Subsidies and State Investments
- This will look into bad corporate welfare deals, like Chinese battery plants, and also ESG practices in state government.
- Public Health and Food Security
- This will look into food safety issues, like Make America Healthy Again, but also securing our food supply chain during states of emergency. This will also look into the way DHHS and many other departments abused the rights of the working men and women of Michigan with no public transparency during COVID.
- Homeland Security and Foreign Influence
- This will look into issues surrounding Chinese (and other) interests influencing K-12 schools and universities through grants, Chinese companies making police drones, Chinese battery plants buying land, and Chinese influence in the expansion of the solar market.
- State and Local Public Assistance Programs
- This will look into welfare program performance, programs that are duplicative, and programs that spend money meant for lifelines on questionable things.
Lastly, Speaker-elect Hall will require vastly increased transparency for “enhancement grants,” or one-off pork barrel spending projects that fill up the budget every year to win the necessary votes. Instead of being snuck into budget bills at the last minute, these grants will now require advance information about which member sponsored them, where the money is going, and a description of the spending. This will prevent outrageous spending like this and this.
It’s a new era in Lansing under Speaker-elect Hall. No more business-as-usual. Michigan taxpayers can now rest just a little easier knowing that Conservative leadership is on the job, and accountability is back!
Read more here.