evidence_text: Senator Lauwers, under his constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the passage of House Bill Nos. 4665, 4666 and 4667.
  
  Senator Lauwers’ statement is as follows:
  
  Just a brief “no” vote explanation here, and I do mean brief. It’s really a personal story of my experience as an employer and a hard lesson I had to learn years ago. I was pretty proud of myself that day. I just explained to all my employees how we had increased their benefits, and one of my younger employees who had two young children at home—younger than that, he was probably in his late-20s or early-30s, something like that—stopped me just outside the office afterwards and said, I think I’m going to have to quit. I thought, what are you talking about? I felt so good, I just increased your benefits—better retirement, better health care. And he said, Yeah, I wish you’d quit giving me more benefits and just raise my pay. He said, I cant feed my kids with benefits, I need money now.
  
  I really think that if we wanted to solve this issue—we seem so hung up on this retirement thing, and I think that has a lot to do with people who make money in that system more than it has to do with the actual employees. If we want to recruit more people, if we want to attract more people, you have to give them a raise. Let’s consider increasing the wages 25 percent, 50 percent. That’s how we bring more people to it, and that’s how you make the job look like something you really want to get into and stay in.
  
  So, I just put that out there to my colleagues. I hope that—I think this may help, but I really don’t think it’s going to solve the issue. I think we’ve got to come back to this issue next session and we really need to discuss compensating people fairly, at least to a level where you can compete with the states around you and the other alternatives these individuals have.
  
  The following bill was read a third time:
  
  House Bill No. 6058, entitled
  
  A bill to amend 2011 PA 152, entitled “Publicly funded health insurance contribution act,” by amending the title and sections 3, 4, and 5 (MCL 15.563, 15.564, and 15.565), section 3 as amended by 2018 PA 477, section 4 as amended by 2013 PA 271, and section 5 as amended by 2013 PA 272, and by adding sections 3a and 4a.
  
  The question being on the passage of the bill, Senator Runestad offered the following amendment:
  
  1. Amend page 3, following line 14, by inserting:
  
  “ (4) A public employer shall not increase its contribution to the medical benefit plan of a legislator who becomes a local official after voting on this bill or has other conflict of interests. ”.
  
  The question being on the adoption of the amendment, Senator Lauwers requested the yeas and nays.
  
  The yeas and nays were ordered, 1/5 of the members present voting therefor.
  
  The amendment was not adopted, a majority of the members serving not voting therefor, as follows: