The Senate agreed to the title of the bill.
Protest
Senator McBroom, under his constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the passage of Senate Bill No. 43.
Senator McBroom’s statement is as follows:
Madam President, Senate Bill No. 43 while a bill with good intention I think is certainly unnecessary and potentially creates additional costs and burdens on the state of Michigan. The Department of Transportation can already place these barriers, initiate policy, and utilize its discretion as much as it needs to determine what safety needs there are. There is not a need for us to pass this bill and mandate these be placed everywhere on some rigid circumstance rather than allowing the department to continue to do this. In the committee process, when asked about this the department had no explanation to give us as to why they need this to be put in a statute versus what they’re already doing. There was instead some vague thing about creating a standardized process but they’re the only Department of Transportation we have so who are we trying to standardize with? When I brought these issues up, I was accused by the department of not caring about the lives of highway construction workers, which is simply untrue.
The department seemed to say, and they did say, that I’m putting a price on saving peoples’ lives which is incredibly insulting but is also assuming, somehow or other, that the department doesn’t place a price and a cost on its own workers’ lives, which it obviously does because if it spared no expense to protect highway workers’ lives, it would close down every single road it ever works on. It would simply tell the public, Well, good luck finding your own route to this place because for now in the name of safety and saving lives, this road is closed. But they don’t do that. They keep roads open. They pave extra lanes temporarily. They move traffic temporarily because they themselves recognize what everybody recognizes in the whole wide world, that you can’t do everything to do something. There’s limits on time, there’s limits on cost, there’s limits on materials. It was very insulting for the department to imply that I or anyone else who just voted “no” on Senate Bill No. 43 does not care about the lives of highway workers. That allegation could be thrown right back on them for their failure to do everything they could possibly do.
That’s why I voted “no” and why I encourage this bill not to proceed beyond this point today.
The following bill was read a third time:
Senate Bill No. 129, entitled
A bill to amend 1996 PA 381, entitled “Brownfield redevelopment financing act,” by amending the title and sections 2, 8, 8a, 13, 13b, 13c, 14, 14a, 15, and 16 (MCL 125.2652, 125.2658, 125.2658a, 125.2663, 125.2663b, 125.2663c, 125.2664, 125.2664a, 125.2665, and 125.2666), the title as amended by 2003 PA 259, section 2 as amended by 2022 PA 178, sections 8, 13, 13b, 15, and 16 as amended by 2020 PA 259, section 8a as amended by 2017 PA 46, sections 13c and 14a as amended by 2021 PA 138, and section 14 as amended by 2016 PA 471.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: