The Senate agreed to the title of the bill.
Senator Barrett asked and was granted unanimous consent to make a statement and moved that the statement be printed in the Journal.
The motion prevailed.
Senator Barrett’s statement is as follows:
I wanted to just briefly talk about some of the merits of Senate Bill No. 686 that is before us today. This bill represents a codification of, I think, what we all believe should exist in statute already, which is this basic protection for employees of the state of Michigan—the tens of thousands of employees who go to work each day and work hard on behalf of the taxpayers of this state—to make sure they can have open and free communication with us as lawmakers. As we serve in an oversight role of the departments and positions that they hold and as they work with us collaboratively to make the best public policy we can and apply the best resources toward solving the problems of our state, we want to make sure we can have those open and candid conversations.
Senate Bill No. 686 allows state employees to come forward to state lawmakers and communicate openly with us without any fear of reprisal or disciplinary action by their department. I personally, and I’m sure many of you have as well, had interactions with state employees who have come to you about an improvement to their department or a process they would like to see changed or some type of issue they’re facing within the scope of their work. By us protecting that communication today, we can ensure that going forward we will continue to have those open and candid conversations.
I wanted to send a special appreciation to the Senator from the 23rd District who worked with me on this, and I look forward to bipartisan support on this bill.
The following bill was read a third time:
House Bill No. 4712, entitled
A bill to amend 1931 PA 328, entitled “The Michigan penal code,” by repealing section 421 (MCL 750.421).
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: