LANSING – A week after Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm called on the Legislature to quickly act on her Michigan Business Tax proposal it is becoming more and more apparent that a replacement tax for the Single Business Tax will be approved in 2007.

Officially, no one in the Legislature or the Executive Office is giving up on the idea that action on the tax proposal could still occur during the weeks left in the 93rd Legislature, even though the Senate Finance Committee canceled a Wednesday meeting in which it originally was to continue discussions on the issue and later changed the agenda to other bills. The House Tax Policy Committee does still have scheduled for Wednesday a meeting to hear a presentation by Treasurer Robert Kleine on the MBT.

Granholm spokesperson Liz Boyd said the administration is not conceding anything on the schedule of taking up the tax proposal. “We think lawmakers can and should pass the business tax before the end of session,” she said.

Ari Adler, spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema (R-Wyoming), said the Senate is committed to getting as much work done as possible on the proposal. Even if the proposal does not pass, then at least much of technical groundwork will be finished for the 94th Legislature to tackle, he said.

But on background, a number of officials acknowledge that the chances the tax proposal could pass in December grow more fleeting as the days pass.

The House has always been more cool to the idea of moving the package quickly than the Senate, but the argument for delay was bolstered Monday when the state’s largest business groups urged the Legislature take more time to consider the business tax proposal.

While hearings on the proposal are expected to continue, there is no sign from any of the legislative leaders on when a vote on any of the bills introduced – SB 1513 , SB 1514m SB 1515 , SB 1516 , SB 1517 and HB 6676 , HB 6677 , HB 6678 , HB 6679 and HB 6680 – will be scheduled.

The Senate, for example, is now scheduled only to meet until Thursday, December 14, meaning that its introduced bills would have to pass to the House by this Thursday for that chamber to act under the constitutional five-day requirement. The constitution requires that all bills sit in each house for at least five days.

And if the Legislature does meet a third week in December, bills would have to pass at least one house by December 14 in order to be considered by the second house.

Ms. Granholm has said she needs the new tax enacted in order to prepare the 2007-8 budget that will be presented in February.

Plus, she said that since the current Legislature eliminated between $1.8 billion and $2 billion in revenues when it accelerated the end of the SBT to December 2007, this Legislature should be the one to “correct” the problem.

But some Republicans see her call for lame duck action as simply a ploy to spare the Democratically-controlled House that takes office in January from some tough tax votes.

There is also a sense that Granholm’s true first priority is passage of her Merit Scholarship proposal that went to the full House on Tuesday.

Beyond that, legislative officials said they are getting legitimate requests for time as tax specialists in the different business groups try to study the proposal’s new concept of taxing assets and defining what those assets would be.

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