LANSING – Committee action, mostly on the Michigan House side, will be the name of the game this week, including a discussion by two panels on the future of the state’s film credits.
The quiet legislative week is attributable to the start of the deer hunting season, which is a traditional time off for lawmakers. However, both chambers have session scheduled for Wednesday.
While the Senate passed a measure in October reducing the film credits, the legislation (SB 838 ) has gone nowhere in the House as each chamber debates what revenues should be pursued to restore cuts, if any, in the 2009-10 budget.
The bill is before the House Tax Policy Committee, but, while that panel and the New Economy and Quality of Life Committee are scheduled to discuss the film credits on Wednesday, the legislation will not be put up for a vote.
In other committee action, the House Judiciary Corrections Reform Subcommittee will take testimony on a bill package reinstating good time credits for people serving time in state prisons (HB 4497 , HB 4498 and HB 4499 ).
The Detroit Regional Chamber included good time credits in its 2008 corrections reform proposal.
Meanwhile, the full Judiciary panel is slated to take up legislation eliminating the state’s driver responsibility fees (HB 4098 , HB 5603 and HB 4101 ). The fees have been controversial since they were enacted in 2003, but lawmakers have yet to muster enough votes in both chambers to eliminate them as the state is ever more reliant on any revenues coming into its coffers.
And the House Transportation Committee will take up two bills it first examined in May dealing with transit infrastructure.
The bills (HB 4965 and HB 4966 ) create a transit regionalization grant program and spend up to $50 million for a new transit services program. A separate bill in the package creating a tax increment financing authority is not on the committee’s agenda.
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