By Zachary Gorchow
Executive Editor and Publisher
Posted: September 1, 2015 10:55 AM

House Speaker Kevin Cotter named Rep. Kurt Heise to the select committee considering whether scandal-embroiled Rep. Todd Courser and Rep. Cindy Gamrat remain qualified to serve in the House, in part, because of his background as an attorney.

Besides his background as an attorney, Mr. Cotter (R-Mount Pleasant) also chose Mr. Heise (R-Plymouth) because Mr. Heise is smart, focused, has done a great job with his committee assignments and is familiar with evidentiary proceedings, Cotter spokesperson Gideon D’Assandro said.

But the selection of Mr. Heise also completes a circle, and to be clear, this is purely my observation, not anything cited by Mr. Cotter or Mr. Heise as a rationale for Mr. Cotter’s appointment of Mr. Heise.

There was an incident involving Mr. Courser (R-Silverwood) and Mr. Heise early in the year that showed Mr. Courser was going to pose problems for his House Republican colleagues.

Mr. Heise is chair of the Criminal Justice Committee, and Mr. Courser is a member of that panel.

On February 17, the committee unanimously approved HB 4006, which would require a wireless phone company to provide location information from a person's wireless device to a police officer upon request in certain emergency situations. The idea is to allow a police officer to request the location of the device if there was an imminent risk of death or serious physical harm to the user of the device.

Mr. Courser’s role in action on the bill was notable. On the surface, the bill seemed like it could prompt criticism from him about Big Brother.

But before he voted for the bill, Mr. Courser proposed four amendments. The committee rejected three of them, but approved, with Mr. Heise’s support, the one that would require the officer's supervisor to participate in the request for information.

After the meeting concluded, the inescapable feeling was perhaps Mr. Courser was quickly learning how to work within the Legislature.

Mr. Heise seemed to feel that way. I bumped into him and another person in an Anderson House Office Building elevator later in the morning, and Mr. Heise seemed ebullient, telling the other individual the legislative process had worked, that the committee had supported one of Mr. Courser’s amendments and then Mr. Courser in turn had voted for the bill.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Well, no.

A week later, with the bill possibly in the hopper to come up for consideration on the House floor, Mr. Courser uncorked one of his scathing missives, posted to Facebook and elsewhere, lambasting the legislation as an “Orwellian” privacy intrusion.

“Only a few times do you get a bill that will let you see cleanly if the person is up for defending our rights under the Constitution, a bill before the House of Representatives this week, HB 4006, is one of those lines in the sand,” Mr. Courser wrote. “This bill is an unfettered trampling of our constitutional rights to due process guaranteed by the 4th Amendment. This bill is the next step towards unfettered government surveillance; it allows government to use its power to locate citizens through their cell phone providers without a warrant and all of these actions are kept secret from the person being monitored and the public.” (emphasis his)

To repeat, Mr. Courser voted for the bill, something he failed to mention.

The bill remains pending on the House floor, and to be sure, given how completely ostracized Mr. Courser is from the House Republican Caucus, there is no way his opposition alone is holding up the bill.

But when reviewing the predicament of Mr. Courser and Rep. Cindy Gamrat (R-Plainwell), whom the House could expel for various offenses, one of their problems is that they have alienated so many of their colleagues. Mr. Courser’s handling of HB 4006 could not have helped in that regard.