By Nick Smith
Staff Writer
Posted: January 11, 2019 1:47 PM

Lawmakers in the early days of session are ready to get to the task of beginning to legislate, which leaves reporters wondering what early priorities individual members want to start with.

In most sessions the first bill introduced in each chamber is a sort of statement of leadership priorities, also a sort of bright shiny object for reporters and others to watch for prior to being introduced.

A look at the last 10 legislative sessions as it relates to the first bills introduced in the House and Senate, however, shows a mixed bag in terms of success in getting those early session priorities to the governor's desk.

On Wednesday the House introduced a pair of civil asset forfeiture bills that have bipartisan backing and the support of Attorney General Dana Nessel. The first Senate bill of the session will be introduced sometime next week and what it will be has not yet been revealed.

In the previous two legislative sessions, no first bill introduced in either chamber made it to the governor's desk. Former Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof failed in both of the last two sessions to have bills repealing the state's prevailing wage to pass, while now-House Speaker Lee Chatfield last term introduced the income tax rollback that narrowly failed on the House floor.

The last bill that was the first introduced in either chamber during a session to be signed by the governor was during the 2013-14 session, introduced in the House by now-Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey. He introduced legislation that changed the formula for calculating fees for Freedom of Information Act requests, capped at 10 cents the per-page cost of copying documents and allowing for individuals to file suit if a government body delayed or declined a FOIA request.

In the last 20 years only once did both the first House and Senate bills make it to the governor's desk: during the 2007-08 session. The first Senate bill that year requested a federal waiver to provide certain incentives for Medicaid recipients to adopt healthier lifestyle behaviors. On the House side, transparency legislation was signed that required disclosure and reporting of legal defense fund for elected officials involved in criminal, civil or administrative matters. The House bill was passed in response to the text-message scandal that led to the resignation and imprisonment of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

During the 2005-06 session the first House bill providing tuition waivers at public universities for children of deceased or disabled members of the armed forces was signed into law.

Before that, during the 2001-02 session, the first Senate bill was signed into law, eliminating the statute of limitations for certain cases of criminal sexual conduct in which DNA evidence was obtained.

And during the1999-2000 session the first Senate bill was a bill allowing for a state income tax cut of 0.1 percent in 2002. The bill was part of a series of bills introduced in both chambers that put together cut the state income tax rate from 4.4 percent to 3.9 percent by 0.1 percent per year over five years.

The mixed bag continues the further back one goes the mixed bag continues.

One of the more influential first bills was the first introduced in the Senate in the 1993-94 session. The tax legislation eventually led to Proposal A and the state's current system for school funding.

Will the first bills in either chamber this session be signed, or have anywhere near the broad sweeping impact of that 1993-94 bill? That chapter in the state's history has not yet been written.