By Danielle Emerson
Staff Writer
Posted: February 3, 2017 4:11 PM

This week, nearly every member of the state House attended a press conference announcing legislation to expand open record laws to include the Legislature and the governor’s office, but across the Capitol, some were less keen on the idea.

That includes Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof (R-West Olive), who was reluctant to say much on what his chamber would do – if anything – with the House package until he sees the actual language of the legislation.

Last term, the legislation introduced and passed by the House landed in the Senate in mid-October 2016. There were few, if any, session days remaining by that point before the November general election. Of course, after the general is when “lame duck” starts to come together, and with such major items as energy law overhaul and several debated changes to retirement systems for public employees, it was a longshot to expect the Senate would take the items up.

Plus, Mr. Meekhof has maintained, his members had questions about the legislation that were not able to be resolved in time to vote on them.

But the issue of passing this legislation may not be a question of “if” so much as it is “when.”

Mr. Meekhof is one of 26 members of the Senate that will be termed out of office come 2018, and if history has anything to say about that, House members past and present will fill the upper chamber next. After all, 35 of the current 38 senators served in the House at some point, the exceptions being Sen. Ian Conyers (D-Detroit), Sen. Patrick Colbeck (R-Canton Township) and Sen. Curtis Hertel Jr. (D-East Lansing).

You need 20 votes to get something through the Senate, so if the team of 26 comes in – presuming they are all from the House previously – and decides to take up legislation to expand open record laws together then, they’ll succeed on their own.

Of course, the reality of an emptied-out Senate is, in real time, two years off. While that may not seem like a long time to folks in this town, to an outsider, that’s a long time. Different issues will come up in Michigan and in the nation that will have to be dealt with, and priorities will be set accordingly.