By Zachary Gorchow
Executive Editor and Publisher
Posted: February 15, 2023 1:06 PM

The mass shooting at Michigan State University this week struck at the heart of the MSU campus, the Lansing region and the state of Michigan itself.

The heart of campus because among the 50,000 current students and half-million living MSU alumni (this reporter among them), everyone spent some time in the MSU Union (where the second attack occurred) and a large percentage (again, this reporter included) had classes in Berkey Hall, where the first attack occurred. That walk to Berkey twice a week from South Case Hall in the winter (about 17 minutes if I really hustled) is seared into my memory from 1994-95.

The heart of the region because MSU is the beating heart of the Lansing area. It's a huge employer, economic driver, fuels people residing in the area and, even more than Lansing serving as the state capital, is what people think of first when they hear Lansing or East Lansing.

The heart of the state, or perhaps one of them, because I doubt there is a single resident of Michigan who has more than three degrees of separation from someone who attends or works for MSU. And for everyone in the Lansing region, there are no degrees of separation.

Three students dead, five critically injured, eight families shattered, tens of thousands traumatized.

This is a gut punch.

But while of course shocking, it also is not shocking. Gun violence and mass shootings, particularly at educational institutions, are all too common in the United States. Michigan just got lucky for so long in avoiding them until the mass shooting at Oxford High School in late 2021.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Legislature now face more urgency on what changes in law, if any, should be made.

The new Democratic-controlled Legislature, until Monday, seemed to have shunted firearms legislation to the backburner. In the month since officially taking majority in the House and Senate, lawmakers have gotten completely tangled up on their tax priorities that have not yet been sent to Ms. Whitmer.

Exactly zero bills have been introduced so far by Democratic lawmakers regarding firearms (editor's note: about 25 hours after this column posted, Senate Democrats introduced several firearm regulation bills). In fact, the only bill so far that contains a new firearm restriction is sponsored by a Republican, Sen. John Damoose of Harbor Springs, addressing a loophole in charging someone for bringing a firearm into an airport.

Now the focus is on three areas from Democrats: a red flag law allowing a judge to order a person's firearms seized if shown to be a danger to themselves or others (which possibly might have made a difference in Monday's attack) as well as mandatory background checks for all sales and a safe storage law (it's unclear if either would have helped based on the limited facts known about the shooter).

Democrats at some point will have to reckon with other firearms statutes they have lamented for years but could do nothing about so long as Republicans, who have long opposed new gun regulations, continued to oppose changes.

State law prohibits local governments from suing gun manufacturers, something now-Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan wanted to do more than 20 years ago as the Wayne County prosecutor but couldn't. There's the statute prohibiting local governments from regulating firearms, reserving that power to the state. What about codifying the 2018 Michigan Supreme Court ruling barring the open carry of firearms in schools, which otherwise are gun-free zones? Surely there is more.

Democratic lawmakers also will have to reckon with the move by some Democratic county prosecutors to ease up on the charging of nonviolent gun offenses and whether to remove some of that discretion.

The shooter was charged in 2019 for carrying a concealed pistol without a license, which is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. He eventually pleaded guilty to a high-level misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to probation. This meant he was still eligible to legally purchase a firearm. The felony would have prevented that.

Now, two things.

Former Ingham County Prosecutor Carol Siemon, a Democrat who was leading the county prosecutor's office at the time, was notorious for astonishingly soft charging, even on violent criminals. Her declaration in 2020 that she does not believe in life without parole sentences, even in the case of a man on parole for domestic assault who was accused of bludgeoning two women to death with plans to kill two others, brought a torrent of criticism. The judge on the case rejected her offer of a 30- to 50-year sentence for the man for second-degree murder (he eventually pleaded guilty but mentally ill and was sentenced to 70 to 100 years, the Lansing State Journal reported).

So the MSU shooter getting off with a misdemeanor and probation has gotten a lot of attention given Ms. Siemon's history.

However, the notion of someone with no known prior convictions (as appears to be the case with the MSU shooter) getting a felony conviction and prison time for a nonviolent gun charge seems unlikely, regardless of the county or the prosecutor. How, if at all, the Legislature addresses this question will be closely watched.

Republicans have led the criticism of Democratic prosecutors' charging habits in the wake of the MSU shooting, but they also have some questions to answer.

In the last three terms, Republicans have introduced bills to end the requirement that someone wishing to carry a concealed firearm obtain a license to do so. Legislation passed the House in 2017 but died in the Senate. It moved from a House committee to the House floor in the 2019-20 term but died there. And in the 2021-22 term, legislation was introduced (now-Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt of Porter Township introduced one of the bills in the package), but it never left committee. Supporters have dubbed the legislation "constitutional carry," contending under the Second Amendment persons should have the right to carry a concealed pistol without having to go through the training and licensing required under Michigan law for more than 20 years.

Had these bills been law in 2019, when the MSU shooter was charged with carrying a concealed pistol without a license, he wouldn't have been charged at all because he would not have broken the law. So Republicans will have to reckon with that if they want to attack Democratic prosecutors for undercharging a gun offense.

How does the legislation produced by a school safety task force at the end of the previous term and reintroduced this week factor into any upcoming action is another question.

All this is happening after a week of partisan procedural battling and recriminations on the tax issues at the Legislature that exactly zero people outside of the two-block radius around the Capitol will want to see on whatever legislation results from the MSU and Oxford High School shootings.

I'm currently watching two students jogging west on East Michigan Avenue toward the Capitol for a sit-in to back gun legislation, carrying signs. I seriously doubt they want to hear about a bunch of partisan posturing in the wake of what happened Monday.

By Alyssa McMurtry
Staff Writer
Posted: February 13, 2023 9:43 AM

Implementing tolling on 545 miles of highway by 2032 may be feasible according to a recent study, but the Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Committee had questions at a meeting last week about toll rates and diversion away from roads that would no longer be free of charge.

HNTB, a Missouri based company, conducted the Michigan Statewide Tolling Feasibility Study and Implementation Plan released in December 2022. The study was done at the request of the Legislature.

Before the committee was Eric Morris, HNTB senior vice president and project manager, Ron Davis, deputy project manager, and Kari Martin, Department of Transportation statewide systems management section manager and project manager for the feasibility study.

"The bottom line is a total of 6 and 6.5 cents per mile indexed for inflation will cover all the lifecycle costs for about 545 miles of highway at or above standard performance measures," Mr. Morris said. "By 2032, if implemented, this program would support $8.5 billion in capital investments on these 545 miles."

Commercial vehicles would be charged more, approximately 18 cents per mile, similar to other states like Indiana or Ohio. Sen. Joe Bellino (R-Monroe) voiced some concerns about charging truck drivers more than everyone else.

"They already pay a lot more tax on fuel and they pay a lot more tax on registration," Mr. Bellino said.

Mr. Morris said there is quite a bit of freight traffic flowing from Canada into Michigan. He agreed that Michigan is a peninsula state and does not have the pass-through traffic like Indiana or Ohio, hence why the researchers suggest 18 cents rather than the 50 cents those states are charging.

The state would have to implement electronic tolling, meaning no toll booths or waiting in line. The electronic tolls would either pick up on the transponder like iPass or E-ZPass, or would take a photo of the individual's license plate and mail the toll to their home.

Looking only at limited access highways for tolling, Mr. Morris said the research team was able to narrow the options down to 14 corridors. One factor in the selection process was to avoid placing the tolls in "environmental justice communities," or disadvantaged communities.

Breaking it down to three tiers, Mr. Morris said Tier 1 would be ready in five to seven years. Tier 2 would take approximately 14 to 15 years and Tier 3 would take more than 15 years. Tier 1 corridors centered largely on I-275 and I-696. The revenue from the entire Tier 1 system, Mr. Morris said, would represent about $1.3 billion yearly in gross collections.

Unlike other states, the report suggests an new approach to converting non-toll roads to toll road, Mr. Morris said.

Sen. Veronica Klinefelt (D-Eastpointe) asked about diversion away from the toll roads, saying many residents take 8 mile in Detroit to get to one side of the city to the other during rush hour.

Mr. Morris said he was expecting as high as a 13 percent diversion rate for 696. He also said that when looking at the diversion rate for 8 cents per mile, it reached as high as 20 percent, and when charging 4 cents per mile, the revenue was not enough to fund the roads.

Mr. Davis discussed the costs of implementing the tolls, saying bond financing would allow them to take out financing and pay for the initial roadwork to bring the roads and bridges up to "asset performance standards."

Between 2026 and 2031, Mr. Davis said he estimated the costs of installing the toll collection system would be $500 million. Beyond 2031, all the costs would be covered by toll revenues, he added.

The legislation necessary to get the tolling implemented on the researchers' timeline would need to be approved by the end of 2024. When speaking with reporters after the committee, Committee Chair Sen. Erika Geiss (D-Taylor) said she did not predict any legislation on tolling to be introduced this year.

When asked how she thought constituents would react to tolls, Ms. Geiss said she had a feeling they would react similarly to those in her household, firmly asserting that they do not want tolls in Michigan.

"The concept part of it, it's a little scary because a lot of us think you know person in the booth, traffic slows to a grinding halt and … all that time that you've made up going fast has just been completely wiped out by having to sit there, like that's the mentality," Ms. Geiss said.

However, Ms. Geiss added that if tolling is implemented, she thinks the state will do it "intelligently and equitably and in a way that doesn't make it regressive but that does improve our roads."