The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly disrupted most facets of life in Michigan. Many businesses are either operating remotely, under strict limits, or not at all. Families, friends and churches have been physically disconnected. School buildings and have been shuttered and community rituals curtailed. Travel has been heavily restricted, with some types banned entirely. And as with 9/11, there will be no “returning to before,” but more likely a lengthy transition to the next “normal.”
When the lockdown ends and the Michigan Legislature returns to regular meetings, the landscape before it will look fundamentally different.
For starters, lawmakers will have less money to spend. Officials expect that the current year’s budget will have $3.2 billion less than they thought when they set the budget. Over the last decade, the state has saved diligently for the next crisis, but its rainy day fund is not nearly big enough to fill either depression-sized budget hole. Thus legislators will have to work quickly to make the painful spending cuts necessary to fulfill their constitutional mandate of a balanced state budget.
Legislators will also have to monitor the medical condition of our state to ensure that we have survived the first wave of COVID-19 and are better prepared for its likely return in the fall or winter. They will also need to assess what worked and what didn’t in our initial response. The governor’s emergency powers have come under scrutiny, but the review needs to go much deeper than looking at those.
Toward that end, the Mackinac Center has retooled its 2020 legislative agenda to more effectively meet the needs of Michiganders, both during the next pandemic and also the next normal. Among other things, it calls for the state to repeal unnecessary and harmful regulations that interfere with innovation and prevent people and businesses from responding to changing individual needs and preferences.
In health care, that means permanently getting rid of the certificate-of-need laws that we had to waive during the crisis to add necessary medical facilities. It means reforming scope-of-practice and licensure requirements so that medical professionals can provide care consistent with their level of training. It means permanently expanding patient access to telemedicine; increasing the duration and flexibility of short-term, limited-duration health insurance plans to the maximum extent allowed under federal law; and protecting patients against surprise medical bills.
In education, that means expanding digital (that is, blended) learning and moving toward a system that strongly supports personalized, mastery-based learning.
In the workforce, that means reducing the burdens of occupational licensure. The Legislature should narrow the use of criminal history in licensure decisions, establish regular reviews of the necessity and propriety of state occupational licenses, and demand conformity and reciprocity of licenses with other states and the U.S. military.
During the pandemic, the actions of some other states highlighted Michigan’s archaic system of alcoholic beverage regulations. Among the numerous flaws in Michigan law, it is inexcusable that Michiganders remain unable to receive beer, wine or spirits shipments from retailers and wine clubs based in other states.
If some of this sounds familiar, it should. The COVID-19 pandemic has vindicated many concerns the Mackinac Center has raised for years about harmful government regulations. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recognized the importance of waiving several of them in her executive orders. We now urge her and the Legislature to repeal these restrictions for good.
