By: State Rep. Pauline Wendzel

As this year comes to a close, I wanted to highlight some of the top issues of the past term and how I’ve been fighting for you and your family in our state capital.  

Energy

The most significant piece of legislation passed by the Democrat-controlled legislature was a re-write of our state’s energy plan.  The legislation strips away all control from local governments over large-scale wind and solar projects and mandates a 100% clean energy standard by 2040. 

Over the course of this year, I’ve been outspoken about the dangerous energy policies that the Democrat majority is ramming through the legislature and the hubris of politicians who refuse to learn from the mistakes of other states. Unfortunately, these warnings have fallen on deaf ears. 

These mandates are the first step toward eliminating natural gas, the most affordable, clean, reliable, and domestic source of energy in the United States. This package ignores warnings from federal regulators made in September about the threat of reduced reliability of our grid in the face of rapid decarbonization. Most importantly, the plan ignores the financial struggles of Michigan families, seniors, and small businesses. Written directly into the bill, it says that utility companies are allowed to recover their cost of compliance.  This means that they won’t pay for these green energy upgrades, you will. 

I wrote about this package extensively in op-eds, in TV interviews, and in a speech on the House Floor shorty before the vote.  To view those op-eds, you can visit www.repwendzel.com.

Cost of Living

Inflation is still rampant, and the cost of living your daily life continues to go up.  Instead of working together, Democrats spent the year passing an extremely partisan agenda that will only make these problems worse.  Under Democrat control, your Right to Work has been repealed, and the cost of projects for local governments and school districts has gone up thanks to the re-instatement of prevailing wage.  These policies take away local freedom and make the cost of building new roads or new buildings at schools significantly more expensive.  Additionally, the Attorney General is fighting to stop a permanent tax cut Republicans delivered very early in the term.  If they have their way, government will get more revenue, and working families will have less in their family budgets. 

Education

It’s clear we have issues in our public education system, but policies enacted this year do nothing to solve the problem. Legislative Democrats have repealed the 3^rd-grade reading law, the A-F grading system that provided parents a clear view on where their school stands and removed student achievement from teacher evaluations – punishing good teachers while protecting bad ones.  Instead of tackling the issues, they’ve made it harder to measure where we need to improve.  

This past year has been incredibly partisan, but with the legislature beginning 2024 with an even split, I’m hopeful that we can find some common-ground and work together. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at 517-373-1799 or at [email protected].  Have a safe and happy New Year!