It’s late on Wednesday, Dec. 11 when I’m sitting down at my desk at the Capitol to work on this column. There are approximately 100 bills on the agenda, and we haven’t even started voting yet, meaning it’s likely going to be a long night ahead.

Welcome to lame duck.

“Lame duck” is the term for the legislative session after the election, but before the new term starts. It’s typically when lawmakers try to ram through a bunch of stuff that the majority party either 1) didn’t think was important enough to get done earlier or 2) knew would be unpopular, which is why they waited until after the election.

The risk that you’ll remember what they did two years from now is a lot lower.

The urgency to get things done is even greater than normal this year for Democrats, who are currently in majority, because they are losing control of the House. (Republicans picked up four seats in the Nov. 5 election and we flipped the chamber.) That also means Democrats, who currently control the state House, Senate, and governor’s office, are losing their trifecta, so this is their last chance to pass things on their own without having to compromise. Come January, there will be divided government.

Given that situation, there’s been surprisingly little done during lame duck thus far, because the Democrats have been having trouble getting all of their members to show up, so they haven’t had the votes. It’s almost like lame duck caught them by surprise.

Which is just fine by me. Rushing a lot of bills through the Legislature at the last minute is a bad way to do things. But it looks like we’re going to spend the last few session days voting on a flurry of bills, and no one has been able to read them all.

There wouldn’t be such pressure to try to ram bills through at the last minute if lawmakers took a more long-term approach to governing, so that it doesn’t matter as much who is in control at any given moment.

For example, revenue sharing.

“Revenue sharing” is budget-speak for the portion of state tax revenue that Michigan gives (“shares”) with local units of government: counties, cities, villages, and townships. The money typically goes into their general fund so they can move it around and spend it wherever it’s most needed: emergency services like police and fire, local roads, parks, etc.

Here’s the problem: the state is obligated to pass a balanced budget every year. So when the money is tight, lawmakers often choose to balance the budget by reducing the amount of revenue sharing. The state gets stingy when it comes to “sharing.”

A Democrat lawmaker from Saginaw and I have been working together on a bipartisan plan to fix this problem by establishing a dedicated funding mechanism that would go into a revenue sharing “trust fund.” Under our plan, a fixed portion of the state sales tax would automatically go toward funding counties, cities, villages and townships.

The total amount of money that goes into the trust fund each year would be variable, but the mechanism would ensure there’s always a fixed, untouchable percentage going into it. The funding formula could be changed, of course, but it would require a vote of the full House and Senate, and the governor’s signature, rather than getting decided by a backroom deal during the appropriations process.

In this way, it would almost put some of our budget process on autopilot. That would give a lot more stability and certainty to local units of government, and it would stop lawmakers from constantly raiding the revenue sharing part of the budget to spend on other stuff.

Likewise, Republicans have offered a road funding plan that would create a dedicated funding stream, in part by making sure that all gas taxes go to roads. I’ll talk more about roads in a future column.

State Rep. Mark Tisdel, R-Rochester Hills represents Michigan House District 55, which includes the cities of Rochester and Rochester Hills, and part of Oakland Township. You can reach him by calling 517-373-1792 or by sending an email to [email protected]