The governor sent a special message to lawmakers on local
government reforms this week. There was also a hidden message to House
Republicans which boiled down to: Your agenda is not mine.
You reach this conclusion by what he did and did not say.
Item: Binding arbitration. House R's want to kill it; the
GOP governor wants to tweak it.
Item: Repeal the prevailing wage law. House R's want that;
the governor did not mention it.
Item: Create Right-to-Work zones. House R's are ready to
roll; the governor is not.
He respectively acknowledges that his friends in the House
can debate whatever they want, but that doesn't mean he has to do what
they want.
Governors and members of their own party will often disagree
on priorities. It's not the end of the world. After all this governor
is not worried about getting re-elected but the 63 House Republicans
are, which is why they have about 30 bills that labor considers to be
anti-labor.
Since he wants to cooperate with unions, the governor is not
anxious to tackle that agenda.
To be fair, the governor and House R's see eye-to-eye on some
of the major Snyder items including scrapping the item-pricing law and
the Emergency Financial Manager bill.
And to be fair, since he is a tad more moderate than most in
conservative GOP ranks, we'll see more disagreements, but both sides
will play that down and pretend it doesn't exist. But it is real.