Pappageorge Talks Term Limits and More with Berkley Rotary (video)
(Crystal A. Proxmire, Feb. 11, 2014)
With one year left in office, State Senator John Pappageorge (R, Troy) is planning on giving term limit reform one last shot. The 82-year-old Republican met with members of the Berkley Rotary Club on Monday to talk about a variety of political issues including term limits, a budget surplus in Lansing, fixing roads and the personal property tax.
And while Pappageorge falls along the party line in terms of budget priorities and policies, one area where he and “the Republican bean-counters” and the “Democratic bean-counters” disagree is term limits.
“I’m not opposed to term limits, but I am opposed to the kind we have in Michigan,” he said.  “They are the worst in the country. Our term limits say you can be a member of the House of Representatives for six years, and in the Senate there’s two four year terms.  The difficulty is leadership continuity in the House of Representatives… In the House right now over 80 of the 110 members of that body have been there two year or not at all… They won’t be ignorant when they leave, but it’s going to be too late.”
Pappageorge proposes keeping the 14 year cap on service, but allowing elected officials to be in the House or the Senate up to that full time.
“We only need a dozen people on both sides of the aisle to stay more than six years and we’d have some leadership continuity,” he said.  “Now you guys get that, I saw heads nod.  When I left the House… I proposed that.  And the bean counters on the Republican side went to Betsy DeVos who was the Chair of the Party and said ‘if you do what Pappageorge wants it’ll help the Democrats. The Democrat bean counters went to Granholm and Mark Brewer and said, ‘if you do what Pappageorge wants it’ll help the Republicans.’  So both political parties descended on the leadership in the House and said ‘don’t take up his bill.’
“Well, I’m still trying.  And I’m going to try again this year, my last year, because leadership continuity is important.  You know in your own profession.  That’s a $50 billion budget and you can’t have people who don’t even know how to call somebody to get the data they need to try and figure out how to do a budget.
“When you don’t have the background, you fall back on ideology.  Ideology is gridlock… so we need to fix term limits.”
Pappageorge also talked about the budget process.  “We’ve got $115 million and the whole world is after it,” he said in reference to a surplus in Lansing.  “We have to be very careful with that so-called extra money, and we have to put it in places where it’ll be used one time and not promised forever.”
Serving on the Finance and Appropriations Committees, Pappageorge is involved in the budget process. He explained that this is all about setting priorities.  “If you were to ask citizens what things they want done with any money that’s not committed, which by the way is zero, it’s schools, fire and police, roads.  And right now roads is really big because we’re all experiencing all those potholes there…  Now if you poll everyone about what the roads are like, more than 90% of the folks say the roads are in bad shape, gotta fix them.  Then you say ‘you willing to pay for it?’  24% say yes… So the dilemma if you’re in the budgeting process in Lansing is how do you set priorities?”
Other topics included the personal property tax, gas prices, toll roads, education spending, the bridge to Canada and Detroit politics.  To hear the entire discussion check out the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKJ_YeFLRM4&feature=youtu.be.
Pappageorge represents Bloomfield Township, Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, Troy, Clawson, Madison Heights, Berkley and Royal Oak in the State Senate.  For more information visit his website at www.senatorjohnpappageorge.com.  Learn more about the Berkley Rotary on their Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/pages/Berkley-Rotary-Club.