Reducing Rancor in Michigan.

• Author: Bell, Dawson

Geniality, bonhomie, civility--they're gone from the Michigan House. Some blame it on term limits.

Maybe next time they should try a toga party. With lots of beer. Clearly, breaking bread together--as Michigan's Speaker of the House Chuck Perricone and one of his Democratic colleagues, Detroiter Keith Stallworth tried with a fall session opening barbecue--isn't getting the job done.

"The job" being a thaw in relations between the warring factions of the Michigan House of Representatives in the chamber's first PTL (post-term limits) session. Instead of warming, the barbecue brought on yet another chilly exchange of barbs between Perricone and his Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Michael Hanley.

Many of the expected pitfalls of term limits--control shifting to lobbyists and bureaucrats, embarrassing attempts to enact the failed miracle cures of the past for intractable problems--have not materialized, but Michigan has been beset with one new and potentially serious obstacle.

These guys don't like each other. And the animus isn't confined to the top. Personal relations across and within the parties in the Michigan House are at their lowest ebb in memory. With at most six years to make an impact, there appears to be not enough time to make friends.

Except for Stallworth and a handful of other Detroit Democrats, the September picnic on the Capitol lawn was a markedly Republican event. Hanley let it be known that such occasions should be co-hosted by leadership (instead of a junior and iconoclastic member like Stallworth). He showed up for a few minutes, but disappeared before the serious pig eating got under way. Perricone suggested that Hanley had instructed other Democrats and staff to boycott the affair.

Trivial stuff. But pretty typical of the snarling that has been going on across the aisle virtually nonstop since January. About the agenda (controlled, in Michigan, entirely by Republicans). About the process (GOP bills on fast, sometimes frantic, track; Dems left without committee hearings). About the hours (the Michigan House set a record for post-midnight lawmaking in the first six months of the year).

AS DIFFERENT AS...

Without question, Perricone and Hanley are very different personalities. Perricone is definitely a Type A. He had a plan for leading the first term-limited Michigan House before most of Michigan knew there would be one. Hanley, a former local union officer, is more laid back. His ascension was more in keeping with the anointment style of Michigan Democrats, all of whom were bitterly disappointed when they lost their House majority in the 1998 elections.

The war began in the first week of session, when the Perricone-led House responded within days to Republican Governor John Engler's call for an income tax rate cut. The Democrats decried it as a sop to the rich; they were ignored. It continued with a controversial, and for Democrats divisive, initiative to transfer...