LANSING, Mich. – With the historic defeat of Proposal 1 this past May, the Michigan Senate is holding summer session, something that happens very rarely, in an attempt to come up with a comprehensive roads and infrastructure funding fix.
Sleeves haven't even been rolled up yet, and already some citizens groups are threatening recalls of several state senators, including some for metro Detroit, if any of them vote for anything that looks like a tax increase.
Coming to a consensus was already looking like an uphill climb, and now you can add threats into the mix. The always unflappable Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhoff R-West Olive isn't afraid.
"I think If you look at the past history of these folks, who have threatened this type of action before, they haven't been able to get anything off the ground, so I don't see it as a very credible threat," Meekhoff said.
Meekhoff, along with several others, including Senator Mike Kowall (R-White lake), Senator Bert Johnson (D-Highland Park), Senator Hoon-Yung Hopgood (D-Taylor) and Senator Coleman Young Jr (D-Detroit) are on the list.
Young, for his part, thinks these kinds of threats are nuts and that people who make them wholly lack credibility.
"There's always that guy that likes to ice skate uphill," he said. "There's always Ray-Ray who's cray-cray at work, that's what this is."
Young says the last thing the voters are interested in is another round of political hijinks after the poorly crafted Proposal 1 went down in flames.
"People don't want to see prima donnas fight each other," Young said. "If they wanted that, they could see a rerun of the Mayweather-Pacquaio fight, people want to see the roads fixed."
Recalls are also no easy feat. They require money, time and lots of signatures. Meekhoff is uninterested in recall threats and will not say new revenue is off the table.
While nobody in Lansing wants to raise taxes, Meekhoff's marching orders to his caucus are 'figure it out.'
"I've been very transparent and I've taken no options off the table, our caucus is going to look at cost reductions, things we can do in the budget, we're looking at revenue that we have now-- can it be redirected and we're going to look at new revenues."