“This week we have our first quadrant meeting with the Governor. It’ll be the beginning of regular meetings with my new Governor,” Shirkey said. “Also this week, we begin preparations for having advice and consent committee meetings for appointments. This is something that was not done, frankly, I think it was only done once, during the previous 8 years with Governor Snyder. It’s more important this time because there are some philosophical differences.”
So what exactly happens in an advise and consent meeting? “The primary focus is just to provide some assurance, legislative oversight, that the folks that are being appointed have the credentials and the skill set necessary to lead their departments. Its not meant to be a political process” the Senator said.
We asked Senator Shirkey about the priority list for the Senate. He has his eye on something, and he wants to be held accountable to it. “It is my specific intention that car insurance be the number one issue, and shame on us if we don’t wrestle this to the ground in the first five months of this year,” Shirkey said. “We’re fighting among ourselves. The insurance industry and the provider industry are really at odds over this. When government creates a law, it often effects the way people do their business, they change their business model. Then when that carries on for a number of years, if you discover that you have to change or amend the law, or something unintentional happens like runaway auto insurance costs, the people that have built their business models around those laws are resistant to change.”
