A passed bill that never reached the governor

Three bills that passed the Michigan Legislature to improve retirement benefits for corrections officers have been sitting in the House clerk's office for 17 months. They were never sent to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's desk for her signature.

The legislation — House Bills 4665, 4666, and 4667 — would move corrections officers into the same retirement system as the Michigan State Police. The bills cleared both the House and Senate during a late-2024 session. Under normal procedure, they would have been transmitted to the governor shortly after.

They were not.

The political standoff behind the delay

After Republicans took control of the Michigan House in January 2025, Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) ordered the House clerk to stop sending nine already-passed bills to the governor. The corrections retirement bills were among them.

Hall argued the new majority was not obligated to finish work left behind by the previous Democratic trifecta. Seventeen months later, the bills remain in limbo.

"Everybody knows what's supposed to happen when bills are passed by the Legislature," said Byron Osborn, president of the Michigan Corrections Organization, the union representing roughly 5,000 state corrections officers. "This was a simple administrative task that should have happened, and it didn't."

The human cost while lawyers argue

The state's own numbers show the stakes while the bills sit unread. As of January, the average officer vacancy rate across Michigan's 26 prisons was 15.8%. Ten of those facilities were short at least 20% of their officers.

In the Upper Peninsula, the crisis is deeper. As many as one in three correctional positions are empty at some prisons, according to reporting from Bridge Michigan. A state audit found that 61% of staff at one Upper Peninsula facility were considering quitting because of mandated overtime.

State Rep. Dave Prestin (R-Cedar River), whose district includes several Upper Peninsula prisons, called the situation "a death spiral," Bridge Michigan reported.

The violence inside the facilities is rising. There were 355 assaults on prison staff in 2025, up from 299 the year before.

Osborn said officers are working 12-hour shifts four or five days in a row. Spouses are issuing ultimatums. Officers who once planned to retire on the job are leaving instead.

"Just complete frustration is what we're hearing from our members," Osborn said. "And it's well warranted."

What the stalled bills would have changed

Michigan stripped pensions for new state employees in 1997 and ended retiree health care in 2012. Both changes happened under Republican majorities. Today, a new corrections officer can take a portable retirement account to any employer and walk away.

The three bills would have offered something to stay for. Osborn said the immediate impact would have been on retention.

"We 100% believe that the immediate impact would have been on retention," Osborn said. "This would have kept people from leaving, because now these bills would have established some sort of light at the end of the tunnel."

The courts step in

The standoff moved from the clerk's office to the courtroom. The Michigan Senate sued the House to force transmission of the bills to the governor's desk.

  • In February, a Court of Claims judge ruled the House should send the bills, though she stopped short of ordering it.
  • The Court of Appeals also sided with the Senate.
  • The Michigan Supreme Court heard arguments on May 6. A decision could come as late as July.

The House's lawyer told the justices that requiring every passed bill to be sent to the governor would upend how the Legislature has long operated. The Senate's position is simpler: The state constitution says bills that pass both chambers go to the governor, full stop.

"It's going to take a prison on fire"

Osborn does not lay the entire stall at Hall's feet. He sees it as a broader failure of the state's political system, one that stretches across both parties and several years.

His warning about what it will take for the public to pay attention is stark.

"It's going to take national news in Michigan asking why there's a prison on fire," Osborn said. "We've been telling y'all for so many years that this pressure cooker has been brewing, and nobody's listening."

The bills have passed the Legislature. The courts have ruled they should move forward. The governor's desk remains untouched. And Michigan's corrections officers keep showing up to understaffed posts.