[LMich]

Here it comes...

Up all night, lawmakers then face off with snowstorm

BY BILL LAITNER • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • December 19, 2008

Friday’s snow day across the state sprung thousands of kids from their last day of school before the holiday break.

Michigan’s state lawmakers weren’t so lucky. They wrapped up the year with a marathon session that kept virtually all of them up for all of Thursday night, and then all through the wee hours of Friday until almost noon. That’s when they went outside only to be greeted with the mounds of snow that slammed Lansing and much of the state.

Exhausted, and still wearing Thursday’s clothing, they faced driving home in the storm. State Rep. Marie Donigan, D-Royal Oak, made it safely to her home and immediately fell into bed for a nap on Friday afternoon, she said Friday evening.

“We did a 26-1/2 hour session. We started at 10 a.m. yesterday (Thursday) and we got done at 11:30 this morning (Friday),” she said, in a phone interview at about 6 p.m., during which she yawned repeatedly.

...

“We got a huge bunch of bills passed that makes sure the 3.5-mile light-rail line gets built in Detroit. So far, it’s all private money to build it. That was a big deal. “I can’t say that both chambers of the legislature have ever voted, with support from people on both sides of the aisle, to pass a mass-transit bill in Michigan. Now we have to figure out next year how to pay to operate it. (The system will be run as a private, nonprofit corporation, she said.) The enabling legislation, for a rail line to be funded in part by auto dealership tycoon Roger Penske, came with a package of other bills to foster economic development along the new rail line that will go up Woodward in downtown Detroit.

...

There is still work being done in regards to how they (the private non-profit) will work into DDOT's public line, which is to go another 4 miles or so to the fairgrounds.