By Elena Durnbaugh
Gongwer News Service
When Republicans took control of the House last year, they created several new committees for the chamber.
Among them was the House Rules Committee , which is chaired by Rep. Bill Schuette, R-Midland.
A year into House Republican control and the Rules Committee process, Schuette told Gongwer News Service the committee has operated to ensure that lawmakers aren’t delegating their lawmaking duties to departments and to make sure laws are necessary.
“It’s to make sure that we’re looking for ways to reduce government red tape and make life more affordable for Michiganders,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re not doing legislation for the sake of legislation, and the legislation is doing what we wanted it to do.”
The committee also exists to make sure that there aren’t unintentional loopholes in legislation, Schuette said.
“We’re just making sure that the legislator’s intent and the Legislature’s role is clearly defined in the statue,” he said. “We benefit as a Legislature and as a body from making sure that the work that we do is fine-tuned and impactful.”
Of the roughly 433 bills that committees other than Rules have moved this term, 70 of those bills have gone through Rules, which is about one in every six bills, a Gongwer News Service analysis showed.
Those bills have been spread across 12 committees, but most of them have been referred to the House Rules Committee by the House Regulatory Reform Committee and the House Health Policy Committee .
The hard and fast rule for when a bill is referred to his committee, Schuette said, is if it deals with the promulgation of or the creation of administrative rules.
Of the 70 bills that have been referred to Rules, 18 of them have been referred by the House Health Policy Committee, and 17 bills have been referred by the House Regulatory Reform Committee.
The House Education Committee has referred seven bills to Rules, and the House Government Operations Committee has referred five. The House Energy Committee , House Election Integrity Committee and House Natural Resources and Tourism Committee have all referred four bills each.
The House Agriculture Committee and the House Economic Competitiveness Committee have both referred three bills, while the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and House Finance Committee have both referred two.
The House Families and Veterans Committee has referred one bill to Rules. The House Insurance Committee and the House Judiciary Committee are the only two committees outside of the House Appropriations Committee that have not referred any bills to Rules.
“We’ve had a lot of bills from Health and a lot of bills from Reg, but we’ve also had bills from Natural Resources, and we’ve had bills from Education. We’ve had bills from Elections,” Schuette said. “So, a lot of great opportunities to work on a host of different issues.”
There have also been nine bills reported to the floor by other committees that were then re-referred to Rules.
For example, HB 4277 , sponsored by Rep. Parker Fairbairn, R-Harbor Springs, would require intermediate school districts to employ one emergency and safety manager and at least one mental health coordinator. The bill was reported by the House Education and Workforce Committee in April 2025 and advanced to Third Reading on the House floor a month later. On May 14, it was sent to Rules.
Similarly, HB 4244 , sponsored by Rep. Matt Maddock, R-Milford, would require Michigan to recognize the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. It was reported by the House Government Operations Committee in April, advanced to Third Reading, and then was sent to Rules in May.
Another example is HB 4279 , sponsored by Rep. Jaime Green, R-Richmond, which would create an apprenticeship program for the Michigan National Guard. It was reported to the floor by the House Families and Veterans Committee on May 6, 2025, and it was referred to Rules later that month. The bill was then reported to the floor again by the Rules Committee in September with a new substitute, and it has sat on the floor since.
Schuette said the process of re-referring a bill to Rules allows the lawmakers to do more work on a bill without going through multiple floor amendments.
“If there’s a particular bit of legislation that has sat on the floor for a while and we think we need to do some additional work on it, there have been some cases where bills have then been referred to Rules for the opportunity to do that modification in a committee process,” he said. “The legislative process sometimes it takes building a consensus, and it takes collaboratively working on bills to do that.”
There are 34 bills and one joint resolution pending in the Rules Committee. Of the 34 bills, only one is a Senate bill. The committee has reported 62 bills so far this term.
Rep. Joey Andrews, D-St. Joseph, has had his bill, HB 4385 , sitting in the Rules Committee since last June. This, he said he believes is mostly because House Republicans introduced a similar bill sponsored by one of their own members.
Andrews said that he is supportive of the mission of the Rules Committee as it was introduced at the beginning of the term.
“I’ve been pretty vocal that the Legislature needs to take its rules-making power back,” he said. “I just don’t know that I’ve seen the Rules Committee do that.”
Andrews said he would love to see the committee dig into the overly broad administrative powers that departments can use to skirt around the Legislature, but so far, he said he feels the committee has largely operated as a “redundancy in the process.”
“What we’ve mostly seen is it’s been a holding place for bills on the way to the floor,” he said. “Testimony has been largely perfunctory.”
He said he had no objection to a committee that operates that way, but he said he felt if that was the case, House Republicans should call it what it is.
“Just have a Ways and Means Committee,” Andrews said. “That’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do.”
There was a Ways and Means Committee in the 2019-20 term that functioned as a holding spot for most bills before they could go to the floor.
Schuette said he was proud of the work the Rules Committee has done in the last year.
He also highlighted the report put together by the committee on regulatory reform.
“Another part of the Rules Committee mandate is to make sure that we’re not over delegating the Legislature’s power to state bureaucrats, to allow them, through the rule-making process, to gain more authority,” he said.
In the coming weeks and months, Schuette said he expected that many of the regulatory bills proposed by the report would be moving through committee and passed by the House.
“That’s just about making life more affordable for Michiganders and making sure the government isn’t getting in their way,” he said.
Gongwer News Service
When Republicans took control of the House last year, they created several new committees for the chamber.
Among them was the House Rules Committee , which is chaired by Rep. Bill Schuette, R-Midland.
A year into House Republican control and the Rules Committee process, Schuette told Gongwer News Service the committee has operated to ensure that lawmakers aren’t delegating their lawmaking duties to departments and to make sure laws are necessary.
“It’s to make sure that we’re looking for ways to reduce government red tape and make life more affordable for Michiganders,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re not doing legislation for the sake of legislation, and the legislation is doing what we wanted it to do.”
The committee also exists to make sure that there aren’t unintentional loopholes in legislation, Schuette said.
“We’re just making sure that the legislator’s intent and the Legislature’s role is clearly defined in the statue,” he said. “We benefit as a Legislature and as a body from making sure that the work that we do is fine-tuned and impactful.”
Of the roughly 433 bills that committees other than Rules have moved this term, 70 of those bills have gone through Rules, which is about one in every six bills, a Gongwer News Service analysis showed.
Those bills have been spread across 12 committees, but most of them have been referred to the House Rules Committee by the House Regulatory Reform Committee and the House Health Policy Committee .
The hard and fast rule for when a bill is referred to his committee, Schuette said, is if it deals with the promulgation of or the creation of administrative rules.
Of the 70 bills that have been referred to Rules, 18 of them have been referred by the House Health Policy Committee, and 17 bills have been referred by the House Regulatory Reform Committee.
The House Education Committee has referred seven bills to Rules, and the House Government Operations Committee has referred five. The House Energy Committee , House Election Integrity Committee and House Natural Resources and Tourism Committee have all referred four bills each.
The House Agriculture Committee and the House Economic Competitiveness Committee have both referred three bills, while the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and House Finance Committee have both referred two.
The House Families and Veterans Committee has referred one bill to Rules. The House Insurance Committee and the House Judiciary Committee are the only two committees outside of the House Appropriations Committee that have not referred any bills to Rules.
“We’ve had a lot of bills from Health and a lot of bills from Reg, but we’ve also had bills from Natural Resources, and we’ve had bills from Education. We’ve had bills from Elections,” Schuette said. “So, a lot of great opportunities to work on a host of different issues.”
There have also been nine bills reported to the floor by other committees that were then re-referred to Rules.
For example, HB 4277 , sponsored by Rep. Parker Fairbairn, R-Harbor Springs, would require intermediate school districts to employ one emergency and safety manager and at least one mental health coordinator. The bill was reported by the House Education and Workforce Committee in April 2025 and advanced to Third Reading on the House floor a month later. On May 14, it was sent to Rules.
Similarly, HB 4244 , sponsored by Rep. Matt Maddock, R-Milford, would require Michigan to recognize the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. It was reported by the House Government Operations Committee in April, advanced to Third Reading, and then was sent to Rules in May.
Another example is HB 4279 , sponsored by Rep. Jaime Green, R-Richmond, which would create an apprenticeship program for the Michigan National Guard. It was reported to the floor by the House Families and Veterans Committee on May 6, 2025, and it was referred to Rules later that month. The bill was then reported to the floor again by the Rules Committee in September with a new substitute, and it has sat on the floor since.
Schuette said the process of re-referring a bill to Rules allows the lawmakers to do more work on a bill without going through multiple floor amendments.
“If there’s a particular bit of legislation that has sat on the floor for a while and we think we need to do some additional work on it, there have been some cases where bills have then been referred to Rules for the opportunity to do that modification in a committee process,” he said. “The legislative process sometimes it takes building a consensus, and it takes collaboratively working on bills to do that.”
There are 34 bills and one joint resolution pending in the Rules Committee. Of the 34 bills, only one is a Senate bill. The committee has reported 62 bills so far this term.
Rep. Joey Andrews, D-St. Joseph, has had his bill, HB 4385 , sitting in the Rules Committee since last June. This, he said he believes is mostly because House Republicans introduced a similar bill sponsored by one of their own members.
Andrews said that he is supportive of the mission of the Rules Committee as it was introduced at the beginning of the term.
“I’ve been pretty vocal that the Legislature needs to take its rules-making power back,” he said. “I just don’t know that I’ve seen the Rules Committee do that.”
Andrews said he would love to see the committee dig into the overly broad administrative powers that departments can use to skirt around the Legislature, but so far, he said he feels the committee has largely operated as a “redundancy in the process.”
“What we’ve mostly seen is it’s been a holding place for bills on the way to the floor,” he said. “Testimony has been largely perfunctory.”
He said he had no objection to a committee that operates that way, but he said he felt if that was the case, House Republicans should call it what it is.
“Just have a Ways and Means Committee,” Andrews said. “That’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do.”
There was a Ways and Means Committee in the 2019-20 term that functioned as a holding spot for most bills before they could go to the floor.
Schuette said he was proud of the work the Rules Committee has done in the last year.
He also highlighted the report put together by the committee on regulatory reform.
“Another part of the Rules Committee mandate is to make sure that we’re not over delegating the Legislature’s power to state bureaucrats, to allow them, through the rule-making process, to gain more authority,” he said.
In the coming weeks and months, Schuette said he expected that many of the regulatory bills proposed by the report would be moving through committee and passed by the House.
“That’s just about making life more affordable for Michiganders and making sure the government isn’t getting in their way,” he said.
