by Gongwer News Service
September 25, 2009

Aside from a Gary Cooper movie, it seems nothing actually gets done at High Noon, or even during daylight. Fort Sumter was fired on at 4 a.m., India became an independent nation at midnight (hence the novel, Midnight’s Children) and state budgets just seem to need the oil of all-night sessions to get slipped into position.

With the days to the start of the 2009-10 fiscal year counting down to a precious few, legislators, lobbyists, reporters, overworked legislative staff and others were told ahead of time to pack their jammies in anticipation of an all-night session to finish most of the work on the disputed budget agreement. Lawmakers wanted to get a measure to Governor Jennifer Granholm with some time to spare so she could sign or veto the proposal before the actual October 1 start of the new fiscal year.

It’s not just budgets, of course, that seem to need the pressure cooker of red-eyed exhaustion and the perfume of sweaty sleeplessness to win agreement and sufficient votes. Major tax changes, school funding changes, workers’ compensation legislation, subway construction agreements — all have seen the light of day at the break of day.

Anyone who has spent at least a year circumnavigating both the sun and the Capitol can sit back in an easy chair cradling a glass of a favorite licensed or unlicensed brew and relate at least one story from great all-nighters he/she has known.

Go back far enough, into the days of the 1908 constitution, and you will hear about the clocks in the chambers being draped so nobody knew when midnight had arrived, of a piano being rolled in for the boys (since that’s pretty much all legislators were back then) to entertain themselves while the leaders and the governor tried to reach an agreement, and of lobbyists lowering picnic baskets from the galleries filled with sandwiches and liquids they claimed were ice tea.

The 1963 constitution changed some of that. The clocks were no longer draped. Pizza delivery negated the need for picnic baskets. About that ice tea, though, well…it ain’t been the oratory on those nights that lawmakers found so intoxicating.

Which of course brings one instantly to the night, day, who remembers? when former Rep. John Maynard delivered his now famous intoxicating and intoxicated speech. It was in the 1980s and, suffice it to say, Mr. Maynard’s patience at having to wait on action was at a liquefied end. “Mr. Speaker,” he brayed into a microphone, “I just want to know, why? Why? We got the whole (naughty word, naughty word) Senate here. Why?” Over and over Mr. Maynard asked why until the House took up the chorus and shouted why with him at each exchange. The performance did not magically make things go any faster that day.

All-nighters tend to breed calls of the House and the Senate, those times when the doors to the chambers are locked and the State Police are dispatched to round up any errant lawmakers not already in the chamber. A number of lawmakers over the years have played cat-and-mouse games trying to get out of the chamber, and there have been times when security got a little lax and people suddenly discovered members missing.

One member who had gone missing was former Rep. Ed Geerlings. During another economic crisis, then-Governor William Milliken had proposed a temporary income tax increase. During an all-night session then-House Republican Leader William Bryant worked his caucus over to get the votes needed from his side to pass the tax. Dawn approached and the House was ready to vote, when suddenly somebody noticed Mr. Geerlings was not on the floor.

Fed up with waiting, Mr. Geerlings had simply gone across the street to his hotel and gone to bed. He was sleeping on his good ear and never heard the constant knocking at his door. He was awakened finally when the State Police, assisted by hotel management, opened the door.

As morning broke that day, reporters noticed Mr. Milliken walking with several aides off into the sun. Where’s he going? they asked. Oh, just out for a walk, came the reply. Like hell, said the reporters who went chasing after the governor and caught up with him as he went up to Mr. Geerlings’ room.

Oh, there have been other, smaller incidents: former Speaker Bobby Crim trying to explain legislation to the House while eating a slice of pizza until the pizza’s toppings slid off onto his notes, rendering everything inedible and unreadable; former Sen. Michael Bouchard tossing pencils upward in an unsuccessful attempt to hit the Senate ceiling while former Sen. Joanne Emmons marched relentlessly around the chamber perimeter saying 30 times around (or maybe it was 40) equaled a mile.

The sina qua non of all-nighters is arguably a tossup between December 1993 (with the Proposal A debates) or September 2007 (with the tax and budget fight). Unarguably, however, September 2007 smelled worse than December 1993. After days of being locked in chambers surrounded by mounting piles of papers, coffee cups, pizza boxes and sandwich wrappers, the unshowered, unrefreshed House and Senate coulda used a little Old Spice.

Possibly the oddest all-nighter, however, took place in late September 1978. The world scene had recently seen Pope Paul VI die and be succeeded by Pope John Paul I.

The state scene at that time centered on a fight to stop Medicaid funding for elective abortions. In what anti-abortion advocates thought was a foolproof plan to force Mr. Milliken, an abortion-rights supporter, to block the spending, language outlawing the practice was written into virtually every line of the Department of Social Services budget. Mr. Milliken would never veto the entire budget and deny aid to thousands of people, they thought.

But he did veto it, so well past midnight the House fought over whether to draft a budget with a line item on Medicaid abortion or try the strategy one more time.

Former Rep. Eddie Mihalak, a sweet, gnomish, high-pitched Democrat from downriver Detroit (whose wardrobe made 1970s odd styles seem conservative), rose and said mournfully to the House: “Well, I guess we’ll never have an American pope” and continued to say what a terrible message the House’s action sent to the country’s moral being.

As soon as he sat down, the aforementioned Mr. Maynard rose to announce that Pope John Paul I had just died. Every eye turned to the press box, and the AP reporter at the time, Rob Wilson, known to chums as “the Albino,” rushed to his office and returned with the flash that he handed to the speaker confirming the death.

So at about 3 a.m., the House stood in remembrance for the late pontiff. And then for the rest of the night’s session, members would loudly stage whisper to Mr. Mihalak: “Eddie, Eddie, what do you think our chances are of getting a pope?”

The House, by the way, gave Mr. Milliken a line-item veto on the Medicaid abortion issue.

For nearly 50 years in Michigan, Gongwer News Service has provided independent, comprehensive, accurate and timely coverage of issues in and around Michigan’s government and political systems. For subscription information, including a free trial, visit Gongwer online.