Full-Time Legislature Now Meets Less Often Than Its Part-Time Predecessor

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 10/22/2026) Since 2019, the Michigan Legislature has averaged 73 active session days a year, nearly 30% fewer than it did during the more than five decades of the state's full-time legislative era (1965-2018), a MIRS review of nearly 80 years of House and Senate Journal records found.

Go back further, and the contrast sharpens.

Between 1947 and 1964 — the years the Legislature met annually, habitually adjourned by June and operated as a part-time body — the House and Senate averaged 85 active session days a year. An active session day was defined as one in which a quorum of the chamber was established. The year 1947 was set because it's the year after the last year the Michigan Legislature didn't meet at all.

Michigan transitioned to a full-time legislative posture in 1965, when Democrats took control of both chambers and aggressively started pursuing policy changes. From then through 2018, the House and Senate averaged 103.19 active session days a year.

The average for 2019-26 could increase slightly depending on how many days lawmakers meet in this year's lame duck, but even if lawmakers take attendance all 12 days (13 in the Senate) they plan to be in session, the average only sneaks up a couple of days.

So what changed?

After reviewing the data, former Sen. Bill Ballenger, editor of The Ballenger Report, noted that when the Democrats controlled the House for a record 24 years from 1969 through 1992, the House held session an average of 119 days a year. Once the Republicans took over for several terms between the period of 1995 to 2018, the average of session days dropped to 87 days a year.

His point: Republicans are more reluctant to use government as a mechanism for change and less likely to hold sessions. Since 2019, with conservative Sen. Mike Shirkey serving as the Republican leader until 2022, that tendency has become more pronounced, Ballenger said.

Republicans elected to the Legislature in recent years are embracing the mantra of government doing less. He cited House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) heralding the chamber’s record low legislative output as an example.

Former Lt. Gov. John Cherry Jr., who also served in the state Senate, pointed to a more practical reason as a theory behind the change.

For years, qualifying state lawmakers could deduct certain unreimbursed living and travel expenses on their federal income taxes, with the benefit tied, in part, to the number of days counted as legislative days. Cherry recalled legislative leaders being conscious of keeping lawmakers in session enough days to meet the federal requirements.

That federal tax treatment changed beginning in 2018, when the deduction for those unreimbursed expenses was suspended.

"I think it changed more based on federal tax treatment than it did on term limits," Cherry said.

When former Rep. Jim Townsend, now director of the Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy, looked at the data, he pointed primarily to two forces: increasing partisan polarization and term limits.

Townsend said national politics has bled over and dominated almost everything that happens at the state level. In his eyes, state politics has increasingly "taken its cues" from the national political environment, leaving lawmakers more likely to see themselves as members of the same team as their national counterparts.

It's this current era, he described, that produces gridlock, particularly under divided government, where there is less legislative business that leadership is willing or able to bring up for votes.

"When you have hyper-partisanship, you can't get things done, you can't hold votes, because you can't pass anything," Townsend said. "So that would probably, partly explain why they're having fewer active session days."

He said term limits compound the problem by giving lawmakers less time to develop policy expertise and long-term relationships with their colleagues.

With shorter legislative careers, he said, lawmakers have less time to make those investments.

"Term limits make a bad situation much worse," Townsend said. "And they tend to solidify this notion that the only reason to go to the Capitol is to vote."

Still, neither Townsend nor Cherry said the number of days a lawmaker is physically in Lansing should be treated as a complete measure of whether they're working a full-time job.

Cherry said he thinks the distinction between a full-time and part-time Legislature is better measured by the number of months lawmakers are expected to be working than the number of days they are formally in session.

Unlike states where the constitution restricts the Legislature to meeting for only a portion of the year, Michigan lawmakers can be called into session throughout the year. That makes maintaining another full-time job difficult regardless of how many days lawmakers ultimately vote in Lansing, he said.

"It's a mistake to think the Legislature is working only when they're in Lansing," Cherry said, pointing to constituent meetings and other district responsibilities that can consume lawmakers' time outside the Capitol.

Cherry also raised whether lawmakers are being compensated like full-time professionals.

Legislative salaries have lost purchasing power over time, he said. Lawmakers’ base pay is $71,685 a year, following a 10% cut in 2011 from $79,650. They have not received a raise since 2002.

In his opinion, this is "clearly out of sync with the rest of the economy," noting lawmakers' salaries buy substantially less than it did two decades ago.

Whether the Legislature is viewed as full or part-time, Cherry said, the compensation does not match the demands of the job.

"And I think (the pay) hardly qualifies as even a part-time job, given the kind of work you do," Cherry said. "I think legislators today are extremely underpaid."

Townsend took a different angle.

"If you're doing the job properly," he said, lawmakers should be spending their time away from the floor serving as the "eyes and voice" of their constituents. Still, he felt it's harder to dismiss having fewer session days if lawmakers aren't using that time for other responsibilities.

"Not having a lot of session days, especially because it doesn't appear to be a lot of active oversight activity, is not a very good look for a full-time Legislature," Townsend said. "I mean, I think you can't escape that notion."

He contrasted today's Legislature with an account he recently heard from former House Speaker Paul Hillegonds, who served before term limits.

Townsend said Hillegonds recalled lawmakers holding Monday night sessions in part to bring members to Lansing at the beginning of the week. Members frequently stayed overnight, spent more time with colleagues and sometimes gathered for informal seminars led by senior lawmakers on complicated policy issues.

Former Rep. George Montgomery, for example, would teach newer members about Michigan's tax system, Townsend said.

Townsend pointed to the 1993-94 legislative session as an example of what those relationships could produce. With the House evenly divided 55-55, Hillegonds shared the speakership with Democrat Curtis Hertel Sr., with the two parties alternating control of the House floor and its committees.

"They didn't settle for gridlock," Townsend said. "They actually realized that they could get things done if they just respected each other . . . kind of lived by the golden rule a little bit."

For Townsend, the episode stands in contrast to the hyper-partisanship he sees today: an evenly divided House did not necessarily mean an inactive one when lawmakers had stronger relationships across the aisle.

The point, Townsend said, was not simply that lawmakers spent more days at the Capitol. They spent more time learning the institution, developing expertise and building relationships with one another.

That makes the question for him less about whether Michigan should technically still be called a full-time Legislature and more about what lawmakers are doing with the time a full-time institution gives them.

"It's a full-time job," Townsend said. "If you do it right, it's more than a full-time job."