Legislature To Pass Fewest Bills In Regular Session Since State's Founding

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 12/19/2025) The House and Senate adjourned for the final time this year, producing the fewest number of likely public acts in a regular session since the founding of the state in 1837.

If every bill sent to the Governor this year is signed, the 103rd Legislature is projected to have produced around 70 public acts. The record until this year was 1842, when Gov. John S. Barry signed 90 public acts. A lower number of bills have been passed in a calendar year (many cases zero), but from 1852 to 1946, the Legislature only met in even-numbered years in special session, and often only met a few weeks on a select agenda of bills. View the spreadsheet detailing this here.

House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) congratulated House members as they filed out of the chambers for the year.

“We're proud,” Hall said. “We focused on quality, not quantity. We got all the major priorities of the House Republicans done this year.”

He listed the accomplishments as being the Hall Ethics Assessment and Transparency (HEAT) standards on legislative earmarks, a road-funding package, updated sick leave policies, restoration of the tipped credit for servers and a state budget without a prolonged government shutdown. The House also executed one of “the most robust oversight committees that we've seen.”

“So this was the perfect legislative year,” Hall said. “We came in with a plan. We executed the plan, and we did exactly what we wanted to do.”

Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids) said she found it “really strange that he's so proud of not doing his job.”

She said her members, particularly Senate Democrats, come to session dedicated to doing their jobs and seeing what kind of progress can be made on policy and the budget. She felt there were missed opportunities, such as passing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) expansion bill, expanding housing access or improving drug affordability.

“It is dismaying, but, that said, we did get a lot of good things done as well,” she said.

Brinks said she was pleased to see Medicaid was protected and free lunch and breakfast for school kids remained in the budget, among other wins during the budget process. She agreed with the assessment of Sen. Darrin Camilleri (D-Trenton), who stated on the Senate floor that Hall was the biggest loser from the budget process.

“It does have a sore loser vibe to it,” she said of Hall. “It just seems like he's trying to get out from one crisis after another, changing the subject or causing some other conflict somewhere else.”