I’m not going to tease this one.

{Need to click below to read about it.}

Considering all of the hype the republican elites have leveled against Dave Agema for not setting a good example of how a Republican should act, they might want to turn their attention away from him for a few moments and pay a little more attention towards that guy in the Romney Building in Lansing.

For someone who ran on a platform of transparency and accountability, he certainly has been doing very little of both lately.

I’m not going to dredge up anything like his N.E.R.D. Fund or his cousin’s state contracts. Others have talked about that already and it is easily available on the search box above.

I’m talking present day, 98th Michigan Legislature material here.

This week, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof announced that he and several republicans in the Michigan House and Senate will very shortly be introducing at least a three bill package to eliminate the Michigan Prevailing Wage Law on state construction contracts.

This should be a no-brainer.

According to the Mackinac Center, Michigan’s Prevailing Wage Law adds approximately $250-million to the cost of projects.

And given Gov. Snyder’s insistence that there isn’t any savings available in a $52-and-some-odd billion budget, it should provide a little momentum towards locating other items than can be eliminated and/or reprogrammed when Snyder’s 16.7% sales tax hike fails in May.

And, as if on cue, you’ve got people already bellyaching about why eliminating this law is a bad idea. Some from the expected sources, others not so.

When asked about the proposed savings, Sen. Mike Kowall, who is against repealing Michigan’s Prevailing Wage law said,

“I’ve heard numbers that, geez, we could cure the national debt from what people are coming up with.”

I’m not sure if Sen. Kowall is trying to be cute with the “national debt” comparison. But hey: politician + other people’s money = indifference on how it is spent. That is what I got from him.

Union spokesmen were not exactly thrilled by the prospect. Michigan Building and Construction Trades attorney John Canzano had this to say about eliminating prevailing wage on The Michigan Building and Construction Trades website;

“…But passage of a law repealing prevailing wage…that’s going to immediately affect the pocketbooks of building trades workers.”

And democrats are pretty much echoing the same sentiments like House Minority Leader Tim Greimel who said in Businessweek,

“It’s extremely disappointing that the first priority of Republicans is to lower wages and have people work for less.”

Now, here’s where things get interesting.

Same story, but in The Detroit News (buried almost at the very end of the article), here  is what Rep. Greimel had to say,

“I’m confident that the overall arrangement that we reached (emphasis mine) will safeguard important Democratic priorities moving forward, including maintaining the state’s prevailing wage law on the books.”

I’m sorry?

What was that about “an arrangement”?

“Safeguarding important democratic priorities”?

Exactly, what kind of “an arrangement”  are we talking about here?

We’ve already seen what happened with previous governors, the “arrangements” they had made for reasons unknown and the financial cost to the state.

The people who are giving Republicans like Dave Agema a hard time by implying what they thought he wrote, should instead refocus their attention towards what kind of deal(s?) Gov. Rick Snyder cut with democrats and what the final cost to the Michigan Budget those will be in the end.