Michigan emergency laws gave executives broad unilateral power, witness tells oversight subcommittee

At a meeting of the Oversight Subcommittee on Weaponization of State Government, Michael Van Beek, director of research at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told lawmakers that broadly written Michigan statutes allowed state officials to exercise "unilateral" lawmaking authority during the COVID‑19 response and urged the Legislature to adopt a statutory pandemic plan.

Van Beek told committee members that his review of Michigan law identified roughly 30 statutes that grant some form of emergency authority, but singled out three he called the most dangerous: epidemic powers in the Public Health Code, the Administrative Procedures Act’s emergency‑rule provisions and the governor’s authority under the Emergency Management Act of 1976. "Separation of powers guards against the weaponization of state government," Van Beek said, and he argued those three authorities were written so broadly that they could be triggered with minimal procedural checks.

Why it matters: Van Beek and several committee members said the combination of vague statutory triggers, long or open‑ended durations and minimal procedural requirements created legal and political controversy during the pandemic and left the public uncertain about…