Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette State Rep. Greg Markkanen and State Sen. Ed McBroom answer questions from the audience during the annual meeting of the League of Women Voters of the Copper Country Saturday.

HANCOCK — State Sen. Ed McBroom and State Rep. Greg Markkanen addressed “dark store” legislation, mental health treatment and more at the League of Women Voters of the Copper Country’s annual meeting Saturday.

The two legislators spoke about their histories and legislative priorities, after which they took questions from the audience.

One question related to the “dark store” theory, by which big-box stores and other companies seek to have their buildings valued not based on their current use, but what they would be sold for if the building was vacant.

The Walmart in Houghton is seeking to lower its taxable property value by 60%, with a Michigan tax Tribunal hearing set for June. Houghton is also suing Walmart in federal court for allegedly violating the terms of a development agreement made when Walmart expanded to a Supercenter in the 2000s.

McBroom, R-Waucedah Township, recently introduced legislation that would create a new standard for valuing properties at their “highest and best use,” and would also send cases involving properties over $600,000 to a new county-level board instead of the state tax tribunal. Markkanen, R-Hancock, will be introducing the House version of the bills.

Unlike other states such as Indiana or Arkansas that have tackled the “dark store” issue directly through statute, Michigan’s property tax laws are included in the state constitution, making it harder to change, McBroom said.

That has resulted in some “complex and very nuanced statutory endarounds” over the past few years, which have passed the House but died in the Senate, McBroom said.

McBroom said he hopes that by putting the decision in the hands of circuit court judges with more legal training, it will lead to better results.

“It’s been my conclusion through all of this that the tribunal was never meant to handle these million-dollar cases that they’re receiving, and that the expertise and the competency that’s necessary to handle these complex decisions is simply not at the tribunal … what a circuit court judge knows how to do is to get out the manual and read the law and understand how to apply the law,” he said.

The legislators addressed efforts to improve mental health services in the U.P. McBroom said one obstacle is the hodgepodge of groups and different interpretations of law across the peninsula.

With no long-term care facilities in the U.P., it can be difficult to get psychiatrists to come up and stay here, he said. When he first began working on the issue, there were only three full-time psychiatrists who lived in the U.P, and no child psychiatrists, he said.

“I’ve been trying to look at this, how do we stop thinking about the U.P. as 15 independent counties and start looking at it as a community of 300,000 people? How do we stop looking at it as 11 different hospitals and start looking at it as one overarching need for care?… It’s a big project and COVID kind of put everything on ice for a while, but back in the saddle now. I’ve got another meeting on the issue on Monday, putting together kind of a plan to see that change.”

McBroom said he’s encouraged by a recent agreement among health care providers that more inpatient beds are needed in the U.P., which can stop patients from being stuck in emergency rooms for weeks or from needing to be driven hundreds of miles.

In what McBroom called a stopgap “immediate pressure valve,” McBroom and Markkanen introduced legislation, since approved, that allows local communities to hire third-party companies to conduct mental health transports. Previously, those were done by law enforcement agencies such as county sheriff departments, resulting in more overtime spending and stretching departments thin.

Another question asked if anything could be done about township and county restrictions that prevented the installation of solar and wind arrays. Markkanen and McBroom said on the topic of large-scale renewable projects, they preferred to see the decision made at the local level, citing recent ordinances by Adams and Stanton townships in response to a proposed wind farm.

However, both support small-scale individual or community solar projects. McBroom recently introduced a group of bills that would encourage community solar projects, and allow the cost to be offset on the bill rather than require community members to get credits back later.

“If you just see a reduction of your overall bill in the first place, it’d be a lot smoother, more convenient for everyone,” he said.

Markkanen has introduced legislation to eliminate the cap on distributed energy, working with the non-profit Michigan United.

“I stood in front of the Capitol with them, and said that we need to lift the cap in Michigan… if you choose to invest in rooftop solar, you should be able to sell it back or store it in your own storage facility. I strongly believe in that.”

McBroom and Markkanen also addressed the term limits legislation. Rather than limit someone to two Senate terms or three house terms, the new law allows legislators to now serve up to 12 years combined.

McBroom will have served 14 years in the legislature by the end of his second Senate term, above the maximum of 12 years combined under the new bill. Markkanen, who would have been term-limited under the prior law, said he intends to run again.

“I have no intention of serving in the Senate, but there’s a couple of projects and legislation that I’d like to see through to the end and I would like to serve a term or two more,” he said.

After the Q&A, Markkanen and McBroom stuck around to answer questions from audience members.

Markkanen and McBroom both approved of a resolution the Houghton County Board passed Tuesday that called on Michigan’s legislators not to pass bills conflicting with the Second Amendment or the corresponding section in the state constitution, and to increase funding for mental health. It also included a pledge to continue to support the U.S. and Michigan constitutions.

It was passed a day before Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill establishing universal background checks for all firearm purchases and safe storage requirements. She called the bills “long-overdue steps” that would keep guns out of the hands of criminals and domestic abusers and children in the home.

Markkanen pointed to floor speeches by the Republican caucus warning against unintended consequences of the bills.

“We’ve got people in our caucus that have 10, 20, 30 years of law enforcement experience speaking out and saying this is going to be dangerous,” Markkanen said.

McBroom said the bills and others being proposed by the Democratic majority are “silly window dressing bills” that don’t address the root causes of violence.

“In Oxford, the people who knew the kid had problems weren’t communicating it to the administration,” he said. “We had bills that said, ‘You’ve got to communicate those things better.’ And rather than do that, we’ve got this make-believe ‘Gonna make a big difference bill’ that doesn’t. And it’s very frustrating to us. So I’m happy to see Houghton standing with us that we need more thoughtful legislation that would actually address the underlying causes and problems.”

With Democrats having unified control of state government for the first time in nearly 40 years, McBroom said it changes the outlook for which projects have a future and which don’t. Some ideas that make it will need to come through different channels: McBroom said he will look to include projects as amendments to other bills.

McBroom was able to get a minor change made to a bill recently, making it the first Republican-proposed amendment approved by the Senate in the current term.

“It’s not the end of the world, as long as we get out of this ‘burn it all down’ mode the last three months the Democrats have been, where they don’t do committee processes and they’re just kind of ramrodding through as if it was lame duck session,” he said. “Once we get through that, hopefully there’ll be a chance for better discussions and compromise. I’ve seen a few glimpses of sunlight here in the past week where a few ideas are getting accepted finally.”