{"id":20417,"date":"2011-01-13T21:57:50","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T01:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miserybay.usanethosting.com\/wordpress\/?p=20417"},"modified":"2011-01-13T21:57:50","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T01:57:50","slug":"state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/state\/","title":{"rendered":"Opsommer to serve as transportation committee chair"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/miserybay.usanethosting.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/gallery\/11jan\/capitolth.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"image\" class=\"aligncenter size-full\" \/>5-year-old granddaughter assists with inaugural house session <!--more--><br \/>\nState Rep. Paul Opsommer today was officially sworn into office in Lansing as the 96th Legislature convened its first session. Opsommer was accompanied to the ceremony by members of his family including his wife Barb, sons Greg and Matt, daughters-in-law Holly and Christine and 5-year-old granddaughter Grace who participated by serving as an honorary assistant during the seat selection process.<br \/>\nOpsommer was chosen to chair the House Transportation Committee and will also serve on the Energy and Technology, Health Policy, Insurance and Regulatory Reform committees. Opsommer served on both the Transportation and Energy and Technologies Committees during the previous term. First elected in 2007-08, the current session will mark the first time that Opsommer will serve with the majority party since he has been in office.<br \/>\n&#8220;I&#8217;m honored to have been chosen as a committee chair under the new Republican leadership team,&#8221; said Opsommer, R- DeWitt.<br \/>\n&#8220;I have spent the past four years working in a bi-partisan manner with my past Democratic colleagues and will continue to do so as Chair of the Transportation Committee. There is much that needs to be done.&#8221; Opsommer said.<br \/>\nOpsommer said that he expects the 96th Legislature to get off to a quick start on an agenda that will include a return to fiscal conservatism and reforms to help Michigan&#8217;s economy rebound from the past several years. As his first bill introduction for the year, Opsommer reintroduced HJR-A, a constitutional amendment that would require the budget to be balanced in a time frame that coincides with those of local school districts. Legislators would lose pay for each day after the deadline that they have not passed such a balanced budget out of their chamber.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/miserybay.usanethosting.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/gallery\/11jan\/capitol.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"image\" class=\"aligncenter size-full\" \/><br \/>\n<em>Grace Opsommer (center) assists with the seat selection on the first day of the 96th Legislature.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>5-year-old granddaughter assists with inaugural house session<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}