Mark Sanchez: The election's done, things are decided, and there's some changes coming in Lansing in January with the changes in the legislature and the House going to Republican control. What does that mean? We're now into the ‘lame-duck’ session of the Michigan legislature and this can get, it sometimes gets quite interesting in these last days of the legislative session. But there's one really big issue that the legislature now seems intent on deciding and the general thinking was that this would get acknowledged and taken care of in the ‘lame-duck’ session. And that's the minimum wage and the earned paid time off. Remember back in the summer, there was a Michigan Supreme Court ruling that struck down an amended law that the legislature passed in 2018. There had been a ballot petition, and the legislature could either put that on the ballot or adopt it. The legislature chose to adopt it and then did an adopt and amend to kind of water it down. The Supreme Court in the state decided, no, that was not allowed in the same legislative session. So, it into effect the law that the legislature had initially adopted when it was submitted on a ballot petition. So now here we are, this is something that the business community, especially your restaurants have really been hollering about that it's going to hurt their business. It would significantly raise the minimum wage and get rid of the wage for tipped workers. So, we had a bill introduced last week in the legislature, (H.B.) 6056, that would basically scale back the pending law that will gradually do away with the tip credit system and expand paid medical leave requirements. And another bill targets the sick time law. That's largely a shell legislative proposal to kind of be flushed out in negotiations in the legislature. There's some bipartisan support for this. It's co-sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat. And this is something you haven't heard the governor in the Democratic leadership talk a heck of a lot about, but we've covered this on this program before. Basically, the minimum wage would go up and there's also some new rules that would come in February if this does not get changed, that your businesses and your business groups have really been saying would cause quite a burden. They're not necessarily against that proposal, what would go into effect for the amount of pay time off. But it would really, just the way it's implemented and executed, there's some confusion, there's some administrative burdens on how it would all accumulate and accrue. And this law that was introduced, this proposal that came into the legislature last week, would kind of hopefully rectify some of that situation to what the folks at the business advocacy groups are saying could be really bad public policy if this takes effect in February.
Patrick Center: We have some economic data that came in for October for West and Southwest Michigan. What are we seeing here from the past and where do we see the economy moving in the future?
Mark Sanchez: This is the monthly report, Brian Long. He's director of Supply Chain Management Research at the GVSU (Grand Valley State University) Seidman College of Business. He does a monthly survey of industrial purchasing managers here in Western Michigan, and basically Brian does an index on various metrics. For the first time in four months, the four key metrics in his monthly report showed some improvement. Now, three of the four metrics still are in negative territory, but each recorded some good solid month-to-month improvements. And, you know, in his comments in the report said, you know, one month is not a trend, but maybe those concerns about a recession are subsiding, inflation certainly getting under control, and there's that anticipated perhaps this soft landing is indeed going to occur. Although the Fed still has some more work to do to get that targeted inflation rate back to 2%. We did get another interest rate cut last week, the day after the election, or two days after the election. So, his report for Monday, you know, had some good news to it that things are perhaps stabilizing a little bit and going back in the other upward trajectory or direction. I'll add onto that in the story we posted yesterday at Crane's Grand Rapids business. So, we did an event last week, what we call our Power Breakfast. And Randy Thelen of the Right Place Inc. spoke there. The event was about commercial real estate. And he talked about some of what's been going on to the industrial sector here in West Michigan, which coming out of that pandemic in the last couple of years, two, three years has been what he calls ‘de-stocking.’ Remember in 2020, 2021, even into 2022, the supply chains were a mess. They were disrupted. That's part of what drove inflation up there in 2022. And so, a lot of companies were buying everything they could get. If there were parts, there were things they needed. As he said, the supply chain kind of went from just in time to just in case. So, they bought products from their suppliers, and they put it into warehouse. They are now working that stock down and they're not buying as much. So that's obviously, you go down the supply chain, down to the manufacturing base and production base, that affects production volumes. So that's part of what his insight was at our event last week. And we'll see how this plays out. But for now, the latest monthly data from Brian Long looks like it's good and it's going in the right direction.
Patrick Center: We're talking with Crain’s Grand Rapids Business staff writer, Mark Sanchez. You've written a story about Grand Haven's big blue boat.
Mark Sanchez: Yeah, it's going to be called Big Blue and this is something I kind of stumbled across last week. And I thought, ha, we should pay a little attention because this is something unique. And maybe not unique, but it's something the local entrepreneur is trying to do. It's a gentleman, Erik Peterson in Spring Lake. He has acquired a vessel. It's a 48-foot vessel that will carry up to 55 passengers. He's kind of retrofitting it, fixing it up right now. And come next spring, he's going to launch this as a tour boat to offer cruises on the Grand River, Spring Lake, Lake Michigan next year. It'll be interesting because, boy, some of the images he was showing me that when you see this for folks who visit the lakeshore and they go there to Grand Haven next year, when they see this at the marina there, the city marina on the river, this thing's really going to stand out. It's a good-sized vessel. And it was once a vessel that was operated on a Leland ferrying passengers from Leland to the Manitou Islands. So, it's got some history on the lakes and he's going to launch this next spring as kind of a tour boat over there. And it's been a while since he had a tour boat operating out of that port. You've had some in the past, obviously you've got what was known as the Port City Princess, I don't recall the name now operating out of Muskegon and you've got some other port communities that offer tour boats. But in the Port of Grand Haven, it's been a while since you had one. And this is a story we wrote and posted on Crain's GrandRapids.com last week. It's just an entrepreneur taking a risk and seeing the market demand perhaps and trying to fill it. So, we'll see how he does next year when he launches Big Blue there on the Grand River in Lake Michigan.
Patrick Center: And it's a story about somebody making a big career change.
Mark Sanchez: Yeah, he's an engineer. So, he was just at that age where he's an avid boater. He's done some of this in the past, helming tour boats and he saw this as not only a business opportunity, but something that he was at that point in life, like, hey, let's transition, let's pivot and let's try this and see what happens.
Patrick Center: Mark Sanchez, staff writer, Crain’s Grand Rapids Business. Thank you so much.
Mark Sanchez: Thank you, Patrick.