4 takeaways from Mackinac Island Policy Conference

Gov. Gretch Whitmer, center, present an executive order creating the Growing Michigan Together council on the porch of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island on June 1, 2023.

At the annual gathering hosted by the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce on Mackinac Island last week, representatives of the state's major industries mingled with lawmakers at the Grand Hotel. After all the schmoozing and buffet grazing, here were a few noteworthy items from this year's confab.

If there was a central policy question at the heart of this year's Mackinac Policy Conference, it was how to get and hold onto workers.

At the heart of employers’ strife is Michigan's own decades-long population stagnation, where qualified workers have fled the state for jobs elsewhere. During this policy conference, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other elected leaders strove to demonstrate they were tackling the problem head on.

Read more: Michigan's population trend could bring economic pain. How are policymakers responding?

It's a broad, systemic issue that touches all corners of the workforce. In northern Michigan, where housing is particularly scarce, some businessowners have taken to building their own accommodations to house seasonal staff.

Building more housing stock statewide is seen as one facet of the solution, and to that end Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan proposed taxing land and buildings separately in Michigan's largest city, a move that he said would punish those sitting on empty land while rewarding homeowners.

Still, the state is facing a ticking time bomb in the form of an aging workforce without enough folks to replace them. An issue large enough that Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist said he is thinking about it every day.

The federal contingent of the policy conference was conspicuously absent from this conference.

Normally members of the Michigan's congressional delegation are seen hobnobbing with attendees, but the looming deadline on the debt ceiling had consumed Congress right as the conference got underway.

A Tuesday evening mixer with the delegation was canceled outright, as the lawmakers flew to Washington, D.C., to vote on the 11th-hour deal pulled together by the White House and U.S. House Republicans.

President Joe Biden signed the debt ceiling deal on Saturday, just two days before the Treasury Department predicted the government would run out of money.

As the same time, despite an increasingly large field of Democrats looking to succeed Michigan's U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2024, they were conspicuously few of them on the island last week.

ML Elrick of the Detroit Free Press noted no Republican candidates had registered for the conference, and only one Democratic candidate, who has yet to launch a campaign, was in attendance.

The conference's theme was stylized as "the power of &," mostly left up to guests to freely interpret.

Conference programming at least alluded to what the Detroit Regional Chamber was trying to get at this year: There was a panel on "inclusive policymaking" another on increasing equity through "mobile solutions" and a third on where the goals of business and equity intersect. That was three panels, up from one the year prior.

And for the first time, on June 1 the chamber arranged for one of the four U.S. flags on the Grand Hotel's famous porch to be swapped out for a progress pride flag.

Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks, made some news of his own on the topic.

"Call me woke — you don't need to call it DEI, you can call it whatever you want — I call it good business," Cuban said during an on-stage interview. "It means taking the people that you’re selling to and making sure your workforce looks like them, and making sure you can reflect their values and being able to connect to that. That's what works for me."

This was the first Mackinac Policy Conference in decades where lobbyists were catering their pitches to a state government controlled wholly by Democrats, and some of those leaders were feeling the contrast.

"We’ve had more conversations about economic development and more conversation with business leaders, not just big business leaders, but those mom-and-pop shops in our districts in the … first five months of our majority, then I’ve had in so many years when Republicans were in charge," Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids said in an interview.

Brinks said Democrats’ emphasis on economic development and inclusive policies would lead to a more business-friendly environment. Policymakers were also quick to reassure the business community they were willing partners.

"We’re not interested in doing things to industry, we’re interested in doing things with industry," Gilchrist told MLive.

Perhaps emblematic of the crowd's political inclinations, former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman who gained the national spotlight for unfettered criticism of former President Donald Trump, was a hotly anticipated guest at the conference.

Cheney, who has one of the most conservative voting records in the U.S. House, told the crowd the Republican Party has ‘embraced insurrection,’ and is "willingly trapped" in Trump's "cult of personality."

While she demurred on what her own future political plans would be after her ouster from the U.S. House, she said she was committed to ensuring Trump didn't win reelection to the White House. She left to a standing ovation.

Some more conservative Republicans believe little has changed. Meshawn Maddock, the former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party and a loyal Trump ally, was on hand and told MLive, "the truth is this conference has always been leftist-leaning."