That huge collective sigh of relief you just heard bursting out of the capitol dome is the realization that the effort to create a part-time legislature is a total bust.

Woo. That was close.

Well actually it was not even close.

Had you put pen to paper last May when Lt. Gov. Brian Calley launched the petition drive, you would have written this PTL thing would fly because it had popular support in the polls, i.e. citizens hate government and here was a chance to send those “clowns” in Lansing a message.

The message was: Come into town three months a year and than get the heck out of here. And while you are at it, slice your salary from almost $80 thou a year to about $36 thou a year.

With great fanfare, Mr. Calley was all in telling everyone that he was not a Brian-come-lately to this movement as he supported it when he was in the legislature.

The theory goes there were two reasons he was leading this effort. One, he did believe in the concept but more importantly, the popular wisdom goes, his political consultant John Yob assured his client that championing this effort and stirring up the troops to storm the bastille would catapult him into the lead to nail down the GOP nomination for governor.

On paper it looked like a winning strategy, until, months later, it didn’t.

Following the May rollout, the political insiders started to pick away at the petition language and found one gaping constitutional hole after another. The stoic Mr. Calley stood by his original language until it dawned on him they were right and so he called a halt to the drive, which was about two months into the field, and crafted “new and improved” language and rebooted the petition drive.

In the reboot he lost some 40,000 signatures that were collected during the ill-fated first bite of the PTL apple.

The drive went merrily along until signals started surfacing that they were having problems getting enough names. The goal was to collect about 380,000 with 315,000 valid names required to be on the November 2018 ballot.

As the rumors swirled, Mr. Calley announced in November that he was relinquishing his leadership role and turning over the whole shebang to some grassroots volunteers. Mr.Calley’s critics, mostly from the Bill Schuette side of the tracks, had a field day with that unmanly withdrawal.

“Calley Bails on Own Petition Drive for Fear He’s Leading a Losing Effort.” And that was the kindly way of putting it. Other’s denounced him as a loser who couldn’t collect signatures, so how could he run state government?

With Mr. Calley now on the sidelines, the drive continued while the word on the street was, this thing is going nowhere fast.

In what one consultant called an 11th hour “desperate” attempt to salvage this thing, a giant 100,000 person mailing with a petition inside the letter went out to would-be supporters. “Sign this. Get your friends to sign and send it back” was the hopeful request.

Fast forward to this past week.

“We currently don’t have the numbers to file,” conceded former lawmaker Tom McMillan, who suffered a heart attack in the midst of all this. When you backed out the original 40,000 they lost, they had 280,000 names. But he advised, they would start over again.

The players in town felt this was a loser from the opening bell. They privately blasted Mr. Calley for pushing a scheme that would have, supposedly, emasculated the House and Senate, turned more power over to the unelected bureaucrats and whomever was governor. And when you coupled PTL with the state’s most severe term limit law in the land, the insiders were aghast that the affable Mr. Calley would play this card when he should have known better and he did it just to feather his own political next the chatter went.

Turns out there was no “feathering” as Mr. Yob’s original strategy, which he won’t confirm, did not ignite a groundswell of Calley votes.

How so? In the polls a year ago he had about 13 percent of the vote.

And one failed petition drive later, where is he?

You guessed it: 13 percent.