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LANSING, MI – During a marathon session day, state lawmakers Thursday unveiled line-by-line details of a $51.8 billion budget proposal to fund government services. <\/p>\n
The general government spending plan, presented a day after the state government\u2019s mandatory Oct. 1 deadline, includes funding for local governments and state departments. It will be accompanied by a separate school aid proposal for K-12 schools. <\/p>\n
A House Conference Committee, which started a little after 1 p.m. Thursday and didn\u2019t pass out a budget until nearly 8 p.m., marked the first time the full details of the budget deal between Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and legislative leaders was publicly presented. <\/p>\n
In addition to a $51.8 billion spending plan, the budget approved unanimously by the committee pulls $12.5 billion from the state\u2019s General Fund. <\/p>\n
It significantly cuts funding to several state departments, including over $7 billion to the Department of Health and Human Services, mainly due to federal spending cuts. The Departments of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy and Labor and Economic Opportunity also shrunk. <\/p>\n
Funding to the state Department of Transportation increased, part of a roads plan that includes $1.1 billion in increased ongoing funding, with the largest recipients being counties ($456.7 million) and cities\/villages ($246 million).<\/p>\n
The budget includes a $53.6 million increase for state trunkline road and bridge construction, a $17.8 million increase in federal funds for local roads and bridges, a $17.5 million increase in restricted funds for county road commission operations and an increase of $9.8 million for city and village road operations.<\/p>\n
It allocates $7.7 million for a study and 3-year pilot program to look at options for a per-mile fee on drivers, an alternative to Michigan\u2019s gas tax. It removes $1 million in administration costs to begin transitioning the state\u2019s fleet of 14,000 leased and owned vehicles to electric vehicles. <\/p>\n
The budget also gives $26 million in one-time funding for the runway replacement project and infrastructure improvements at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, an $11 million increase from the previous year. <\/p>\n
The base was selected for a new mission by the Trump administration in April. <\/p>\n
A $543 million Department of Natural Resources (DNR) budget, which was increased by $8 million from the previous year, includes several line items to help Michigan recover from a March ice storm that left an estimated 100,000 homes without power. <\/p>\n
A supplemental to the 2024-25 budget includes $10 million from the General Fund deposited into the Disaster and Emergency Contingency Fund to support ice storm response activities.<\/p>\n
The supplemental also includes $14 million for cleanup and reforestation activities. <\/p>\n
The 2025-26 DNR budget includes $2.2 million for the reforestation of state forest lands affected by the storm, and $2 million for fire suppression due to increased fire risk in the storm\u2019s aftermath. <\/p>\n
The budget also allocates $1.4 million in federal funding for the installation of high-speed internet infrastructure on DNR lands, and $2 million for continuing grants to schools to connect all Michigan fourth graders to the state park system. <\/p>\n
In addition to new funding, the budget eliminates positions for around 2,000 \u201cphantom employees,\u201d which are unfilled full-time positions, in multiple state departments. <\/p>\n
It includes new requirements that state departments \u201cmaximize utilization of its in-person workforce,\u201d with required office occupancy rates of 80% or higher for some departments.<\/p>\n
The budget agreement is contingent on a new 24% wholesale tax on marijuana to help fund roads, a bill that is now awaiting passage in the Senate. <\/p>\n
After its approval out of an initial conference committee, the bill will now move to the House and Senate floors for votes. <\/p>\n
Along with advancing a general government budget, the Legislature will also present its K-12 schools budget. Final details have yet to be revealed.<\/p>\n
Last week, Whitmer and leaders from the state House and Senate announced they had reached an agreement to pass a budget by Oct. 1 after months of stalled negotiations.<\/p>\n
But lawmakers failed to pass the 2025-26 spending plan before that Oct. 1 deadline, which is the start of the state\u2019s new fiscal year. Instead of entering a state government shutdown, lawmakers passed a short-term continuation spending plan to keep the government funded and operational until Oct. 8. <\/p>\n
The annual process of agreeing on a state budget to allocate dollars for schools, state departments and local governments is usually completed by July 1, the statutory deadline to pass a budget.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers missed that deadline amid funding and policy differences, lower revenue projections and disagreements on a long-term funding plan to fix the state\u2019s roads.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LANSING, MI – During a marathon session day, state lawmakers Thursday unveiled line-by-line details of a $51.8 billion budget proposal to fund government services. The general government spending plan, presented a day after the state government\u2019s mandatory Oct. 1 deadline, includes funding for local governments and state departments. It will be accompanied by a separate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[1488,55,554,1076,1486,1487,212],"class_list":{"0":"post-4905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-whats-in","8":"tag-51b","9":"tag-budget","10":"tag-general","11":"tag-government","12":"tag-michigans","13":"tag-proposed","14":"tag-whats"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegloss.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}