State Budget Bills Sent to Governor

The state legislature has passed all of the bills needed for the 2019-2020 fiscal year budget, and sent them on to Governor Gretchen Whitmer for review.

The budget totals $59-billion.

Most of the 14 bills passed on party line votes. The only ones that garnered significant bipartisan support were those for the Department of Energy and Great Lakes, the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, and the judiciary system. The education budget bill had passed earlier, with support from Democrats in the House, but not the Senate.

Republican State Representative Greg Markkanen likes it…

The education budget provides basically a cost-of-living per-pupil bump for most school districts, but Michigan’s four-year colleges will see only a half-percent funding increase, and community colleges will get just 1.6 percent.

The road budget gets an extra $400-million from the general fund, which Whitmer notes will fix less than 40 miles of freeway. It also contains language that could open the door to selling state assets to fund road repairs, including some airports and the Blue Water Bridge, which connects Port Huron and Sarnia, Ontario. It contains no long-term road funding solution.

Democratic State Representative Sara Cambensy of Marquette decried the cuts that were made to other state budgets to get the $400-million for roads. Whitmer called the result “a mess.” 

Once the finished bills are officially transmitted to the governor, she can approve them, reject them, or use line item vetoes to strike out sections of them. That’s a process that traditionally takes 10 days to two weeks. It will need to be accelerated if the state is to avoid a partial government shutdown beginning Tuesday.