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Michigan has a budget for the 2019-2020 fiscal year, but there are a lot of big, black lines on it.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer used her line item veto 147 times to scratch nearly a billion dollars out of the plan sent to her by the Republican-led legislature.
The biggest deletion was a one-time, $375-million extra allocation for road repairs. Whitmer maintains that new revenue is needed to supply $2.5-billion dollars per year for roads and bridges. She had criticized the cuts the legislature had made in other programs to free up the money.
She also crossed out $128-million in spending for K-12 education. The veto apparently does not affect the per-pupil grant, but is aimed at some purchases from private vendors that she said were unnecessary, and were diverting money away from actual teaching.
There is also a report that she black-lined the Pure Michigan Tourism campaign. More about the governor’s vetoes should become clear today.
The legislature could override the vetoes, but would need a two-thirds majority.
The governor has also called a special meeting of the State Administrative Board this morning. The board can be used to transfer budget allocations within state departments. It cannot move money from one department to another.
