'Pot for potholes'
A spending plan for roads is on its way to the governor. More
“Let us pray,” intoned Senator Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing) shortly after midnight. She got directly and succinctly to the point with her morning invocation after the Senate gaveled in a new session day.
“Dear God, help us pass this budget,” she said. “Amen.”
And, with or without divine guidance, more than two days past the deadline, the Michigan Legislature very early Friday morning finally approved a bipartisan budget for the new fiscal year.
Anthony, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, acknowledged the rocky going between a Senate controlled by Democrats and a Republican-led House.
“I think there were a lot of missed opportunities to compromise in a civil way, but we did get there,” she said. “I just think it just took too long.”
The roughly $80 billion budget is about the same amount as the last fiscal year’s. It increases K-12 funding slightly, among other things, and cuts economic development incentives that were championed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
The budget will preserve universal free school breakfast and lunches, dedicate all sales taxes on fuel to roads, lift income taxes on overtime wages and tips and raise an estimated $1.9 billion for roads once it is fully implemented, which will take several years.
The state’s fiscal year began at midnight on October 1 and, officially the state was without a budget for a few hours until the Legislature adopted and Whitmer quickly signed an extension.
House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) said he does not regret missing the October 1 deadline to get the budget deal he wanted.
“I think this budget is really about value for the dollars, whether it passed before or after,” he said. “But I’ll just say that this year, if I had surrendered to the Democrats and allowed all that pork in this budget, the voters would not have preferred that budget.”
Democrats were equally chagrined and held Hall liable for deadline pushing and uncompromising demands. The shutdown, they said, was an avoidable embarrassment. Keeping the budget in balance will rely partially on revenue from a controversial new wholesale tax on marijuana, with anticipated revenue pegged at $420 million. The debate over piling a new tax on the voter-approved legal pot industry almost stalled the budget.
Senator Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor) said that level of revenue is an illusion as the new tax will likely drive a stake in Michigan’s legal marijuana industry.
“The more the public hears about this, the more the public hears about how this is going to drive a huge number of customers back into the illicit market, how this is going to turn away the money that’s coming into Michigan from other states like Ohio and Indiana, it’s getting less and less support,” he said.
Irwin said he thinks the new cannabis tax could be susceptible to a court challenge for running afoul of Michigan’s voter-approved initiative that legalized marijuana in the state.
The budget bills now go to Whitmer’s desk. With the extension, she has until Wednesday to sign them.
