Article courtesy of MIRS for SBAM’s Lansing Watchdog newsletter
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is informing contractors who were set to receive a piece of the $645 million in non-statutory work projects that the House Appropriations Committee denied earlier this month that the State Budget Office and her administration are not done with its review, and are awaiting a legal opinion from Attorney General Dana Nessel as it takes its next step.
In a letter, Whiter acknowledged that the State Budget Office is still reviewing existing contracts, obligations and encumbrances. While the Budget Office is being charged with answering questions from impacted funding recipients, it’s not clear that they have answers at this point in time.
Suffice to say, the Governor is not happy about the situation based on the tone of the letter.
“Many of the affected projects are already underway and directly impact Michiganders’ ability to access good-paying jobs, quality, affordable health care, public safety services, reliable infrastructure, and other critical services,” she wrote.
On Dec. 10, the House Appropriations Committee rejected $644.9 million in unspent money from the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget that had been allocated by the administration as “work projects.”
It’s a move Republicans called the next step in weeding out “waste, fraud and abuse” from the state budget, but Democrats decried as Republicans playing the role of Scrooge before Christmas.
This rarely taken step was passed along mostly party lines and came after the State Budget Office recommended $2.7 billion in work projects that House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) called a “slush fund” scheme that hid pork in the budget.
The 1984 law that House Republicans used – 451a of the Management and Budget Act – was recently used in 2020 when Senate Republicans rejected four Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) projects totaling $18.2 million. At that time, however, the state was only holding on to more than $1.74 billion in work projects.
On Dec. 16, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing) sought Nessel’s opinion on what the Appropriations Committee did.
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