In 2020, 15 Republicans tried to cast Michigan’s electoral votes for President Trump, even through President Biden won the state by 154,000. In this episode of MichMash, WDET’s Cheyna Roth and Gongwer News Service’s Zach Gorchow break down how the legal case against these electors unraveled.

Then, Executive Director of the Michigan Association of Counties Steve Currie joins the show to talk about how the state budget affects local governments.

Subscribe to MichMash on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Michigan mass transit agencies are waiting to find out how much money they will get from the state in 2026.

Lawmakers have until October 1 to approve a budget and send it to Governor Gretchen Whitmer to sign.

Transit proposals are similar

The governor, the state House, and the state Senate have all approved $226 million for local bus operating revenue. The House budget proposal adds $60 million in new revenue for transit systems that serve more than 100,000 people. The Senate plan includes $15 million in new funding.

The Michigan Public Transit Association analyzed all three budget plans. It says bus systems would lose an average of 5 or 6 percent in state funding if the $226 million figure is approved.

SMART, Southeast Michigan’s regional bus service, gets about a quarter of its funding from the state. General Manager Tiffany Gunter says the governor’s proposal would cost SMART about $8.6 million.

“We obviously don’t know where those cuts would come from directly today,” Gunter says. “This would have a horrible effect on the region’s ability to move mobility forward.”

Cuts jeopardize improvements

Gunter, who became SMART’s GM in August, says state budget cuts threaten plans to improve customer service. That includes expanding the Flex program, which lets people in about a dozen communities schedule shuttle rides seven days a week.

“We wouldn’t be able to move forward with those improvements to the service and those enhancements, because we just wouldn’t have the funding to do so,” she says. “We’d be looking at areas where we could pull back service instead.”

While the House proposal is more generous than either Whitmer’s or the Senate’s, Gunter says the devil is in the details. To get a share of the extra $60 million, a transit system must get at least 10% of its revenue from rider fares. Gunter says SMART’s farebox recovery ratio is 4%.

“43% of our riders are either seniors or people with disabilities, and those individuals pay a half fare,” she says.

Most funding comes from regional tax

60% of SMART’s revenue comes from a regional transit millage, which enables the agency to offer fare discounts.

Gunter says her goal is to ensure that SMART buses are safe, convenient, and reliable.

“We’re not just moving people here,” she says. “We know that what we do every day gives people access to opportunity.”

SMART says it carries an average of almost 11 million riders per year.

As Michigan schools return to classes this week, the uncertainty of the state budget is causing some schools to cut programs just in case there are any issues with funding. In this episode of MichMash, Gongwer News Service’s Zach Gorchow and Alethia Kasben discuss what needs to be done in order for the legislature to make the October 1 deadline.

Then, Robert McCann, Executive Director for the K-12 Alliance of Michigan, joins the show to talk about how the uncertainty of the budget is affecting school districts.

Subscribe to MichMash on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode: 

• How is budget uncertainty affecting schools across Michigan?
• How do educational benchmarks affect school budgets?

Michigan’s state government could shut down in about a month unless lawmakers reach a deal on a new budget.

The negotiations between House Republicans and Democratic senators and Governor Gretchen Whitmer have reportedly been tense.

Senate Democrats approved a budget proposal in May.

House GOP members recently passed their budget plan.

House Speaker Matt Hall says one of the major priorities for Michigan is finding a new source of revenue for road infrastructure.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length

Matt Hall, Speaker of the House: We’re going to have a major cliff in our road funding coming very soon as the governor’s borrowing runs out. She’s borrowed billions of dollars and kind of kicked the can down the road on road funding. A lot of the federal money is running out. A lot of that was from the COVID-19 pandemic, the big infrastructure money.

We got a letter from the Whitmer administration, the transportation department and the labor department. What they told us is if we do nothing, 8,000 Michigan workers are going to lose their jobs because there’s not any more road building or bridge building to do.

I looked at this and said, “wow, this is bigger than any economic development project that Whitmer has done.” We said not only could we create jobs and save jobs if we invested in roads, but we hear from all of our constituents that there’s many bridges that need to be fixed and particularly local roads need to be fixed.

We saw Gov. Whitmer win her election campaigning on fixing the roads. So we said, what if instead of growing all these departments of government, if we invested in roads? I looked at some of these departments and they’ve increased a lot since Whitmer became governor. What I realized is they had the money the whole time to fix the roads. Instead they spent it growing state government departments. So we put together a plan to fund the roads, put the $3.4 billion that are needed to fix the roads in permanently.

And according to Whitmer’s administration, that’ll create over 20,000 jobs a year. So we’ll save the 8,000 jobs and we’ll create 20,000 jobs, and the citizens will benefit because they’ll get good bridges and good roads.

Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: There are some critics that say they’re concerned about some of the cuts you propose in the budget. For instance, those affecting the Michigan State Police and Health and Human Services. I’ve heard some medical officials say they fear your budget makes big cuts in state funding for hospitals and could force some of the smaller rural ones to close. What’s your reaction to those comments?

MH: The hospitals, they lie. These hospitals make record profits year after year after year and they charge a lot of money to people. But the fact is our budget funds rural hospitals $250 million. We appropriated $250 million for rural hospitals.

When you’re changing the status quo, when you’re eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in government, the special interests complain. That’s why nobody’s done it before. We identified $5 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse in this state budget. We found 4,300 ghost employees in the state government. Those are positions that have been unfilled for years. It amounts to $500 million a year. And they squirrel this away year after year after year. That’s why there’s $6 billion sitting in bank accounts for state government at the end of the year. If they don’t spend the money they get to keep it. They put it in a bank account and that’s why they inflate the size of these budgets.

We said, let’s take half of that $6 billion, pay off the governor’s borrowing, and we can put another $330 million a year into roads. So we’re trying to make better use and get value for tax dollars out of this budget.

The state police have had hundreds of unfilled positions for years and years and years. They’re never gonna fill these positions. And what they do is they keep the money. They create all these positions, the politicians fund it and it just sits in these bank accounts. It’s part of the $6 billion I talked about. So when we’re saying why don’t we give you the money you’re actually gonna spend, that’s not a cut. That’s a better use of tax dollars.

When you’re changing the status quo, when you’re eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in government, the special interests complain.

What Democrats are saying is let’s keep the 4,300 ghost employees. Let’s keep these departments where they are. There’s no waste, fraud, and abuse in government. We’re gonna raise all your taxes next year.

We’ve demonstrated we have the money to do this without raising taxes. We just have to spend it better and that’s what the House budget does.

QK: We’re in the school season now. Some school officials have talked about not knowing how much money they’re gonna have to spend one way or the other. Where does the school budget stand in terms of state funding?

MH: My hope is that we resolve the school budget first. Along with roads, I’d like to see us get a school budget done early in our process.

We passed a school budget months ago. It’s been sitting in the Senate. We tried to come to agreement by the statutory deadline, July 1st. Democrats walked away from that negotiation.

We put up for a vote a legislation that says if the politicians don’t get a budget done on time, then they don’t get paid. The politicians here do not have enough skin in the game and sense of urgency to get these budgets done early. And as a result, they shouldn’t get paid. We put that up for a vote, the Democrats voted no and it failed. Now we’re back having conversations. They resumed when the governor and I and [Senate Majority Leader Democrat] Winnie Brinks met. I hope we can resolve our differences and get an education budget done.

We’re trying to restore funding that the Democrats cut for school safety and mental health. Even for private schools. You saw what happened in Minnesota. We want to fund a school resource officer in every school district and restore the mental health and school safety funding. And then we want to empower our local districts to make the decisions that they need to instead of Lansing politicians telling them how to spend their money.

QK: In terms of the Michigan Senate, an issue that interests a number of people in the metro Detroit region is that the senate recently passed a plan to raise tipping fees for waste disposal. They were trying to limit some toxic material from coming into disposal sites. What’s your view of raising those tipping fees?

MH: The Democrats tried to move legislation last year to raise taxes on everyone’s trash. If you raise taxes on the trash companies and their costs go up, they’re passing those taxes onto the customers, right? The Democrats didn’t even have the votes to get this done when they controlled the House, Senate, and the governor’s office. So now that the Republicans are in control of the House, I don’t expect that you’ll see us move it. It’s a lot to ask for a $200 or $300 tax increase on a service that people need to have.

QK: At the moment it seems the House and Senate budget proposals are still billions of dollars apart. There has to be a state budget finalized in about a month or risk a government shutdown. In your view, how realistic is it that Michigan could be getting close to a government shutdown?

MH: Right now, the Senate Democrats are not moving forward in a manner of really looking at the budget and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. What they want to do is just add 4% on what we did last year and call it good.

At the end of the day, there’s a lot of alignment between Gov. Whitmer and the House Republicans. We want to fix the roads, we want to invest in schools and we support public safety. So my hope is that she gets the legislative Democrats in line, they empower her as their leader, and she negotiates a deal with us.

Once they do that, we’ll be done in about two weeks. Right now, what you see is a lot of these legislative Democrats are kind of following the model of this New York City mayor candidate, [Zohran] Mamdani. They are buying into rhetoric like that from [Michigan U.S.] Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed when he says we should take the Republicans and bring them down into the mud and choke ’em out.

You see Gov. Whitmer embracing President Trump and trying to lead the Democrat party in a more cooperative and bipartisan direction. I hope the Democrats in the Senate empower Gov. Whitmer and support her because then we’ll get a deal done very fast. But if they go the route of this Mamdani, the direction that they are heading, then I think it’s going to be a real challenge to get a budget done.

Nearly two months after the original deadline, House Republicans passed a budget giving the legislature a month to negotiate ahead of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1. In this episode of MichMash, WDET’s Cheyna Roth and Gongwer News Service’s Alethia Kasben discuss what was included in this version of the budget. 

Then, they’re joined by Gongwer News Service’s administration reporter Lily Guiney to talk about the new state superintendent and drama within the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. 

Subscribe to MichMash on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode: 

• As the Oct. 1 deadline approaches, how’s the state budget looking?
• Why was Dr. Glenn M. Maleyko chosen to be Michigan’s next state superintendent?
• What’s going on with Michigan DNR leadership?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has passed about $9 billion in federal spending cuts requested by President Donald Trump, including deep reductions to public broadcasting and foreign aid, moving forward on one of the president’s top priorities despite concerns from several Republican senators.

The legislation, which now moves to the House, would have a tiny impact on the nation’s rising debt but could have major ramifications for the targeted spending, from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to U.S. food aid programs abroad.

It also could complicate efforts to pass additional spending bills this year, as Democrats and even some Republicans have argued they are ceding congressional spending powers to Trump with little idea of how the White House Office of Management and Budget would apply the cuts.

The 51-48 vote came after 2 a.m. Thursday after Democrats sought to remove many of the proposed rescissions during 12 hours of amendment votes. None of the Democratic amendments were adopted.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Republicans were using the president’s rescissions request to target wasteful spending. He said it is a “small but important step for fiscal sanity that we all should be able to agree is long overdue.”

But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the bill “has a big problem — nobody really knows what program reductions are in it.”

Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, joined Democrats in voting against the legislation. Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former Republican leader, had voted against moving forward with the bill in a Tuesday procedural vote, saying he was concerned the Trump White House wanted a “blank check,” but he ultimately voted for final passage.

The effort to claw back a sliver of federal spending comes after Republicans also muscled Trump’s big tax and spending cut bill to approval without any Democratic support. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that measure will increase future federal deficits by about $3.3 trillion over the coming decade.

Lawmakers clash over cuts to public radio and TV stations

Along with Democrats, Collins and Murkowski both expressed concerns about the cuts to public broadcasting, saying they could affect important rural stations in their states.

Murkowski said in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday that the stations are “not just your news — it is your tsunami alert, it is your landslide alert, it is your volcano alert.”

Less than a day later, as the Senate debated the bill, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the remote Alaska Peninsula, triggering tsunami warnings on local public broadcasting stations that advised people to get to higher ground.

The situation is “a reminder that when we hear people rant about how public broadcasting is nothing more than this radical, liberal effort to pollute people’s minds, I think they need to look at what some of the basic services are to communities,” Murkowski said.

The legislation would claw back nearly $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which represents the full amount it’s due to receive during the next two budget years.

The corporation distributes more than 70% of the money to more than 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to support national programming.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some funding administered by the Interior Department would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in about a dozen states.

But Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, a network of locally owned and operated stations, said that deal was “at best a short-term, half-measure that will still result in cuts and reduced service at the stations it purports to save, while leaving behind all other stations, including many that serve Native populations.”

Slashing billions of dollars from foreign aid

The legislation would also claw back about $8 billion in foreign aid spending.

Among the cuts are $800 million for a program that provides emergency shelter, water and sanitation and family reunification for those who flee their own countries and $496 million to provide food, water and health care for countries hit by natural disasters and conflicts. There also is a $4.15 billion cut for programs that aim to boost economies and democratic institutions in developing nations.

Democrats argued the Trump administration’s animus toward foreign aid programs would hurt America’s standing in the world and create a vacuum for China to fill.

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said the amount of money it takes to save a starving child or prevent the transmission of disease is miniscule, even as the investments secure cooperation with the U.S. on other issues. The cuts being made to foreign aid programs through Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency were having life-and-death consequences around the world, he said.

“People are dying right now, not in spite of us but because of us,” Schatz said. “We are causing death.”

After objections from several Republicans, GOP leaders took out a $400 million cut to PEPFAR, a politically popular program to combat HIV/AIDS that is credited with saving millions of lives since its creation under then-President George W. Bush.

Looking ahead to future spending fights

Democrats say the bill upends a legislative process that typically requires lawmakers from both parties to work together to fund the nation’s priorities. Triggered by the official recissions request from the White House, the legislation only needs a simple majority vote instead of the 60 votes usually required to break a filibuster, meaning Republicans can use their 53-47 majority to pass it along party lines.

The Trump administration is promising more rescission packages to come if the first effort is successful. But some Republicans who supported the bill indicated they might be wary of doing so again.

“Let’s not make a habit of this,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, who voted for the bill but said he was wary that the White House wasn’t providing enough information on what exactly will be cut. Wicker said there are members “who are very concerned, as I am, about this process.”

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis echoed similar concerns and said Republicans will need to work with Democrats to keep the government running later in the year.

“The only way to fund the government is to get at least seven Democrats to vote with us at the end of September or we could go into a shutdown,” Tillis said.

–Reporting by Kevin Freking and Mary Clare Jalonick, The Associated Press. Associated Press reporter Becky Bohrer contributed.

Michigan school districts face tough choices as their fiscal years began Tuesday while the Legislature remains deadlocked on the state K-12 budget.

The Republican-controlled House and the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, adjourned and left town earlier this week after it became clear they would not reach a deal by the July 1 deadline set in state law. There are big differences between the chambers’ differing versions and it appears possible if not likely the budget will hang fire into the fall.

“We’ve seen school districts passing budgets that make cuts, that pink slip employees, that dip heavily into their reserve funds that they aren’t supposed to be touching,” said Robert McCann, executive director of the K-12 Alliance of Michigan.

McCann said this outcome was foreseeable as the budget process lagged months behind the typical process and missed key benchmarks, including getting initial versions adopted in the spring so they could move to bicameral, bipartisan conference committees to hammer out final versions. Those conference committee versions would have to be approved without amendments in up-or-down votes of the House and Senate before they would go to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for her signature.

“And instead we were left with this sort of chaos situation of trying to scramble something together before the deadline and, ultimately, there wasn’t the will or the way to make that happen and it’s really because of months and months of inaction,” said McCann. “This failure has been happening over the past five, six months now of delays and inaction and seemingly not caring about the urgency of getting a K-12 budget done on time.”

There are no consequences to lawmakers for missing the July deadline, which was enacted by the Legislature after a 2007 deadlock between then Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) and a politically divided Legislature led to a brief partial government shutdown.

The state’s fiscal year begins in three months on Oct. 1, when the Michigan Constitution requires a balanced budget to be signed.

Michigan lawmakers left the state capitol Tuesday night again without passing a new state budget for K-12 schools.

Tuesday was the statutory deadline for passing an entire state budget. But lawmakers likely won’t be back for a couple of weeks.

That means school districts have started a new fiscal year without knowing how much money they’ll be getting from the state. 

The Democratic-controlled Senate adjourned first, throwing in the towel in the late afternoon. Leadership said the Senate and the Republican-led House were still worlds apart in their negotiations.

Speaking to reporters, Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids) said she’d like schools to have more reassurance when it comes to their funding.

“I think we’re in a position where, when we can give them more certainty, sooner is better, and we will do everything we can to get there,” Brinks said before adding, “There’s not much more that they can learn this week. I think we’re continuing to hear from school leaders in our community that the want a better budget — not a fast budget — so that is our guiding principle at this point.”

There are several differences not only between each chamber’s proposals, but how they’re approaching the talks themselves.

The Senate has been adamant about wanting a full budget passed at the same time. House leadership has shut down that idea, instead arguing that a schools budget and a separate roads funding plan that could have implications for school money should go first.

Beyond that, the House schools proposal would raise the base-level funding for schools but cancel out directed spending on items like free school meals or mental health support. House Republicans say it would give districts more flexibility on how they spend their money.

The Senate also proposes more per-student funding but Senate Democrats want that directed spending maintained.

House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Twp) said he still hoped the House could pass a new proposal with bipartisan support after the Senate walked.

Hall said, as a way to pressure the Senate, he offered House Democrats restored funding for school meals and rural school transportation to gain their votes. He called that deal a win-win, and said a similar deal was on the table with the Senate.

“We win because we keep pressure on to get a school budget done quickly and also to get roads done and they win because they can establish relevancy in the budget process. I thought that was a critical opportunity for them and I think they missed that opportunity,” Hall said.

That plan never came to fruition. After session Tuesday, House Democrats said they didn’t feel Hall was working in good faith.

No budget means schools still don’t know how much money they’ll get for things like teachers, resource officers, or free meals for students.

Michigan lawmakers went home without passing a new budget for K-12 schools Thursday night. That’s despite, both meeting for hours and a statutory July 1 deadline for getting an entire state budget done.

It appears part of the holdup is how to handle earmarks for programs like free school lunches or mental health services. The Democratic-led Senate wants them maintained while the Republican-controlled House of Representatives wants to cut them in favor of giving districts more money per student.

House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Twp) is also trying to get a road funding plan passed alongside the school budget.

Hall spoke to reporters Thursday night after spending hours negotiating with Senate leadership, the governor, and their teams. He said the leaders were leaving with “a roadmap” that will help them get a deal done next week.

“The House Republicans are committed to working through the weekend, working tomorrow, and working more tonight. Working over the weekend with our goal of still trying to get something done on roads and education by July 1,” Hall said.

Hall said he believed his Democratic counterparts worked better with added pressure from that deadline. He claimed the Senate adding more session days to its calendar for next week as a win.

The Senate had planned to take the first two weeks of July off.

All sides of the negotiating table say they’re optimistic about getting something done, acknowledging it would be difficult.

Reporters caught State Budget Director Jen Flood leaving the governor’s office at the state Capitol Thursday night. She said negotiators were “having great conversations,” when pressed for a comment.

Democrats, however, are still frustrated by the time crunch. They accuse House Republicans of delaying the process by waiting until a couple weeks ago to release their school budget proposal.

Rep. Alabas Farhat (D-Dearborn) is the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

“We are seeing a budget process that normally takes months to play out, playing out within a span of four to five days,” Farhat said. “We shouldn’t be in this spot right now where we’re five days before the [statutory] deadline contemplating whether or not we’ll have this budget. So school districts don’t have to keep wondering and teachers don’t have to keep wondering if they’re going to be pink slipped or not.”

Hall said he and House Republicans have been vocal about wanting to keep to the July 1 deadline for months. Democrats have as well, though some have raised doubts in recent weeks about that feasibility without having a complete budget proposal from the House.

The odds of passing a full state budget next week are dim.