- Plans to expand a cash assistance program for moms ‘in limbo’ after Michigan House cuts, pediatrician says
- House Republicans unilaterally voted Wednesday to cancel nearly $650 million in previously approved spending
- Other cuts include more than $6.6 million for Flint’s recovery from the city’s 2014 water contamination crisis
LANSING — On Wednesday morning, Dr. Mona Hanna contacted Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall’s office with an invitation, she said: Join her at a January event to announce the expansion of a first-in-the-nation program that gives cash to new and expecting mothers, known as RxKids.
She also wondered if Hall, a Richland Township Republican, had any interest in being part of the press release, too.
But that afternoon, Hanna received an unexpected response, albeit indirectly: House Republicans had abruptly canceled previously approved funding for the bipartisan program. Just like that, nearly $18.5 million meant for pregnant moms and babies in more than a dozen communities was gone.
“The money they have cut is the money we are using, right now, for vital support for Michigan families,” Hanna told Bridge Michigan, saying the program that started in Flint is now “in limbo” as staff works to understand whether the funding cut will impact expansion plans.
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While RxKids is slated to receive another $270 million in state funding over the coming year, program organizers are grappling with the loss of more immediate money that they had been expecting. “I don’t know what this means right now,” Hanna told Bridge, “but it’s not good news.”
The $18.5 million cut to RxKids was a small part of about $645 million in previously approved spending canceled by Republicans during a Wednesday House Appropriations Committee meeting that lasted less than five minutes, blindsiding intended recipients and enraging Democrats.
Dr. Mona Hanna said plans to expand a first-in-the-nation program for expecting and new mothers are ‘in limbo’ after House Republicans on Wednesday voted to cut $18.5 million in funding as part of a larger slashing of state work projects. (Ron French/Bridge Michigan)
Other canceled spending included $159 million for an economic development program championed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to secure federal funding, along with $6.7 million for Flint water crisis recovery, $56,600 to provide wigs to Michiganders undergoing cancer treatment and $2.5 million for a pilot study on traffic cameras in school zones.
Hall defended the House action as a means to “force a discussion about what is the best way to get value for your tax dollars” rather than simply allow the Whitmer administration to carry the funds over to the new fiscal year as work projects, which had been routine practice in past years.
He and House Appropriations Committee Chair Ann Bollin, R-Brighton, argued state departments have been “squirreling away” funding into what they referred to as “slush funds.” Their goal, Hall said, was to identify and eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse” in state government.
A day later, state department heads were still trying to figure out the impact of the unexpected spending cuts, many deferring comment to the State Budget Office, which has said the move will have “negative consequences for Michigan families, businesses and our state’s economy.”
Whitmer’s office argued the GOP moves will “kill jobs and raise costs for Michigan families—just days before the Christmas holiday.”
“Even Ebenezer Scrooge wouldn’t dream of such cruel cuts, like eliminating support for students in Flint impacted by the water crisis and survivors of child sexual assault,” spokesperson Stacey LaRouche said in a statement.
“Our administration will continue to review the full impact of these cuts, but Michiganders deserve to know who is responsible: Matt Hall and his caucus.”
Nearly $650 million in cuts
Michigan House Republicans late Wednesday made the unique and unilateral move to deny nearly $645 million in funding to varying work projects across numerous state departments.
The budget committee leveraged a rarely-used provision in the management and budget act that allowed them to deny requests from the State Budget Office — which is controlled by Whitmer — to extend unspent money appropriated in the prior fiscal year into the future by converting the items into a “work project.”
The requests are automatically approved if the Legislature takes no action, but either chamber can block them without the other’s approval, sending the unsent cash back to the funding pots it came from.
Republicans celebrated the cancellation of more than $102 million for 163 separate “community enhancement” earmarks that had been approved in 2023 when Democrats controlled both chambers of the Legislature.
House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, defended cutting nearly $650 million of state work projects on Wednesday, telling reporters that if the money wasn’t spent this year it was time to ‘force a discussion about what is the best way to get value for your tax dollars.’ (Jordyn Hermani/Bridge Michigan)
Similar grants have drawn criticism, controversy and even criminal charges in recent years, but cutting money for the ones Republicans saw as problematic meant killing the projects they favored, too.
“Not everything that the Appropriations Committee cut was waste, fraud and abuse,” Hall conceded Wednesday. Bollin, too, acknowledged that the cuts could hit some “very good projects.”
House Republicans could agree to resume some of the funding, Hall said, but they want a chance to review past allocations and force Democrats back to the negotiating table.
Republican legislative leaders emphasized they’d prefer all earmarks to be subject to a new, more transparent process they had pushed to implement earlier this year, though they still tacitly approved the bulk of the several billion dollars in work project requests regardless.
Still, none of that is expected to happen before 2026 and the next spending bill, which is likely to be weeks or even months away.
Rep. Jim DeSana, a Carleton Republican on the committee, said he saw Wednesday’s vote as about “reclaiming the process.”
“We’re in the majority now. They negotiated this with (former Democratic House Speaker) Joe Tate. They didn’t negotiate it with the House Republicans,” he said.
If Democrats had been in the same position House Republicans are now, “I would fully expect that they would have” employed a similar tactic, DeSana added.
DeSana told Bridge the cuts were intended to send an anti-pork message — that state budgets shouldn’t be used to fund individual projects — though he himself had requested funding for a baseball facility in his district earlier this year.
“Why should my taxpayers in Taylor pay for a mental health clinic in Muskegon,” DeSana said. “If it’s something that’s worth funding, it either should be funded to every county and it shouldn’t be done in special projects.”
Flint cuts
House Republicans canceled nearly $6.7 million in planned spending for Flint in the wake of that city’s water crisis, which began in 2014. About $1.6 million in funding for community health services was eliminated, along with $5 million to fund education support for children in Flint schools who could have been impacted by lead in that city’s drinking water.
“The Flint drinking water emergency is over,” Hall said Wednesday, referencing the federal government’s May decision to formally lift a declared emergency in the city. “Even Governor Whitmer has acknowledged that, but yet they continue to want to fund it and squirrel away money for it. That isn’t happening.”
Democrats took exception to the comments — and the cuts — for Flint.
“Although they say that the water crisis is over, we still have kids that are still dealing with that, so we still need that money to help those kids that got affected 10 years ago,” said state Rep. Cynthia Neeley, D-Flint, who is married to the city’s mayor. “So for our speaker to say that we no longer need the money is untrue.”
‘I owe (the builders) money’
In Muskegon, the Lakeshore Museum Center had used the first part of a $2 million state grant to restore the roofs of three historic Queen Anne structures which are now local museums.
They were in the process of restoring the homes’ intricate Victorian-era porches when they learned their remaining $1.2 million had been cut when House Republicans canceled $15.8 million in community museum grants.
Most of the wood has been crafted to replace the ‘rotting’ porches on historic muskegon homes-turned-museum, but the Lakeshore Museum Center may not be able to pay to have it installed after funding for the restoration was cut this week. (Courtesy Lakeshore Museum Center)
Local builders are producing the ornate wood beams, but Melissa Horton, the museum’s executive director, doesn’t know what will come next.
“I owe (the builders) money, and I don’t know that I have the money to pay them,” she told Bridge. “I don’t know where I’m going to get the funding.”
Rep. Will Snyder, a Democrat who represents Muskegon in the House, called the vote “one of the most corrupt abuses of power and unprecedented displays of cruelty that I’ve ever seen” in state government.
Horton said she made a contract with the builders “in good faith” because “I never in a million years would have thought that the state would have defaulted on their contract with us.”
Other institutions may have fared better, however.
Three symphony orchestras in Lansing, Flint and Grand Rapids who received a combined $1.6 million in last year’s budget to subsidize their operations had already spent all but $5,100 of that funding — which was clawed back by House Republicans Thursday.
What’s next? ‘Everything is up in the air’
When contacted Thursday, an overwhelming majority of state departments deferred comment to the State Budget Office as they reviewed the potential impacts of these cuts — as did Whitmer’s office.
Lauren Leeds, communications director for the State Budget Office, acknowledged in an email that her office, too, was “still reviewing and assessing the impact” of Wednesday’s votes.
Legislative Democrats responded with fury and outrage to the cuts, though they have little recourse but to push for the funding’s restoration.
They argue that, by upending funding that a host of partners had assumed could be counted on, the state government is showing itself to be an unreliable partner.
Sen. Sarah Anthony, a Lansing Democrat and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, also lambasted the cuts. She also noted that Dec. 14 is the last day to cut any additional work projects.
When asked if that meant the Democratic-led Senate was considering identifying and eliminating any additional work projects in a sort of tit-for-tat move with the Republican-led House, Anthony was noncommittal.
“That’s the purview of this (Appropriations) committee, and that’s what we’re looking at,” Anthony told Bridge. “Everything is up in the air right now.”
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