Breaking down Michigan’s modest budget

Transportation, climate see best investments

The legislative process, with all its high-profile politicking, is often the most public vehicle for making environmental progress. But Michigan’s yearly budget is just as important. It adds dollars behind bills we pass into law. It funds the people who implement them. And it gives us a chance to make real, tangible investments across the state to protect our air, water and beloved places.

Last week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed Michigan’s latest, $82 billion budget, the result of months of negotiating and advocating with the Michigan House and Senate. It was noticeably smaller than previous years’ budgets, which were boosted through billions of COVID dollars. With less money to work with, Michigan’s environmental investments turned out… fine.

To be clear, it’s far better than the budgets of 10 or so years ago, where we had to continually fight to keep our state departments from being cut.

But on the heels of big wins—landmark climate laws and historic lead poisoning protections—and visionary political talk, we and allies fought for something just as grand.

In our recap below, we talk about the best and worst additions and cuts to our budget. These funds built on or are new to the billions of dollars we usually expect to be spent on hundreds of programs.

Transportation

Perhaps the most marked improvement from the last budget to the current is in transportation, a perennially difficult area to get wins in—we did put the world on wheels, after all.

We saw a slew of modest investments across all forms of travel. Three million dollars of electric bike discounts are coming to those interested in a quick and affordable way of mid-range travel. Electric vehicle charging will be ramped up with $25 million in investments. And $36 million in more local bus funding was approved.

Funding to encourage walking, biking and rolling also expanded by about $4 million. 

Climate & Energy

In the spring, we launched Project Greenprint, an effort to secure hundreds of millions of dollars to make housing new and old energy efficient, electric and safe from the elements. We saw it as a way to not only fight climate change but to make Michigan’s expensive housing market more affordable for everyone.

While Michigan’s newly constrained budget came up well short of our aspirational number, we were able to secure over $40 million in new money for these efforts. We see this funding as a pilot program of sorts, a way to prove to the State of Michigan these investments work.

The other good news comes in the form of new, sorely needed state employees—$6 million-worth! The future hires will work to make Michigan’s 100% clean energy goals a reality.

Water

Sometimes the big win is what doesn’t make the budget. That happened when Gov. Whitmer vetoed $3 million in rebates for gas stations that up their ethanol offerings.

Despite its marketing, adding ethanol to gasoline is not environmentally friendly. It creates more smog than traditional gas, and it creates more corn farming, which erodes soil and, subsequently, sends more fertilizers and other chemicals into our waters.

Unfortunately, in inverse happened: Investments we desperately need for clean water were also left out.

As our friend John Hartig reported in Great Lakes Now, the Detroit River and River Rouge need $1.4 billion to clean up heavily polluted sediments at their bottoms. Almost all the money can be provided through federal programs and industry contributions, but $100 million remains. We and 61 allies advocated to include this funding in Michigan’s budget, but to no avail.

That’s unfortunate because in just three years, almost all that federal money will be spent and southeast Michigan will be stuck with a price tag 10 times greater than what they currently have.

Land & Wildlife

Advocates urged elected officials to fund an opt-out recreation passport, which would have automatically given all Michiganders with drivers licenses a free pass to all state parks. It didn’t make the cut.