* Craig Mauger, State Politics Reporter for the Detroit News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
Now in the shadow of the Capitol Dome and Lansing.
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Speaker 2 (00:35):
Michael Patrick Shields is on the air.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Good morning World, Good morning Lancing. I'm Kyle Malan, editor
of the MURRS newsletter, coming at you from our offices
here by the State Capitol off Algin Street. Nice warm
October day. Could be our last warm day for quite
a while, though the forecast is looking like we're gonna
start dipping into the sixties. Maybe get a little rain tonight,

(01:01):
but yeah, I think we need a little rain. As
much as we've enjoyed the sun and the heat, it's
getting a little crispy out there when you're walking on
the grass, and I've done a little of that. But
we've also spent a lot of time indoors because of
the state budget. We spent the two nights last week

(01:22):
past midnight at the state Capitol. One of my colleagues
who did that with me, Craig Maugert from the Detroit News. Craig,
I hope you caught up on some sleep this weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
I don't feel like I'm quite there yet. You need
another week of normal sleeping here to get back to
where I was for But who knows.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
I was just talking with James Holman about this past week.
You know that Tuesday night Wednesday morning was tough because
literally nothing was going on. We were just sitting around
just waiting for them to pass a continuation budget. And
then Thursday night Friday morning was fire hose time, where
we get this budget dropped on us, you know, three
hundred pages and we get like an hour to dissect

(02:03):
it before the House and the Senate vote on it.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Exactly right. I mean, this is a heck of a
document and it's quite a you know, I would be
interested in how it compares to some other things you've
seen in the Capitol, but it's just such a major
compromise from all of the factions involved. It doesn't seem
like really anyone gets exactly what they want out of
this thing, and a lot of people, I think have
to hold their nose and vote for it. I mean
the Senate Democrat so many of them did not want

(02:30):
to vote for this marijuana tax increase. Raising the taxes
that people will have to pay for marijuana twenty four
percent is what they instituted on wholesale marijuana. I talked
to so many Senate Dems who said they didn't want
to vote for it unless they had to. One Senate
Republican told me that they only had eleven committed yes

(02:51):
votes in the nineteen member Senate Dem caucus at one point,
so they had to work to find four Synadems who
were willing to, you know, finally go green on the board,
and they get four Republicans to put them over the
edge there. But they were very close to not having
to vote for this whole deal.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
It seems, well, it's an interesting thing because the Senate
Republicans didn't have to vote for it. They didn't cut
the deal like the House Republicans did. They are like, well, hey, listen,
we're not going to vote for a tax increase if
we don't have to. We're not going to walk the
plank on your deal. This was your deal, not our deal.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
Deal.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
It's interesting now it works out because the House Republicans got, like,
I don't like forty members of their fifty fifty eight
member caucus to walk the plank on that.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
So I was exactly right, And you wonder what, you know,
I have not been able to suss out yet what
these four center Republicans that essentially cast the needed vote
for this tacticers, what they got out of this, why
they did it. We know one of them, Ed McBroom,
who represents stuff or potentially he's kind of morally opposed
to marijuana and was going to vote against vote for

(03:57):
it regardless because he was in favor of, you know,
making it so this industry is not thriving to the extent.

Speaker 5 (04:03):
That it was.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
But then you have three others who voted for it,
and they haven't really I haven't seen them publicly explain
why they did yet.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah. One of the things that you wrote about over
the weekend, I want to talk about. There was a
program that the state was trying to use to help
teachers new teachers pay off their student loan debt and
apparently didn't work as well as they hoped that it would,
so they did something else with the money.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, I mean this is something that I had, you know,
I had no idea about. And we've heard some lawmakers
and lamping talk about waste, fraud and abuse, but they
had never highlighted this until just a couple of days ago.
The two years ago, the legislature put something in the
budget to spend two hundred and twenty five million dollars
to help teachers pay back their student loan debt. And

(04:53):
there were a lot of press releases put out at
the time touting how great of a program this was
and how this was a win for educators in the
state of Michigan. Well, it turns out like none of
the money was handed out. I think I saw that
two hundred and nine million of it was not handed
out and was just sitting in account because the program
did not function properly. So in this new budget, one

(05:15):
of the many provisions that are buried in here, you know,
we'll keep finding out additional things that are in here.
They are going to give two hundred and three million
dollars for essentially bonuses for teachers, bus drivers, support staff,
at schools. Anyone who's represented by a labor union and
works at a K twelve school will get a portion

(05:36):
of this two hundred and three million dollars in extra
compensation that was just put in this budget.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Wouldn't they wouldn't you think that that would go to
people who have college debt though, because of their job
in the school, and not just everybody.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
No, I mean this new what's in the budget Now.
They've changed it from a college debt plan, which it
was previously, and now it's just going to go to
everyone because basically Senator Darren Camilarry said that the college
debt approach they were doing was just not functioning, so
he wanted to find a way to get this directly
into the pockets of teachers. There's lots of talk about
how educators and a lot of other plays in the

(06:16):
state are facing the skyrocketing healthcare costs, and they are
now going to say this is a way to relieve
some of the healthcare costs the teachers are facing.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Something else that you're hot on. Craig and I were
talking with Craig Mager here with the Detroit News and
something I was also trying to get my hands around
was the on a pork they were able to stuff
into this budget. And in years past when we had
a lot of COVID money hanging around, they really really
dished out the pork like it was a roast and
a barbecue. They kind of scaled that back a little

(06:46):
bit in this one.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, it scaled back significantly. I mean depending which lawmakers
you talk to. I mean, some of them will say, hey,
this shows that we had a real financial problem with
the state. We had to really cut back on spending.
Other lawmakers, if you ask them about this, they will say,
we didn't really need to do this tax on marijuana
because we had four hundred and sixty two million dollars

(07:09):
to essentially hand out to different nonprofits and governmental institutions
for special projects. My colleague best LeBlanc and I tracked
four hundred and sixty two million dollars in special projects
in this budget. These are sometimes referred to as legislatively
directed spending appropriations. The main one, more than half of it,

(07:32):
it was two hundred and fifty to two hundred and
seventy million that's going to go to a program called
RX Kids that gives money to expectant mothers and mothers
in the first six to twelve months after giving birth.
So that's the main one that was thought by the
Senate Democrats. But it's run through Michigan State University, and

(07:53):
it's it's something that has been hotly debated in the
Capitol previously. It's been a priority of Senate Majority Leader
Winny Brinks. But that's a huge chunk of the spending.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
Well, and that was her number one item out of
this budget, wasn't it. I mean, the Senate Democrats, this
is the thing that they are shining a light on,
saying we accomplish this.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
I think that's exactly right. And they've been talking about
it all year. I mean, they had a press conference
in Mars where they were talking about this, so definitely
something they wanted. I mean, the Senate Democrats got a
lot of these projects. I don't have the percentage off
the top of my head here, but just anecdotally looking
through the list, their names were attached to so many
of these. It's a lot less money. But it is

(08:35):
a new process. I mean, I will give them credit
for this. They've instituted a new process that's going to
improve to a certain degree, maybe not fully, the transparency
around how this money is handed out. They're not going
to give money any any longer, at least this year,
to nonprofits that haven't formed yet. We've seen this in
the past. They give money to a group that's not
even in physical existence.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
Well, they're making baby steps, that's for sure. Craig Mager
with the Detroit News.

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