All roads in Michigan start with the roads

House Minority Leader Matt Hall, R-Marshall, shook up Lansing last week with his plan to reshuffle $2.7 billion in the state’s roads budget.

The plan isn’t revolutionary. Several prior Republican House leaders advocated for something similar: using General Fund money and replacing the sales tax on gasoline with a higher gas tax.

What makes this plan feel different is the timing.

It comes at a perfect time for outgoing House Speaker Joe Tate and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who desperately need something to rally Democrats around after taking it on the chops on election night.

They need to reconnect with everyday Michiganders again. There’s no better issue than the one that helped get Whitmer elected in the first place.

Remember “Fix the Damn Roads?” Remember the governor’s proposed 45-cent gas tax increase? No legislator ever introduced the bill.

Whitmer, like Govs. John Engler and Jennifer Granholm, got some projects done in the last few years with bonding. Well, her $3.5 billion is almost gone, and there’s still no long-term funding plan in place.

Tate is mired in internal caucus strife. The days of ramming significant policy through the House with 56 Democrats are limited to things that unions and trial lawyers support that can be messaged as helping the working class. (Read last week’s column for more on that.)

To clear the deck on his to-do list, the speaker needs Republicans. If agreeing to a passable plan to fund roads long term is the price for poker, it’s time for Tate to push his chips to the middle and call Hall’s bluff.

You want to use all this General Fund money to fund roads? Put the proposal on the voting board. See what happens.

In 1993, then-state Sen. Debbie Stabenow sponsored a successful measure to eliminate property tax support for schools. It forced lawmakers to craft a more manageable way to fund schools. Her courage is now heralded 30 years later.

The final month of 2024 presents Tate and the governor with a similar opportunity. What better way to end the Democrats’ first trifecta in 40 years than by finally fixing the damn roads?

Moving something like what Hall is proposing starts a chain of dominos that could end with this lame-duck session being among the most productive in recent memory. As it stands now, taxpayers paid lawmakers a full-time salary in 2024 to pass a budget at 4 a.m. and campaign. That’s about it.

Here’s what could happen:

1. Using the corporate income tax to fund the roads mercifully ends this perennial debate about raising the gas tax, which is going nowhere with the high cost of living clearly being voters’ No. 1 issue.
2. Rep. Dylan Wegela, D-Garden City, has a bill ready to go that would raise more money for public schools by increasing the corporate income tax, if moving money around hurts the schools. Voters aren’t crying crocodile tears for corporations these days. As far as they’re concerned, the rich can pay a little more to help kids.

Watch Republicans cast that vote. Corporations or kids?

3. A lane of communication is created, for the first time, between Tate and Hall. The two can help each other pass their priorities without the House being paralyzed because all 56 House Democrats aren’t in Lansing simultaneously.
4. Maybe, just maybe, lawmakers will be amenable to sending a little scratch to Dan Gilbert in Detroit to tear down a couple of obsolete Renaissance Center towers before that site turns to blight.

If some federal money comes for that massive microchip factory proposal in Genesee County, maybe there’s something left over for that, creating a boatload of jobs.

Could this all really happen?

“Bipartisanship” isn’t a popular word these days. Folks seem content believing their side has all the answers.

But maybe each side does have the answers. Similar answers, at least. They’re just coming from different directions. The road to getting things done for working people can land at the same spot.

And it starts with roads.

(Kyle Melinn is the editor of the Capitol news service MIRS. Email him at melinnky@gmail.com.)