Greater Lansing may be on the tail end of a recent funding renaissance seen under the Biden administration and Michigan’s historic Democratic trifecta.
At the state level, the gains included a pair of $40 million grants to help Lansing build a new City Hall and a three-building, 460-unit downtown housing project known as New Vision Lansing. Those funds were part of a historic $150 million for Greater Lansing in the state’s 2024 budget, while the 2025 budget will add nearly $80 million more to the region’s coffers.
Federally, the Grand River Assembly Plant gained a new lease on life this summer when the U.S. Energy Department issued a $500 million grant to General Motors to facilitate its conversion to an electric vehicle manufacturing hub and preserve 650 jobs at the plant. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill have also led to local highway projects and green energy initiatives.
The true impact of the Nov. 5 election remains to be seen. But with a second Trump term and an incoming Republican majority in Michigan’s House of Representatives on the horizon, local Democrats are preparing for a shift in how grants and other state and federal programs and departments operate under the coming regime.
“My suspicion,” speculated Ingham County Treasurer Alan Fox, “is that in the next few years, we’re all going to have to be talking about making better use of local resources and how the tax system in the state works, because federal assistance is likely to dry up in a lot of different areas like housing, health and the environment.”
State Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, and state Rep. Angela Witwer, D-Delta Township, have chaired their respective appropriations committees since Democrats won all three state government branches in 2022. Under their fiscal leadership, Greater Lansing saw its chunk of the pie increase dramatically.
It was the first time in nearly four decades that Michigan Democrats held unilateral control over the Governor’s Office and state Legislature. However, now that House Republicans have won a 58-52 majority next year, a Republican appropriations chair will displace Witwer.
“With the house flipping, I will be negotiating the budget alongside a Republican state representative who will likely be coming in with a different set of values. I anticipate there being some tension points on the issues we are trying to negotiate,” Anthony said.
While this means that Greater Lansing communities will lose some influence over that process, Anthony also noted that, regardless of how the state and national races played out, some reductions were unavoidable.
“Things were inevitably going to change from an investment standpoint, because much of our one-time COVID money from the federal government has largely been spent,” she said.
Anthony said her party will need to emphasize working across the aisle in order to try and preserve some of the progress over the last few years.
“Whether it is environmental protections or the education budget, the Republicans have by and large voted against most of these measures. I can’t predict how they’ll vote in the future, or what things that they may look to cut, but I’m open to doing things that don’t completely reverse what we’ve been able to uplift,” she said.
One positive for Anthony is that she and her Democratic peers “are already used to being in the minority.”
“This is the first time in a generation that any of us have had any power, and that has also been a testament to the fact that we are used to working across the aisle to still be effective. So, I don’t want it to feel like doom and gloom quite yet, because we still have some work that we can get done — even within a split government,” she said.
She cited the Michigan Reconnect Program, which provides free tuition at select Michigan universities and colleges for adults without college degrees, as one “nonpartisan” effort both parties agreed on in the past.
“Most of us are now laser focused on economic issues,” she said, citing it as a key area for compromise in the coming term. “If the Republicans at the state level are echoing the same message that their federal colleagues were on the economy, then I’m assuming we can focus on those issues and stay away from some of the other pieces.”
With the state’s 2025 budget already locked in, Greater Lansing has one more guaranteed year of state-funded projects on the way. However, now that the Republicans have taken control over the White House and both chambers of Congress, changes at the federal level could also trickle down into local affairs.
Based on comments by Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance on the campaign trail, the Grand River Assembly Plant grant could be on the chopping block. This fall, both floated the possibility of pulling back those funds and other unspent Inflation Reduction Act funds.
“They said they couldn’t guarantee the money was still coming, but I have not heard anything new since the election,” Lansing Mayor Andy Schor said. “I will say that having the ability to make batteries here in Lansing for EV cars is a big deal. People can still choose internal combustion, of course, but it’s great if they choose electric. With the GM grant, we’ll have options.”
Though he acknowledged the possibility of Trump following through on revoking those funds, Schor said he’s still confident at this point that they’ll be disbursed as promised. If they’re not, he added, GM could take legal action.
Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce President Tim Daman said he’ll be keeping an eye on how that saga unfolds.
“I look at the EV industry as being a very early market right now, and it’s only going to continue to grow. We think it’s certainly important for our region,” he said. “Unfortunately, that industry has become a bit of a political hot potato, and there was a lot of speculation on both sides on what that future looks like. We’re going to be following it closely.”
The possibility ties into a larger Republican effort to cut down on Biden-era green energy initiatives. According to a 2021 New York Times report, Trump rolled back over 100 environmental regulations and policies during his first term. The majority were tied to emissions standards, which Trump has said hurt the auto industry.
Michigan State University economics Professor Soren Anderson, who studies energy and the environment, said Trump wouldn’t have much trouble reversing or loosening environmental protections.
“At the federal level, under the existing regulatory authority of the EPA, there’s broad authority for the presidential administration to be able to scale back environmental regulations. Without doing any legislation at all, they can just revise the regulations on how stringent environmental policy should be,” he said.
Because Michigan communities “depend” on federal dollars to fund a sizable portion of their environmental programs, Anderson said state leaders will need to “be more active and decisive on what levels of environmental protections we want” during Trump’s term.
Another federal agency that could be gutted is the U.S. Education Department. Trump and his allies, including Michigan native Betsy DeVos, his first-term education secretary, have proposed abolishing it altogether.
Josh Cowen, an MSU education policy professor, said doing so would be “a heavy lift” for Republicans.
“They want to do it. But even if they’re unable to directly eliminate the department, they’re going to try, and probably succeed in some cases, to get rid of funding for programs that monitor discrimination against vulnerable kids,” Cowen said.
Most of Michigan’s education funding comes from the state or local sources, Cowen explained, but the department remains the “chief anti-discrimination authority in schools.”
“Michigan is no longer going to be able to count on the federal government to protect every program that supports low-income, minority and special needs students. That means we’re going to have to double down to make sure those kids are taken care of, if it comes to that, even if it means we’ve got to spend our own money,” he said.
Additionally, Cowen added, “high needs districts” like Detroit, Flint and Lansing benefit more from federal funding than others in the state.
Lansing Schools Education Association President Chuck Alberts said this is especially the case for local students through the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which provides free accommodations for special needs students.
Alberts noted that more than 1,000 district students are in individually specialized education programs, while roughly 15% of Michigan’s total special education funding comes from federal sources.
“Whenever you have any candidate talking about dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, that’s something to be concerned about,” he said. “It goes way beyond funding. It’s about equal access to services and rights for families and kids. I think we have to treat it as if it’s real until we see otherwise,” he said.
At the county level, Fox is preparing for the possibility that Trump’s term could also include efforts to scale back public funding to bolster the nation’s aging housing stock.
“The bulk of the money that has come into housing recently has been federal money funneled through the state,” he said. “The real question is, what’s going to happen with that money in the new administration?”
Fox suspects that projects like the ongoing conversion of the old Walter French school to a housing complex for low-income renters, which was partially funded through federal American Rescue Plan Act money, will be far less common under a GOP trifecta.
“There are worries that the new Congress and administration could pull back money that hasn’t been spent yet, even if it’s already been committed for projects that are already underway. That’s the most extreme possibility right now,” Fox said.
The county is at least partially insulated against those concerns, thanks to its Housing Trust Fund, established in 2022 through a $9 million ARPA grant, as well as a recently approved county housing and homeless millage increase that’s expected to add $5.6 million annually through 2027.
Ingham County Chair Ryan Sebolt echoed Fox in noting that most of those funds were intended to be paired with state and federal matches.
“We use that money, in part, to help leverage additional funds to make those projects go forward,” Sebolt said. “Will we be able to stretch those dollars as far as we could have? Or are we going to have to be more narrowly focused?”
If housing grants do wane under the GOP, Fox said the county’s housing efforts “will just have to happen more creatively.”
“We always knew that at some point the politics wouldn’t be as good as they’ve been for the past two years. Now is that time,” he said. “In the past, there was a sense that you could rely on agencies continuing to do what they’ve been doing. Now, you have people around Trump who say they’re going to make radical changes from the get-go by installing new people and disrupting how things are done normally. I take those as serious possibilities.”
Going forward, Fox added, local municipalities will likely have to lean on even more private investment to secure the proper funding mix. While losing Witwer’s appropriation authority “is a blow,” he said, “we still do have a considerable amount of influence and ability to find resources. It’s just going to happen in different ways.”
While Lansing stands to lose the most in the tri-county region, smaller nearby municipalities like Meridian Township tend to be more “self-sufficient,” Supervisor Scott Hendrickson said.
“By and large, we’re not reliant on federal funding. The takeaway for us is that it’s nice to have those dollars, but we don’t budget around it. At moments like this, when there’s such upheaval at the federal level, we’re very glad that we don’t,” Hendrickson said.
However, both Schor and Hendrickson agreed that some programs, like state revenue sharing, remain important to both communities.
“We saw stagnating revenue sharing coming down from the state over the course of the Republican trifecta years, and we’d obviously prefer to continue the trend of the last couple of years where we saw increases,” Hendrickson said.
Schor noted that some Republican leaders may resist major cuts to policies like the Inflation Reduction Act, of which “more than half has gone to red states and communities.”
“My expectation is that Trump’s administration will look at those numbers, see that it actually has been fair across the board and keep that money coming. If they don’t, there could be significant pushback from Republican mayors and legislators,” Schor said.
At the state level, longtime Ingham County Commissioner Mark Grebner said Michigan Democrats need to “grab everything they can” in the lame duck period before the party’s trifecta expires. Once it does, he added, incoming Republican Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall “can simply not allow something to be scheduled or voted on.”
“That means the only things they’ll get through will be deals cut between the two parties. Everything is going to be either minor or a compromise where the Republicans gain something out of it,” he said.
There is one facet of state government where he believes the Michigan Democrats are flying high, however.
“People ought to realize that the Republicans have now been completely run out of the Supreme Court,” he said, noting that the recent election of judges Kyra Harris Bolden and Kimberly Ann Thomas has ushered in a 6-1 liberal majority.
“It’s kind of like the U.S. Supreme Court in reverse. The courts here are just getting better all the time for Democrats,” Grebner said. “I don’t know when the Republicans can ever take it back.”
Grebner believes the court will be able to use that majority to strengthen individual rights and protections through a “very deliberate interpretation of the state constitution.”
“We’re going to find all kinds of rights and protections in it. I think the state courts have already been leaning in that direction, but they’re going to lean a lot further now,” he said.
Aside from the courts, however, Democrats like Anthony are preparing for an uphill climb.
“By and large, most folks on the Democratic side are doing a lot of soul searching right now,” she said. “What are the issues that we should actually be championing going forward?”
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