Michigan’s highway funding becomes the white whale of public policy

When Stevens T. Mason was the boy governor of Michigan in 1837, transportation was the big issue — besides whether we or Ohio would get Toledo.

Mason wanted three railroads stretching across Michigan, but all three didn’t happen because the state didn’t have the money to pay for a public works project that large.

And so here we are, nearly 200 years later, and the perennial issue of our time is still transportation. The roads are falling apart faster than we can fix them. Freeze. Thaw. We’ve heard it all before.

The debate over getting a dedicated, long-term funding stream has scared away governors and lawmakers alike.

As was the case in Mason’s time, the state doesn’t have the money.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the state House are hopping back on the boat in 2025 in search of Michigan’s white whale of public policy — the seemingly mythical long-term road funding solution.

The road-building lobby says if Michigan dropped nearly $4 billion more into the roads every year, the streets would get to the point where they didn’t suck.

The governor and the state House are willing to consider finding $3 billion in funding. They both have plans for how to get there.

According to the Citizens Research Council, the House plan includes $2 billion in unspecified budget cuts. The governor’s plan’s numbers don’t add up, either. The Council says it’s about $500 million short.

Neither plan is fully baked, which is an issue. The more significant problem is that Whitmer and Republican House Speaker Matt Hall struggle to find much consensus on anything.

They agree that the roughly $1 billion in sales tax money collected at the pump should go to roads instead of schools, local governments, and other expenses. But how do you backfill that money once you take it away?

Nobody is answering that question sincerely. Nobody wants to show their cards publicly.

Don’t we have a bunch of federal money left over from COVID? According to the Council folks, no.

The governor is introducing a benign, no-frills budget for the next fiscal year. If the House and Senate adopted it without changes, the state would have $761 million left over. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not $3 billion.

The governor suggested somehow taxing Amazon, Meta and other high-tech companies $1.6 billion. Nobody knows whether that’s a service delivery fee, an added sales tax or something else.

Whitmer also wants to create a new wholesale marijuana tax to raise $470 million. “Pot for Potholes!”

Republicans are a hard no on that. They’d rather end the refundable Michigan Business Tax credits that this state’s big industries have collected since around 2009 as an annual birthday present. General Motors, Ford, etc., threatened to leave the state or go out of business without these extra payments.

Former Gov. Jennifer Granholm panicked back in the day and delivered these massive annual payments. What happens if the House pushes the state to renege on its deal with these big industries?

Could the state be looking at $1 billion extra?  Maybe. If they don’t get sued. They’re not getting $3 billion a year for roads, though, that’s for sure.

So maybe the state looks at setting aside less than $3 billion?

We’ve seen that movie before, though, haven’t we? In 2015, Gov. Rick Snyder and the Republican legislators threw out their shoulders patting themselves on the back for a deal that didn’t complete the job.

They called their gas tax increase a good “first step.”

We haven’t even talked about the Democratic-led Senate and what they’re going to do.

That’s because they haven’t shown the zeal to do anything. That’s not good. They need to be on board.

For now, they’re on the shore with the rest of us, watching Whitmer and Hall sail away, realizing they’re more likely to shoot a hole in their boat than bag the whale.

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