by Anna Clark
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With a notable appearance this week at the Chicago Democratic National Convention and a bestseller-selling new memoir, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is celebrated as an ascending head — people who won over a very purple state in 2018 by promoting sensible solutions to issues affecting millions of people.
At the Michigan group breakfast on Wednesday morning, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi eloquently praised the governor, saying:” She has been amazing. Every day I hear her speak, I have a strong thought. Sharp in her information. Her success is strong.
However, Whitmer’s second and last year as governor has until next year to fulfill some of his vital campaign promises.
Whitmer vowed as a member to “fix the damn roads”, bring clarity to state government, struggle for a$ 15 minimum wage, overturn the incident manager law and get a handle on companies that collect and sell large quantities of Michigan groundwater.
Six years later, those nationalist promises are either partially or entirely untrue.
Proponents and even some supporters are awaiting Whitmer’s activism during a crucial time, when Democrats also have a strong hold on how the state is run. ” Certainly, I would welcome the governor’s help”, said House Majority Floor Leader Abraham Aiyash, a Democrat who is working to change the incident manager legislation that has been so controversial in the state.
However, it’s not clear whether that assistance will be felt during a hectic election year, or what Whitmer does focus on once she leaves Chicago.
Whitmer’s office did n’t respond to questions posed by ProPublica regarding this story.
She’s heralded by some social spectators for navigating both a divided state authorities and a pandemic in her first name, while still making progress on some objectives. For instance, she turned to bonds to help with her immediate needs when her gas tax proposal for road repairs fell flat.
Democrats won the governor’s office and both chambers of the Legislature for the first time in about 40 years, raising expectations among her supporters. With a projected$ 9.2 billion budget surplus to boot, Whitmer and her party were virtually without obstacles for whatever they wanted to do.
Her supporters point to accomplishments made since then. She and the legislature were able to codify abortion rights, repeal the “right-to-work” law that made it illegal for unionized workers to revoke union dues and fees, pass legislation to prevent gun violence, expand the earned income tax credit, and provide free breakfast and lunch to all public schoolchildren.
” Whitmer has overcome obstacles to keep many of her campaign promises. However, there are still more things to keep, according to Mark Brewer, a former Michigan Democratic Party chair, in an email.
For instance, it fell off the radar to figure out how to finance ongoing road improvements. ” Now she has a Democratic House and Senate, and still nothing’s getting done”, said Eric Lupher, president of the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonpartisan policy organization that has studied road funding.
Whitmer has n’t, either, publicly supported pending legislation that would allow the governor’s office and the legislature to access the Legislature’s records. And the minimum wage has only been$ 10.33 as of right now. A recent ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court puts the state on a path toward a higher wage, including for tipped workers, but business groups are pressuring lawmakers in the capital to intervene and Whitmer has been quiet about whether or not she supports a compromise.
Susan Demas, editor in chief of Michigan Advance and a longtime political columnist, said that “her last two years have just been so consumed by the pent-up priorities of 40 years for Democrats that many of those like first-term promises took a backseat.”
Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks ‘ spokesman said in an email that” we anticipate having a productive second half of the year and discussions about the fall agenda are ongoing.”
Demas sees a talented leader in Whitmer, one with a future on the national stage — in part because she governs as a pragmatist. And that same pragmatism, she said, contributes to Whitmer’s shifting agenda.
Making the State of the State address” Making State Government More Open” by Whitmer in January 2023. ( Al Goldis/AP )
scandals have revealed the value of secrecy, from misbehavior by legislators to the Flint water crisis. According to her 2018 Sunshine Plan, Whitmer stated that she was “making state government more open, transparent, and accountable to Michigan taxpayers.”
Expanding the Freedom of Information Act was a key part of the strategy. The governor’s office and the legislature are both exempt from the open records law in Michigan, one of its kind.
In the strategy Whitmer proposed as a candidate for governor, she pledged that she would voluntarily “extend FOIA to the lieutenant governor and governor’s offices” even if the Legislature did n’t act on the need for transparency. Michiganders should know when and what their governor is working on”.
She has n’t yet done so. And to some, the governor’s transparency promises contrast with reports about her administration’s use of nondisclosure agreements with lawmakers regarding economic development agreements and a memo asking to review record requests sent to other departments that include one or more communications with the executive office.
” To me, that is just an unforced error, the height of hypocrisy”, said Abby Mitch, executive director of Michigan Rising Action, a right-leaning watchdog group.
According to Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit news organization, Whitmer has defended the use of confidentiality agreements for economic development projects, claiming that there is” a lot of proprietary information” shared as states compete for these investments.
Regarding the memo, Bridge reported that Whitmer’s representative described the policy as a means of improving efficiency and that the governor’s office never vetoes or approves the release of public records.
Sen. Ed McBroom, a Republican, and Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Democrat, have been trying to expand FOIA for nearly a decade, dating back to when they served as representatives during the administration of Gov. Republican Rick Snyder, who served from 2011 to 2018, For the first time in June, their most recent bills passed the Senate.
If signed into law this year, the bills would take effect on Jan. 1, 2027, the day the next governor takes office, and retroactive requests could be excluded, according to an analyst with the Senate Fiscal Agency.
According to Moss, lawmakers needed a start date that allows time to develop protocols and capacity to meet new requirements. According to McCoy, retroactive requests” just would be causing a lot of work to get a paper back that says there is n’t anything to show you,” since there are n’t currently records retention requirements.
After years of negotiation with diverse stakeholders, including the governor’s office, Moss said,” we feel we got it right”.
The bills are n’t perfect, but they would be a huge step forward, according to Lisa McGraw, the public affairs manager of the Michigan Press Association. She cited FOIA as well as the attorney general and secretary of state as well. ” I do n’t know why we do n’t put the governor and the Legislature to the same level of accountability and transparency”, she said.
The House now has the authority to address the matter during a busy campaign year. We’re at the end of the world, McGraw said.
Whitmer could accelerate the process and set an example by giving the go-ahead to pass the measure opening up her own office first, McBroom said. He is aware of her desire to join her in this endeavor. In the political world, he said,” It’s always very difficult to unilaterally disarm.”
” Fix the Damn Roads” Whitmer fills a pothole during a campaign event in 2018. ( AP ) ( Paul Sancya )
Dangerously deteriorating roads are a constant complaint of Michigan residents. Leaders from both parties have struggled to maintain them. According to the Citizens Research Council, preservation quality ranks 40th nationally and 10th in an 11-state peer group.
The governor chose$ 3.5 billion in state bonds in 2019 after Whitmer’s proposal for a 45-cent gas tax increase was rejected by the GOP-led Legislature. That was later supplemented by Michigan’s cut of federal infrastructure money.
In the end, according to a recent CRC report, state spending on road and bridge programs nearly doubled between 2015 and 2023. However, as construction costs rose over that time, Michigan’s road agencies only increased by about 50 %. And the spending relies on short-term funds that will soon dry up. A sufficient and sustainable source of revenue for roads is still being worked out by state officials.
Bonds are “pulling revenues from the future to pay for the fixes now,” according to Lupher, president of the CRC.
Former Gov. According to Lupher, John Engler, a Republican, did the same thing in the 1990s, and the state “paid the price” figuratively in the years that followed. He claimed that paying the principal and interest caused the investment’s value to decline as a result of paying the principal and interest.
Subpar roads contribute to Michigan’s long-running struggle to retain and grow its population, according to a report last December from an advisory council appointed by Whitmer. The council stated that the current insufficient maintenance and funding of our roads, highways, and bridges is a liability rather than being an asset to Michigan residents, visitors, and businesses.
The Michigan section of the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the state’s roads a D- in its report card the year Whitmer was elected. Last year, it gave a D. The report said that within 10 years, without further action, the proportion of paved roads in poor condition will increase from 33 % to 48 %.
Michigan’s funding gap is$ 3.9 billion annually, according to researchers commissioned by an industry group to study the issue. Michigan’s complicated and central funding structure is likely to cause inefficient spending. ” The only thing more broken and busted than Michigan’s roads”, the CRC said in a 2022 report, “is the funding system that we’re using to try to fix them”.
According to news reports, Whitmer has indicated that she no longer supports a gas tax increase. However, she and Democratic leaders have not yet found a new source of funding.
” Once the Legislature said no to a gas tax increase and she introduced the bond idea”, Lupher said,” they washed their hands of it. Therefore, it will be necessary for the governor to figure it out in two governors. However, this one was avoided.
” Return Power Back to Local Governments” Supporters at a Whitmer campaign event in Lansing, the capital, in 2018 as she was running for her first term. She is currently serving her final and second term. ( Cory Morse/The Grand Rapids Press via AP )
Whitmer’s Sunshine Plan also promised to repeal Michigan’s emergency manager law, which gives state-appointed administrators unusual authority over distressed cities and school districts. Managers were dispatched to Detroit ahead of its bankruptcy and to Flint under the leadership of Snyder, Whitmer’s predecessor, during a time when the two incidents occurred during a cataclysmic water crisis. Their takeover powers, which essentially replace local representative decision-making, are widely believed to have contributed to the Flint disaster.
” I fought against the ill-conceived Emergency Manager law when it was pushed through the Legislature — not once but twice — during the early days of Governor Snyder’s administration”, Whitmer said in the 2018 plan. ” I will give local governments back their power and will support and help them in their partnership with local elected officials in terms of meaningful investment, support, and assistance.”
In a statewide referendum in 2012, voters rejected lawmakers ‘ initial effort to increase the authority of emergency managers, which is a part of the controversy. The following month, the Republican Legislature passed a similar version of the law — this time with an appropriation attached, making it immune from future referendums.
The law is still in effect despite the Whitmer administration never appointing an emergency manager. Former leader of the Michigan Democratic Party Brewer stated in an email that one of the promises he wants to see Whitmer fulfill is “repealing the anti-democratic emergency manager law which led to the poisoning of Flint.” To date, though, efforts to do so have stalled.
According to a statement Whitmer’s press secretary previously provided to ProPublica, the governor will “work closely with the legislature if they take up legislation reforming the state’s emergency manager law.”
According to some legislators, the state must implement a new policy in addition to repealing the law to address the state’s struggling cities and schools. Aiyash, the House majority floor leader, told ProPublica that he’s collaborating with another lawmaker to propose such legislation this fall.
It’s not like this is a hypothetical, Aiyash said. We are aware of the damage that emergency management has done to these communities and that it is possible to happen again. So we have to make sure that they’re not going to give folks the opportunity to utilize this archaic, punitive law anymore”.
Flint was a central figure in Whitmer’s campaign, not just because of her opposition to the emergency manager law. She also criticized the state for allowing a bottle of water to significantly increase the amount of groundwater it extracts in exchange for nominal fees, as her campaign’s water plan suggested.
In her plan, Whitmer said her administration would” control the siphoning of water for water bottling”, but there’s been little change, as ProPublica reported this year.
Whitmer addresses a campaign rally at Michigan State University in 2022 during” Focus on Raising Wages.” ( Brandon Bell/Getty Images )
Whitmer made a$ 15 minimum wage part of her platform in 2018, phased in over three years, and promoted the Fight for$ 15 cause, which has since rebranded as Fight for a Union.
In her campaign’s jobs plan, she said,” To create an economy that works for everyone, we must concentrate on raising wages for all working families.”
Then things started to get complicated.
At the time, Michigan seemed headed for ballot initiatives where voters would decide whether to increase the minimum wage, phase out the lower wage for tipped workers and require employers to provide paid sick leave. However, the Legislature, which was then led by Republicans, kept it off the ballot by passing the petitions as laws before immediately dilating them afterward. It reduced what is required for paid leave, reduced the minimum wage, and kept the tipped wage.
This summer, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that this “adopt-and-amend” tactic is unconstitutional. The state was given the order to gradually phase in the original laws while making adjustments for inflation. The state has not yet been able to predict how the increases will evolve over time. The Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association projected that the minimum wage would reach$ 13.50 by 2028.
Business groups are retaliating while organizations representing workers are celebrating.
The MRLA stated on its website that it is working with Lansing leaders to find a legislative way to reduce the impact of the ruling on the hospitality sector. ” This is an existential, all-hands-on-deck moment for our industry”, the MRLA notice said.
She’s going to let the Legislature do what it needs to do, according to Justin Winslow, president and CEO of MRLA, who told ProPublica that his organization has not heard from the governor since the decision. He claimed that the Detroit Free Press ‘ quotes from 2022, where the governor” stressed the need for a compromise” are encouraging.
Some Democratic legislators have also been quiet on potential modifications to the laws.
According to Justin Onwenu, a point person for the nonprofit One Fair Wage in Michigan until recently, he anticipates Whitmer and the Democratic-led Legislature to continue to have the backs of workers given their strong track record.
Whitmer has not made a public announcement whether she supports or opposes any changes to the laws.
