Whitmer budget vetoes turn storyline on its head

Shortly after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed $945 million out of Michigan’s budget, a prominent Republican told me: “Two years ago, Rick Snyder wouldn’t sign off on an income tax cut because he said we couldn’t afford $950 million. Whitmer comes in and says, ‘Hold my beer.”

Conservative Rep. Steve Johnson added, “A Democrat cut $1 billion in government spending? What a week!”

The typical Lansing storylines have, indeed, been turned on their heads with the governor’s latest move. True, her slicing into the $60 billion budget is a big-time leveraging move to strong-arm Republican legislative leaders to the negotiating table.

Whitmer doesn’t really want to cut government spending. This is all an attempt to get Republican legislators to pass legislation to raise more state revenue, not spend less.

It won’t be the 45-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase, and Whitmer knows that. She wants something or a combination of somethings that raises something in the neighborhood of $2 billion. Sales tax expansion on some services? A smaller gas tax? We’ll see.

Whitmer will insist on it and R’s will begrudgingly need to go along with something.

Cutting funding that primarily impacts rural, Republican-represented districts has their attention. Despite the R’s tough guy “the budget is done” talk, they’re more than a little interested in restoring funding for:

— Small hospitals that serve rural residents

— Schools with geographically enormous bus routes

— County sheriffs who’d like to get reimbursed for the state inmates they’re housing

— Out-of-the-way townships that rely on state payments to make ends meet.

In time, they will. Don’t worry. Just as you’d find something to do with a random $1,000 in your checking account, so too will Whitmer and the Republicans find a way to spend that $1 billion.

In the meantime, Republicans have taken full advantage of the budget-cutting lines Democrats routinely deliver on them.

The pro-Republican 501(c)4 called Michigan Rising Action is the latest to pile on Whitmer for vetoing $375 million in additional road improvement money, the $1 million autism navigator program and $35 million funding for charter schools.

The group’s executive director said Whitmer’s disapproval rating went up in a recent Marketing Resource Group poll because she’s “using critical services for real people as pawns. Our students, families and our state deserve better.”

The chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, Laura Cox, bemoaned $166 million in cuts to private school education grants and other education spending.

“Thousands of students may be forced out of college and several school districts may close,” Cox said. “It is horribly disheartening that our children’s education opportunities have to suffer, all so that our governor can try and prove a point.”

Talk about Alice in the looking glass. Isn’t it supposed to be Democrats hammering Republicans for making budget cuts?

It’s modern-day politics at its finest. It’s not the point of the issue, but the person who is making the point that matters.

Heritage Hall project scaled back

One line-item veto that isn’t coming back is the final $15 million for the Heritage Hall project underneath the Capitol.

Crews are nearly done popping a geothermal project into the Capitol’s west lawn. They’re going to need something to do soon and the Capitol Commission doesn’t want the expense of bringing them back.

Instead of crossing their fingers and hoping the $15 million will come back some day, the Commission agreed to be fine with the $40 million they received in last December’s Christmas tree supplemental spending bill.

School buses will still have an Ottawa Street drop off at the northwest corner of the Capitol lawn. What won’t be in the project is the 500-seat auditorium that was envisioned as the ideal place for the governor’s annual budget presentation, among other special events.

Instead, Heritage Hall will be a single level with a large space that can be divided up into various rooms as need be. An underground tunnel will still give kids and the public and underground walkway to the Capitol.

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