GOP passes higher education budget. Dems call it “not serious.” What happens next?

Hi! You're reading the It's Just Politics newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the It's Just Politics podcast for all the political news you need each week.

To borrow from Winston Churchill, this isn’t so much the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.

We are talking here about the lollygagging state budget process. And the now near-meaningless July 1st legal deadline for finishing the state budget is just over two weeks away.

The state House met into the night on Thursday as Republicans voted on their higher education budget. We know it is a non-starter in the state Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.

The state Senate has come up with its own budget, but these two versions need to be reconciled and approved before budget bills can go to Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

And did we mention (we did, but it’s worth repeating) that the legal deadline to finish work on this is just a couple weeks away?

This matters for many reasons, but we’ll focus here on how the GOP version of the budget would make huge cuts to the University of Michigan and Michigan State University and bump that money over to other state universities, which would get double-digit increases.

This last part is a seismic, head-spinning shift from the initial GOP budget that passed a House committee on Wednesday.

It is also not the final product. Not even close.

Sen. Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing), who is the Senate Appropriations Committee chair, declared the House GOP budget “not serious.”

That aforementioned July 1st deadline, er, “deadline” (let’s just start putting that in quotes now) is not just an academic exercise for higher education institutions – not to mention school districts and many local governments. It marks the beginning of their fiscal years and the budget bedlam in Lansing leaves their governing boards without even an educated guess as to what their funding picture looks like.

Cynics might say the fact that the state’s fiscal year doesn’t begin until October 1st insulates the Legislature (or at least its GOP members in this instance) from the effects of its fiscal intransigence. But the folks back home live in school districts and local governmental units that have to balance their budgets. There are also plenty of families paying tuition to one or more of the state’s two largest universities.

We shouldn’t ignore that a double-digit bump to the 13 other public universities would be welcome news to those students, families and alums, especially if it’s reflected in lower tuition costs. But the question here is whether that’s a realistic expectation.

There are a lot of directions we could go from here, but let’s take a moment or two to discuss the “Big 3” university boards because there’s definitely political implications.

So, yes, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University take a lot of out-of-state and international students, but there are also a lot of in-state students, families and alums who are registered voters who choose the members of those elected university boards.

Candidates for the UM Board of Regents, the MSU Board of Trustees as well as the Wayne State University Board of Governors are chosen in statewide elections. The candidates are nominated at Republican and Democratic state conventions and those candidates are often alumni with fierce loyalty to their alma maters and are often very big party donors. (We’re not saying that plays a big part in how they win those nominations, but we’re not not saying it, either.)

It’s not out of the question that we might see the quiet exercise of some soft power by some of these university board members and political donors while we wait for the budget process to play out.

Why does the state fiscal year begin on October 1st?

We promised in a previous newsletter to delve into why Michigan has a budget year that begins three months after the July 1st fiscal year start for school districts, community colleges, public universities and many local governments.

Once upon a time, the state’s fiscal year did begin on July 1st.

So why did that change? Simply put, to buy time.

For a deeper explanation, we turned to Gongwer News Service publisher emeritus John Lindstrom, who covered the Michigan Capitol dating back to the administration of Gov. William G. Milliken. Lindstrom was a local government reporter at the time, but he remembers it well. Switching to October 1st, he says, was “an act of desperation.”

In the 1970s, Michigan’s economy was collapsing because the domestic auto industry was collapsing as carbuyers were foregoing U.S.-built gas guzzlers in favor of foreign fuel sippers. This affected state revenue and a balanced budget is required by the Michigan Constitution.

“It was the greatest recession since the Great Depression – it was the first of the greatest recessions since the Great Depression and the state found itself bullocksed in how it was going to balance the budget,” Lindstrom explains.

So the state added three months to the fiscal year to balance the 1973-74 budget and that is why we now have a state budget year that begins October 1st and is, thus, out of alignment with those other units of government.

“At that time, we’re talking 50 years ago, it did cause some real problems for local governments,” Lindstrom says. That led to political upheaval that put a tax limitation amendment in the state constitution. The effects of the Headlee Amendment still resonate today.

There is a recently enacted state law that says the Michigan budget is supposed to be wrapped up and ready to go by July 1st, but there are no consequences for missing that deadline. And, this year, the Legislature is on track to do exactly that.

______________________

Have questions about Michigan politics? Or, just want to let us know what you want more of (less of?) in the newsletter? We always want to hear from you! Shoot us an email at politics@michiganpublic.org!

_______________________

What we’re talking about at the dinner table

Close to home: You’ve probably heard by now that the Republican-controlled U.S. House voted Thursday afternoon to clawback funding for public media. “The measure passed largely along party lines, 214 to 212. The legislation is the first request by the Trump administration for Congress to take back money it already has approved through annual spending bills. The bill reflects a list of cuts totaling $9.4 billion that were requested by the Office of Management and Budget,” NPR’s Deirdre Walsh and David Folkenflick report. It would “ slash slash $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates nearly all of the funds to local stations, for the next two fiscal years. By law, that money is supposed to be approved in advance as part of an effort to insulate public broadcasting from political influence over fleeting issues.” The Senate has until July 18th to vote on the rescission package. You can find out more about the effort to defend against the cuts at protectmypubliamedia.org.

JJ shout-out: We’ve mentioned before the mini-mystery surrounding the lowkey gubernatorial announcement by Congressman John James earlier this spring. There was talk in D.C. (and here in Michigan) among politicos about whether or not President Trump and his political team wanted James to stay in the House (and not give-up a possible swing-seat in 2026.) At a bill signing on Thursday, Trump singled out James saying, “You know, he’s running for governor. But I’m not sure I’m happy about that, John.” Trump went on to ask in front of the crowd, “Do we have someone good to take your seat? Cause otherwise we’re not letting him run for governor.” A Trump endorsement in Michigan’s 2026 gubernatorial race would be highly coveted in the GOP primary.

Going public: Michigan U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin is getting a lot of attention as maybe an oracle for Democrats to heed as they chart their path forward. She won her Senate seat in the same election where Michigan sent its electoral votes to Donald Trump. She delivered the Democratic response to the President’s address to the nation in March. She also promised to lay out a plan for Democrats to go on offense heading into 2026. Slotkin’s going to deliver “a new vision for the Democratic Party” address Wednesday in Washington D.C. to the Center for American Progress. She’s said Democrats need to focus more on the economy and “kitchen table” issues and less on divisive social questions. The spending targets set in the Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill” provide her with the entree to that talk. Expect her to talk about Medicaid cuts, tariffs and concerns about how AI will impact jobs. The speech is supposed to have a national focus, but Michigan has a lot of open seats on the ballot next year. Just saying.

_______________________

Yours in political nerdiness,

Rick Pluta & Zoe Clark

Co-hosts, It’s Just Politics