Aug. 8, 2025 | This Week in Government: Public Service Commission Members Back Myers

The chair of the Public Service Commission (PSC) expressed support for the panel’s newest member Thursday, despite concerns raised recently by some Democratic lawmakers over her appointment.

PSC Chair Dan Scripps told reporters following Thursday’s commission meeting that Commissioner Shaquila Myers’s background in policy development will be a significant asset on the commission and that she has quickly been settling into her role.

“It’s exciting to have somebody who’s been as actively and centrally engaged in policy making over the course of 20 years in public service, and so bringing that sort of inside look at how the legislative process works and how statutes are created, I think, is going to be a benefit,” Scripps said.

Myers, who was appointed last month by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to a full six-year term to fill a vacancy on the PSC, has faced criticism over her work as chief of staff for former House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, during the 2023-24 legislative session.

Critics raised concerns that Tate’s office nixed multiple legislative packages during the 2023-24 session dealing with energy and environmental policies opposed by DTE Energy Company and Consumers Energy Company, the state’s largest investor-owned utilities regulated by the PSC.

Myers pushed back against one of her critics earlier this week on social media following a story from The Detroit News on concerns over her appointment (See Gongwer Michigan Report, Aug. 5, 2025).

Scripps told reporters Thursday he was confident in Myers’s policy experience and that it should serve the commission well during her term.

“One of the primary jobs of the chief of staff to a House speaker is counting to fifty-six. How do you get a majority? You often, sort of by nature of the position, are the person who says, ‘I don’t see fifty-six votes on this,’” Scripps said. “But if you also look at what they were able to do given slim majorities, and sometimes and often in a bipartisan fashion as well, she was really good at that job, and I fully expect she’ll be really good at this one.”

Myers did not speak with the media following Thursday’s meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, she thanked the commissioners and staff for helping her settle into the job.

“You guys have made my transition very comfortable and easy, and your willingness to welcome me in has been very much appreciated,” Myers said.

Scripps, while speaking to reporters, used the example of Myers, while serving as chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II, being involved in policies surrounding improving broadband internet service in the state.

While serving under Tate, Scripps said Myers was heavily involved in energy policies that were passed, including changes to the state’s renewable energy standard, which the PSC has been working to implement.

“You don’t get to be chief of staff for the lieutenant governor, chief of staff to the speaker, and a senior advisor to the governor without being a quick study, and we’ve seen that in her first days at the commission,” Scripps said.

Commissioner Katherine Peretick agreed with Scripps.

“She’s really jumped in with two feet, too,” Peretick said. “She’s been fully participating in meetings and really asking fantastic questions. She seems really excited to dig into the substance of the work.”

Michigan voters approved just over half of the school bond requests on the Tuesday ballot.

Twelve school districts asked voters to approve taxes to pay for school district items. In the end, voters approved 58.3% of school bonds, a rate higher than the May 2025 election but lower than the November 2024 election.

Voters approved $198.98 million in school bonds for seven school districts and rejected $236.15 million for five districts, according to a Bridge Michigan analysis of Gongwer News Service election data.

School bonds used to be an easy sell in communities, but have had lower passage rates in recent years. In May, 49% of school bonds were approved, and in November 2024, during the presidential election, 62% of school bond requests were approved. Experts have said the economy, the complicated nature of school finance, and shifting attitudes about public education since the pandemic may all be reasons for lower passage rates.

“This is just really indicative of economic uncertainty for voters, and they’re going to be pretty cautious,” said Michigan Association of School Boards Executive Director Don Wotruba.

He said voters have heard about tariffs and don’t know what their expenses will look like a year from now. Unless someone looks closely at a flyer or attends a community meeting, they are “probably looking at it purely as a tax increase.”

School districts can use bonds to pay for constructing or remodeling buildings or athletic facilities, bus purchases, energy conservation improvements, and certain technology hardware. They can also use sinking funds, which are pay-as-you-go funds. Those funds can also be used for school security and technology purposes.

Romulus Community Schools had the largest school bond on the ballot, for $153 million. Superintendent Benjamin Edmondson told Bridge if the bond had passed, there would be a zero-net tax increase. Now, taxpayers will see their taxes lower in January.

“They are going to see a tax relief from this, but we still have an infrastructure issue, but now when we come back to you, it’s going to be ‘ooh, you’re raising my taxes.’ And that’s going to be an uphill battle.”

The district will use its existing sinking fund to demolish a “dilapidated” building, but Edmondson said the district will have to hold off on $11 million of parking lot repairs since the bond failed.

He said the district did two city council presentations, held four open houses, sent 9,000 mailers and posted on social media. He said some critique the district for its test scores, but the district is seeing students’ scores grow despite starting sometimes years behind.

“Yes, achievement can always be better, but I can’t control what parents do at their house, but I can control what’s happening in the classroom.”

In the 2023-24 school year, just 46% of the students who lived in the district attended district schools, according to a Bridge analysis. Edmondson said he appreciates anyone who came out to vote during the election.

Au Gres-Sims Superintendent Chris Ming told Bridge the district’s building needs a new roof in parts of the elementary, middle, and high school areas. An $11.99 million bond proposal failed Tuesday.

“We need to regroup,” he said. “We missed a one-time opportunity to do something amazing and fantastic for our community.”

Fitzgerald Public Schools, Mason County Eastern District, and Negaunee Public Schools passed sinking fund increases, but Grant Public Schools’ sinking fund increase proposal failed.

Voters approved a sinking fund millage renewal for Northville Public Schools.

There were 11 school operating millage renewals on the ballot. All of them passed.

This story was reported by Bridge Michigan using Gongwer News Service data.

A month has passed since the July 1 statutory deadline for the state budget. Since then, little demonstrable progress has been made on the House budgets, and in fact, the process has become more complicated.

Last week, House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, removed Rep. Alabas Farhat, D-Dearborn, from the House Appropriations Committee. He was the Democrats’ ranking member working on the 2025-26 fiscal year budget.

Now, at the start of August with no House General Fund budgets in sight and no agreement on the School Aid Fund budget materializing, it’s apparent this year’s budget process is very different from what Lansing has seen in the past.

In interviews, many House Republicans argued that the process is moving slowly but intentionally and with greater levels of transparency. House Democrats and other sources speaking on background suggested that the speaker’s office is holding up the process as Hall attempts to consolidate the decision-making process and pass his budget his way.

House Appropriations Chair Rep. Ann Bollin, R-Brighton, said that this year’s budget process is different on purpose.

“It probably does feel different to people that have been around this town for a long time, and it feels different because we are actually approaching it from a very different perspective,” Bollin said.

Bollin said that, in addition to returning to divided government with one chamber having a different majority than the other, this year was the first year since the pandemic that the state would be returning to more normal revenues.

“This is our first year coming out of post-COVID budgeting where we blew through $9 billion, so I think people should expect that it would look very different,” she said.

This is the longest the House has gone without presenting its budget proposals since 2009, when Democrats held the majority in the House and Republicans held the majority in the Senate. Notably, there was a government shutdown that year.

Bollin said that House Republicans would present department budgets this year, unlike 2009.

“The subcommittees have been working diligently,” Bollin said. “There’s a lot to wade through from the previous two years of a lot of reckless spending, going back looking at how did we do things? How did we word things? What did we fund when we were in a Republican majority?”

Another difference this year, Bollin said, is that the House is holding subcommittee hearings on proposed earmark projects to make that process more transparent.

“So, is the timeline the same as it’s been in the past? No,” she said. “Is this timeline not going to work? I would say it will work.”

Bollin said that subcommittees have been very involved in the budget process.

“They’ve tried to dig in and go through the line items to understand their budgets,” she said.

There have not been the same budgetary presentations at subcommittee meetings, though, because stakeholders have been funneled through the House Appropriations Labor and Economic Opportunity Subcommittee  to centralize the process and make it more transparent.

Rep. Nancy Jenkins-Arno, R-Clayton, who chairs that subcommittee, previously served three terms in the House between 2011 and 2016. During that time, she chaired the Capital Outlay and Military and Veterans subcommittees.

“It’s very transparent,” Jenkins-Arno said of this year’s process. “Before, we didn’t have this process of submitting the forms online to say the legislators have their name (on an earmark project), to say that they want that project. It was just kind of at the end of the budget cycle, if there’s money left over, we’d say, Where can we put that money? And so, this is kind of nice because we see what the needs are out there in the state.”

Jenkins-Arno said that she feels much more involved in the budget-making process than she did when she sat on Appropriations during her previous terms because the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity has a bigger budget.

“There’s just so many different aspects to what’s in this budget,” she said. “And so many people are coming in to talk about their projects and say this is what we want. … I’ve enjoyed being able to say this is something that we can do to help the state overall, and it’s been a good process, I think.”

Jenkins-Arno said subcommittee chairs were asked to take their budgets down to what was required by the Constitution, the courts and state statute.

“That really make you look very bluntly at the budget and say ‘this is what’s here. This is what we have to do,” she said. And then being able to look back at that and say, ‘OK, now how do we want to build that back up to put this into a position where we are a more productive state.’”

The LEO budget has programs and language that is outdated, Jenkins-Arno said, but she declined to specify what those programs were as the department budget hasn’t been presented yet.

Bollin called the existing executive recommendation and the Senate’s budget bills “fake budgets.”

“We’ve seen these kinds of fake budgets come through. The executive makes a recommendation, and the Senate put their budget through before CREC,” she said. “Here comes CREC, and we find that it doesn’t work at all. And now we have the One Big Beautiful Bill that’s passed in Washington, and we were prepared for some changes, and we’ve been taking our time to look at just how that’s going to impact us.”

Although typically the governor, the Senate and the House all present their budget recommendations before the May Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference, during times of both Democratic and Republican majorities, Bollin said she didn’t think that was best practice.

“These are business decisions. We should be approaching this as though we’re running a business. Not playing inside baseball with stakeholders, also known as the lobbyists,” she said. “Ideally, I don’t think anybody should be putting forth fake budgets. We need to be very committed to the process, and we have a job to do.”

Bollin said although the House hasn’t presented most of its budget bills, it should be clear that the House and the Senate are very far apart.

“The Senate put forth an $83.5 billion budget with the contingency of $3 billion for roads, and within that $83.5 billion budget, they had numerous $100 placeholders. Realistically, if they filled in all those line items, it would be closer to $87 billion or $88 billion budget. You will not see a $87-$88 billion budget coming out of the House. I can assure you that.”

No one should be concerned about a government shutdown, Bollin said, because the House passed its shutdown prevention plan earlier this year.

Jenkins-Arno said she wasn’t sure if the Legislature would come to an agreement on the budget before the end of the state’s fiscal year, Sept. 30. The Constitution mandates a variety of spending, and absent the signing of a bill providing spending authority beginning October 1, a partial government shutdown would commence as briefly occurred in 2007 and 2009.

“It’s going to be a question for these last couple of weeks,” she said. “I’m hoping that we can come to an agreement from the House and the Senate, and obviously the governor, too, but the school aid budget – it kind of makes you think, this is going to be more of a challenge.”

Democrats paint a very different process of budget negotiations.

Farhat, who participated in many of the budget negotiation meetings prior to Hall removing him as the House Appropriations minority vice chair, said that Bollin was not part of those meetings.

“I’ll tell you who’s not: Ann Bollin,” Farhat told reporters last week about who was negotiating. “What you see with the speaker is a consolidation of every aspect of power on this side of the chamber. You’re seeing him handle those conversations. You’re seeing him handle those things, and you’re trying to see him also pick who negotiates on behalf of Democrats.”

House Minority Leader Ranjeev Puri, D-Canton Township, who has said he himself has not been part of all the budget negotiations, said recently that Hall is the only part of the budget equation that has changed since last year.

“He’s never negotiated a budget in his life,” Puri told reporters. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s going up against other people who have negotiated a budget multiple times, on time, every time, who have never missed a budget.”

The speaker himself did not deny that he’s been closely involved in budget negotiations, but he also said that Bollin and subcommittee chairs have been part of those discussions.

“Who’s negotiating the budget? It depends on the budget,” Hall told reporters recently. “Whether it’s subcommittee chair, or the appropriations chair, or in some cases it’s me, depending on the subject, we’re all negotiating parts of the budget.”

He flipped the onus on Democrats for the delay in negotiations.

“I don’t see how legislative Democrats could be doing a poorer job on negotiating this budget,” Hall said. “I think we’re having a lot of encouraging conversations between our team and Gov. Whitmer’s team, but she’s the leader of the Democrat party, and if the Democrats were smart, they would follow her.”

Bollin said that House leadership and the Republican caucus are working together on the budget.

“Leadership is a team, and we’re working together as a caucus to put forth a responsible and fiscally sustainable budget, moving forward, preparing for the future,” she said.

Other sources outside the Republican caucus who spoke on background described a situation that was more in line with the one presented by House Democrats: budget decisions in the House are being made solely by the speaker’s office.

Senate Appropriations Chair Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, and Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, did not respond to a request for comment on the ongoing state of budget negotiations and who is involved in those discussions on Friday.

As the calendar marches forward toward Sept. 30, Bollin said the timeline is all relative.

“The July 1 law wasn’t put into place until 2019, and the reason it was put in place is because the Legislature passed a budget, appropriated money, and then the executive went out and decided to make a transfer of money,” Bollin said. “That was something that was negotiated between the House and the Senate and the governor’s office to avoid that happening again.”

Bollin said the House is more deliberate and prudent about what lies ahead.

“My goal is not to shut down the government,” she said. “My goal is to deliver a sound budget that delivers to the taxpayers in the state of Michigan.”

Bollin said the House will put forward serious budgets, and the negotiations for those will start with a roads plan.

“Working out a roads deal and what that looks like has a very large impact on the rest of the budget,” she said. “We can get a schools budget done. Higher ed. Community college. People are concerned about the date, but realistically, that money is for a fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.”

The discussions that need to be held are occurring between the necessary people, Bollin said.

“We’re having conversations with the Senate. We’re having conversations with the governor’s office. We’re having conversations with House Democrats. We’re having conversations with House Republicans,” Bollin said. “Stakeholders are still coming forward with their concerns. … So I think there are a lot of conversations at this time that are a little more productive than they have been. … We’re at work, and we’re ready to get to it.”

House Speaker Matt Hall denied Minority Leader Ranjeev Puri‘s request to reappoint Rep. Alabas Farhat as minority vice chair of the House Appropriations Committee in a letter sent Monday.

“Rep. Farhat has demonstrated an inability to represent your caucus and work in good faith to pass key, bipartisan legislation and a school budget that prioritizes students over special interests,” Hall wrote in the letter.

Hall, R-Richland Township, stripped Farhat, D-Dearborn, of his committee assignment at the end of last month after he voted against a Republican sponsored bill that would make changes to life without parole sentencing for 19- and 20-year-olds.

House Republicans did not have the votes to pass the bill without Democratic support with three of their members not in attendance (See Gongwer Michigan Report, July 24, 2025).

Hall went on to say he intends to interview members of the Democratic caucus to ensure that Farhat’s replacement “demonstrates the ability to secure buy-ins” from the Democrats and that he would consider different recommendations from Puri.

“The events leading up to Rep. Farhat’s removal last week are clear to us all. He was planning to support the commonsense legislation that was brought up for a vote – including priorities for the governor as well as Wayne County – but ultimately voted no after a long public argument with you and your leadership team. That change of heart came even after we agreed to approve his amendment to one of the bills and agreed to pass other bills sponsored by his fellow Democrat members,” Hall said. “If your caucus intends to play a meaningful role in this Legislature, it must begin by demonstrating a willingness to engage in good faith and prioritize real results over political maneuvering.”

Puri, D-Canton, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday evening, but he previously called Farhat’s removal “punitive and childish” (See Gongwer Michigan Report, July 29, 2025).

In a statement, Farhat said Hall’s letter was evidence that the Speaker was “spiraling.”

“I did read the letter. I feel bad for the Speaker. He’s spiraling a bit. I have faith, though, that the institution will level set, and I do agree that the governor won’t sign a bad budget,” he said. “I’ve asked my office to prepare the voicemail and forward all calls during the Matt Hall Government Shutdown to his office. In the meantime, we will be ready to negotiate a roads deal and a people-focused budget.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer requested two of her department heads provide data on how a state road funding plan could “blunt or offset” construction job losses due to federal economic policies and an upcoming funding cliff.

Whitmer, in a letter to the leaders of the departments of Transportation and Labor and Economic Opportunity, also asked for an analysis of projected job losses if a comprehensive road funding package is not enacted.

The governor called for the information on or before Aug. 21.

The letter references the Rebuilding Michigan Plan, and how those bonds are set to end, creating a road funding cliff. A federal infrastructure program is set to end as well.

Whitmer also said federal policies, like tariffs, are creating uncertainty.

“If Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature do not come together to get a roads deal done, we could lose thousands of good-paying jobs and stall dozens of infrastructure projects statewide, creating unsafe driving conditions for families, further straining already crumbling local roads, and jacking up the cost of future fixes,” Whitmer said in a statement. “Delivering a bipartisan, sustainable roads plan will provide long-term certainty for workers, industry, and small businesses as we face uncertainty and volatility at the national level. Let’s get this done to make a real difference in people’s lives and keep moving Michigan forward.”

The Legislature has yet to agree on a road funding proposal and does not appear to be making significant headway on the budget.

The House, with some Democratic support, has passed its own roads proposal. The Senate has not offered its own plan.

Senators have said a roads plan needs to move with the budget.

Whitmer asked MDOT Director Brad Wieferich and LEO Director Sue Corbin for information on job losses if a road funding plan is not enacted and losses due to federal policy. It also asks for analysis on how a state road-funding plan could help blunt the losses.

“Without a long-term, bipartisan road funding solution, thousands of good-paying jobs will be at risk. Critical projects will be delayed or canceled, creating more dangerous conditions for drivers, further straining our infrastructure, and jacking up the cost of future projects,” Whitmer wrote the directors. “This risk is compounded by economic uncertainty from Washington, D.C. Federal tariffs – both enacted and threatened – are slowing business growth and raising unemployment in Michigan. A long-term, sustainable road funding plan will provide certainty for workers, industry, and small businesses during a particularly volatile time.”