The Michigan Legislature passed the K-12 budget and is expected to send Gov. Gretchen Whitmer the rest of the 15 FY 2020 spending bills as soon as Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year. Gov. Whitmer is expected to exercise her line-item veto power to keep the state government open beyond Oct. 1, but may scratch as many Republican-specific spending priorities as possible to force them back to the negotiating table to find ways to raise more money for road improvements and schools; Local road funding bills were introduced in the House. HBs 4963 – 4973 were referred to the House Transportation Committee. The 11 bills would allow counties to levy, after a vote of the people, their own registration fees or excise fuel taxes for roads; Gov. Whitmer offered three emergency rules banning all flavored vaping products from Michigan shelves. The orders came after Chief Medical Executive Dr. Joneigh Khaldun described youth vaping as a “public health emergency”; The House and Senate have both passed House Bill 4446, which limits how much a corporation or a union can put toward fundraising events for a political action committee (PAC) and is now headed to the Governor for signature; House and Senate Democrats have introduced a 16-bill package of legislation aimed at cracking down on payroll fraud; Democrats have introduced a 10-bill package to reform the state's unemployment system, which they described as one of the Midwest’s worst unemployment systems in terms of compensation and benefits.The measures would restore the maximum weekly benefit rate indexing formula to 58 percent of the state average weekly wage, while also returning the eligibility period from 20 to the standard 26 weeks.

For more on these and other legislative issues, please click here for the September 2019 Karoub Report.