GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A state budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year will need to be in place in 41 days but Democrats and Republicans are divided on a range of issues, including a roads plan that the Governor has promised since she first ran for the office.
The amount of communication between the governor, Senate Majority Leader, and Speaker of the House — the three major players in signing off on a budget — has been limited. This led Speaker of the House Matt Hall to call for negotiations while Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks says Republicans in the House have no plan to negotiate.
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“I don’t think Winnie Brinks wants to get in the negotiation room with (me) because she knows I’ll get a better deal and so I think it’s going to take Gretchen Whitmer to drag her into that room so we can get a deal,” Hall said. “And I hope that we can get a deal, but Winnie Brinks does not want to negotiate at the negotiation table with me, she doesn’t know budget as well as I do, and she doesn’t think she’ll get a good deal, so they try to put anyone else in there except her.”
But Brinks said Republicans in the House first have to negotiate with each other.
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“At some point they just need to get in a room and start negotiating whether they show their cards about where their priorities are or not, whether they have the ability to get the votes together to pass their budget or not to start the conversation, at this point I could care less about how they do that in their chamber but they do need to come to the table and start having real conversations about the big things that need to be decided in order for us to get the budget to the governor’s desk by Oct. 1,” Brinks said.
One major stumbling block may end up being that roads plan. Republicans in the House want to do it with no new revenues, something Democrats in the Senate are unwilling to go along with. But just last week, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told News 8 that the budget will not be done without a plan to fix the roads.
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