Lansing Update: What the Early House Passage of a State Budget Means
Posted March 14, 2025
What the Legislature’s Recent Budget Moves Are All About
As reported a few weeks ago, the budget-setting process for Fiscal Year 2026 is getting underway, but the typical process experienced an unexpected wrinkle recently.
The House last week passed a “continuation spending bill” framed as an emergency backup plan to keep the state running if the Legislature and Governor do not agree on a budget by Sept. 30 of this year.
The passage of a budget bill for next year at this point is unusual, given that both the House and Senate had not publicly put forth their own budget recommendations for next year in response to the Governor’s executive proposal that she announced last month.
However, the budget bills were approved by mostly Republicans, who control the House. The Senate is controlled by the Democrats, who have already signaled they do not favor this approach, meaning the legislation is unlikely to go anywhere.
The emergency budget bills would collectively appropriate about $20 billion in state spending, which is roughly a quarter of the $80 billion the state is slated to spend this year, making it a dramatically scaled-back version of the state budget. Several existing spending programs in the House-passed budget were eliminated, including safety and mental health funding for nonpublic schools, as well as the entirety of the Department of Health and Human Services budget, which would include several programs that serve the poor and vulnerable.
The Republican House Speaker is asking the Senate Democrats and the Governor to support the emergency budget continuation bills in exchange for his support of proposed mid-year supplemental spending legislation, which the Senate is currently advancing for the purpose of closing the books on Fiscal Year 2024, and is due by law to be completed by March 30.
In any event, as the typical budget processes continue to play out in the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees, Michigan Catholic Conference continues to work with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in both chambers to advance budget proposals to promote the common good.
Renewed Effort Begins in Senate to Improve Protections for Vulnerable Adults
Lawmakers are again considering legislation to allow for elder or vulnerable adults to acquire personal protection orders (PPO), a policy MCC supports in the interest of protecting vulnerable individuals particularly from financial harm or exploitation.
Senate Bills 111 through 114 are new versions of legislation from last session that cleared the Senate but not the House The bills would create a process for elder and vulnerable adults to petition a circuit court to enter an elder and vulnerable adult PPO.
According to an analysis of the legislation, a vulnerable adult means an individual 18 years or over that is unable to live independently or requires supervision or personal care, whether due to age, developmental disability, mental illness, or physical disability.
The PPO, if approved by the court, could prohibit an individual from accessing, exercising, or transferring control over the funds, benefits, property, resources, belongings, or assets of the elder or vulnerable adult who requested the PPO.
The legislation defines financial exploitation as a person’s use of fraud, deceit, misrepresentation, coercion, or unjust enrichment to obtain—or attempt to obtain—money or property to directly or indirectly benefit the person, or the individual’s improper leveraging of a caregiver relationship for financial gain.
The bills would also include embezzlement from a vulnerable adult—both during and after the adult's life—as a racketeering violation.
Senate Bills 111–114 were up for testimony only during a recent hearing before the Senate Civil Rights, Judiciary, and Public Safety Committee.
Both Chambers Have Advanced Bills to Uphold Right to Counsel for Indigent Youth
The House this week advanced its own legislation to enact minimum standards to ensure indigent youth have access to adequate criminal defense, following recent Senate action on a similar bill.
That both the House and Senate have advanced indigent defense bills to their respective chambers is an encouraging development toward final passage of this policy priority of MCC to ensure justice for youth in the juvenile justice system.
It is common practice for both chambers to concurrently advance similar bills. The process allows members to educate themselves on the issue and be in a better position to support legislation when, for instance, a House committee receives the Senate version of the bill, and vice versa.
House Bill 4070, sponsored by Rep. Sarah Lightner (R-Springport), was approved by the House Judiciary Committee and sent to the House floor this week. It would pave the way for state standards around the provision of indigent legal defense for juvenile offenders, which would address the fact that Michigan lacks a centralized structure and minimal standards, supports, or resources for juvenile public defense.
The Senate version of the legislation is SB 81, sponsored by Sen. Sue Shink (D-Ann Arbor), and is on the Senate floor as well. Both bills are reintroduced versions of legislation from last session, which failed to make it to the Governor’s office only because of a technicality in the legislative process. The legislation’s effective date was amended in the Senate, which would have forced it to undergo another concurrence vote in the House, which ultimately did not happen due to that chamber adjourning for the year.