Brinks: No Genuine Conversation Between House, Senate On Road Funding

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 05/27/2025) (MACKINAC ISLAND) – Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids) says what's lacking right now in terms of creating a new road funding plan "is a genuine conversation between the House and the Senate."

"It's not enough just to have a plan, and it's not enough to even pass things through one chamber. If it's not bipartisan and bicameral, it will not be successful," Brinks said. "It also needs to move alongside the budget, because the budget implications are so significant, and so, until we have productive conversations about both those things, it doesn't matter if there's a plan on the table."

Brinks spoke alongside Sen. Kevin Hertel (D-St. Clair Shores) as part of the debut "Live From Mackinac Brought To You By DTE Energy" series, a broadcast feature of the Mackinac Policy Conference.

Both the Governor and the Republican-controlled House have plans to add around $3 billion to road construction projects. The two agree that any state taxes paid at the gas pump should go toward road improvements. Doing so would reroute the 6 percent sales tax on gas from the School Aid Fund and local government revenue sharing to the roads, creating questions and concerns over how those funding obligations will be back-filled without the same amount of sales tax revenue coming in.

To make the plan financially stable, the Governor has suggested new wholesale taxes on the marijuana industry similar to those for cigarettes and other tobacco products. Additionally, she proposed new costs for "Big Tech" corporations "that haul heavy weights on Michigan roadways and bombard Michiganders with nuisance (pop-ups) and ads."

Meanwhile, House Republicans want to avoid new taxes and fees, instead looking to eliminate publicly funded corporate incentives and business grant programs. But at the same time, Senate Democrats are cautious about potential slashes to education and public assistance programs, especially after U.S. House Republicans voted on a plan early on May 22 to reduce future Medicaid spending and eligibility over the next decade.

When asked if road funding can be done without creating new arteries for state revenue, Brinks said Tuesday she thinks the Governor was accurate "in saying that it's going to be really difficult" to pull off a plan without new revenue resources.

"She may even have been stronger in saying it should involve both revenue increases as well as tightening up our belt and finding savings or cuts in the budget," Brinks said. "I think that's most likely accurate in order for it to be successful without cutting things that most in Michigan frankly really rely on."

Also participating in the "Live From Mackinac" series was statewide pollster Richard Czuba, founder of the Glengariff Group Inc. He said there isn't a survey he does in which voters don't say the roads stink.

"Everybody says 'fix the roads. Fix the roads,' but the voters aren't willing to expend any resources to fix those roads," Czuba said. "And I think one of the challenges policymakers have on this road issue is nobody has thoroughly explained to the voters why the funding doesn't exist."

The top two things Glengariff hears in focus groups are people don't know why there isn't enough money for roads, and "that all voters think they're road building experts, which is really fun. But they don't know why there's not money."

Specifically, he explained that in more than 40 years of polling, he's never seen voters actually support an increase in the gas tax to fix the roads. In her first year of office, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer proposed boosting the state's gas tax by 45 cents per gallon.

Brinks described Senate Democrats as trying to put the pieces together to create a road funding plan that could actually get through the Legislature.

Whitmer has gone on the record saying the "ideal situation" would be legislators finishing the next state budget and roads funding by the end of June.