History Shows Odds Of Post-Summer Budget Deal Are More Than 50/50

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 03/03/2025) When is the Legislature going to send a Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget to the Governor?

If history is any guide, the odds are better than 50/50 that it'll be after the summer.

The reason is because of the split-party arrangement Lansing now finds itself in with the Republicans taking over the House and Democrats still controlling the Senate and the Governor's office.

In the last 30 years, the Legislature has passed 30 School Aid Fund budget bills and 30 General Government budget bills for a combined 60 budget bills for the coming fiscal year. In recent years, these budgets have been rolled into larger omnibus or "School Bus" spending plans, which have not had any impact on when the bills are signed.

What has impacted the date of when budget bills were signed is the political makeup of the Legislature and the Governor's office, according to MIRS research.

In those 30 years, 28 of the 60 aforementioned bills passed in some type of split-party arrangement. Of those 28 bills, 16 of them (57%) were signed in September, October or (in the case of 2007) November. Six more were signed in August.

When a single party is in charge of the Governor's office, the Senate and the House, there have been 32 budgets passed since 1995. All but one of them passed after Aug. 1.

In 2001, the Legislature was starting to see a dip in School Aid Fund revenue and didn't know what to do about the prospects of cutting the education budget. That budget went until the end of September, but that is the only exception. All of the budgets under Rick Snyder and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's last two were passed by the end of July.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed a combined 16 School Aid Fund and General Government budgets. The earliest she ever signed one passed by her Republican-led Legislature or split Legislature was July 21. The other 15 were signed in August or later.

Meanwhile, Snyder had nothing but Republican-led Legislatures. The latest he ever signed a budget was July 18.