Senate Approps Panel Passes House & Senate Earmark Request Bills

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 10/14/2025) The Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday moved legislation that would require lawmakers to disclose and detail their special spending requests ahead of budget bills being voted on by their chamber. 

After 11 a.m., the Senate Appropriations Committee moved SB 596 by Senate Appropriations Chair Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing) and HB 4420 by Rep. Tom Kinsey (R-Clare). The bills were tie-barred together, meaning that one cannot be implemented without the other. 

Anthony explained that the latest version of her SB 596 prohibits legislatively directed spending items (LDSIs) – or budget earmarks requested by lawmakers – from funding for-profit entities or nonprofits without a history of stable operations prior to the request. She added that LDSI forms detailing requests must be posted on legislative websites within five days after their submission. 

The dome of Michigan’s Capitol Building.

She also noted that the House and Senate hold hearings on any LDSIs originating in their chamber, "ensuring public visibility and legislative accountability together."

"These bills represent a significant step forward in modernizing our budget process, reinforcing the public trust and ensuring that legislatively directed spending items are more transparent and responsible," Anthony said. 

House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) has criticized Senate Democrats for being more hesitant and slower than House Republicans in adopting disclosure mandates for budget earmarks. Hall said to reporters last week that "Democrats were willing to shut down the government over not disclosing their pork," referring to how legislators failed to have a final budget deal voted on ahead of Oct. 1. 

Even Tuesday's hearing revealed different interpretations between the House and Senate over how LDSI requests will be processed. For example, Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor) asked what happens when a legislator sponsoring an earmark request doesn't want somebody else in the Capitol listed as a co-sponsor. 

While Anthony said some of that will be determined at the leadership level, Kunse said "it's my understanding that would be my LDSI, and when I submitted mine, I did not have co-sponsors on them." 

"The answer we heard from the Chair was that leadership decides. The answer we heard from you is the member decides . . . I'm kind of on team-member and team-Legislature versus team-leadership and team-executive office," Irwin said. 

Sen. John Damone (R-Habor Springs) also wanted to know how deep into the process the ban on for-profit entities went. 

"For instance, the ice storm Up North . . . a lot of the services that were contracted by governmental units who would qualify for this, aren't handled by those units. They're subcontracted to vendors who are for-profit companies," Damoose said. "There's not a prohibition on that, is there?" 

Anthony said no, that funds will be appropriated to trusted entities that then can contract with organizations to do the work.

Irwin voted against SB 596 , but supported HB 4420 because the bill established the form for earmark requests. He sees today's efforts as an "unworkable approach to trying to get more transparency" while he instead feels the Legislature should finally approve bills subjecting their offices and the Governor's to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

The Senate passed such FOIA reforms in late January, and they've been sitting in the House while Hall uses his speakership to pursue other types of ethics and disclosure reforms, like public earmark requests and banning ex-lawmakers from becoming registered lobbyists within two years of leaving office.   

"Also, the idea that budgets can be signed, appropriations can be approved and then . . . the executive can decide not to allocate the funds for reasons that aren't very clear, I'm not a big fan of that either," Irwin said. "But my biggest issue is just that this is an unworkable and unnecessarily complicated way to not pass FOIA on the Legislature."  

Irwin additionally worries that today's bills set up a culture of late budgets created after the July 1 deadline – which is currently non-penalizing – that lawmakers have for themselves. For example, if an elementary school unexpectedly floods in early July, should the Legislature hold off on passing a budget so that an earmarked spending request can be formally submitted? 

"This is more window dressing," Irwin said.