LANSING, Mich. — The Michigan Legislature passed the more than $75 billion budget very early Friday morning. This year’s budget includes another historic amount of money for education.
“I think it's been a very positive process working with both sides of the aisle and the governor," said state Sen. Curtis Hertel. "And I think this budget will be a solid investment in the roads they drive to work, their kids school investments in our economy moving forward. So I'm very happy with that.”
In total, the state budget will allocate $19.6 billion of its total $75.7 billion toward public schools. This year’s budget is up 8.1 percent from last year’s historic budget. Last year’s budget was about $70 billion total.
"I think the most important thing is the increase in investment in education," Hertel said. "It’s going to to be a record amount of funding, it’s more funding for at risk kids, it's more funding to deal with learning losses that we saw during the pandemic. So, I think that's probably the biggest top line in this budget— the giant increase in our kids' schools.”
One issue left off the budget was tax relief. Members of the GOP-led Legislature could not come to an agreement on such measures with Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
The legislature also left some money on the table during negotiations, Hertel estimates about $6.5 billion was not allocated.
"Michigan's economy recovered fairly well out of the pandemic," Hertel said. "So Michigan has a lot of dollars that can be spent on priorities. I'm looking forward to continuing these negotiations on those dollars as we move forward."
FOX 47 reached out to the GOP chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee Jon Bumstead but did not hear back.
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