This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan (bridgemi.com), a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from Bridge Michigan, sign up for a free Bridge Michigan newsletter here.

House GOP cuts include funding for a new fire pumper truck in Hamtramck, which chief says city is still on the hook for
‘This is not waste, fraud and abuse,’ says Democratic lawmaker who sponsored the Hamtramck budget earmark
Speaker Matt Hall defends $644 million in unilateral spending cuts, blasts fellow Republicans concerned by the impact

LANSING — Educators, public safety officials, health experts and more on Tuesday bemoaned last week’s unexpected funding cuts by House Republicans — a move one fire chief called “a punch in the gut.”

Lawmakers did not contact them before unilaterally canceling an estimated $644 million in previously approved spending on dozens of projects, some of which were already underway but not yet paid for, they said.

“Nobody bothered to notify us,” Hamtramck Fire Department Chief Matt Wyszczelski said in testimony before a state Senate panel.

Hamtramck, which also helps respond to fires in Detroit and Highland Park under a mutual aid agreement, had received an $800,000 earmark in the state’s 2024 budget to purchase a new fire pumper truck to replace a 30-year-old unit.

The city had already contracted to buy the new fire truck, but manufacturing on the specialized units can take years, so the city had not yet paid for or received the final product, Wyszczelski said.

“We are now on the hook for over a $900,000 piece of apparatus that, frankly, my controller and I are trying to figure out how we’re going to pay for now.”

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House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, defended the spending cuts later Tuesday, arguing House Republicans had a responsibility to “be good stewards” of taxpayer dollars previously approved by Democrats, because “the spending is out of control.”

However, his caucus did not have “a responsibility to reach out to these groups” before clawing back more than half a billion dollars in unspent state funds, he told reporters. Instead, he argued, that responsibility should have fallen to state departments that oversee the grants.

“I’ve said over and over, when we see good programs that are justified, we’ll put those back in in a deal,” Hall added, telling reporters that any initiative which fell under the umbrella of “diversity, equity and inclusion” programming was officially “dead in state government.”

Hall touted other GOP cuts to what he called “green energy scams,” including $325,000 in cancelled funding for EV charging stations around Lake Michigan and the blockage of $2 million in federal funding for a Michigan Energy Academy. As for legislative earmarks, he raised concerns that groups who received them were rewarding lobbyists as a result.

“I was never trying to cut really critical things that would create cataclysmic problems.”

State Budget Director Jen Flood pushed back on Hall’s claims, saying in a statement that departments provided Hall and House Appropriations Committee members with “more than 500 pages of materials on work projects” prior to their vote on the spending cuts.

“This documentation made clear that disapproval would mean voting to halt funding for local road, bridge, and water infrastructure repairs, senior centers, job creation efforts, and other common-sense measures,” Flood said.

‘This is not waste, fraud and abuse’

Joined by five Republicans, the Democratic-led Senate voted Tuesday evening to restore the canceled funding, which would require House GOP support. Appropriations Chair Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, requested a legal opinion from Attorney General Dana Nessel on whether the cuts were constitutional.

Earlier Tuesday, members of the Senate Appropriations Committee listened to more than an hour of testimony from groups across the state, many of whom characterized the House GOP cuts as betrayal by the state government.

State Sen. Stephanie Chang, a Detroit Democrat who represents Hamtramck and had helped secure funding for the fire truck the department is attempting to buy, questioned the cut by House Republicans.

“Clearly, this is not waste, fraud and abuse,” she said. “This is simply the process by which a municipality acquires a fire truck.”

Sen. Jon Bumstead, a North Muskegon Republican who later voted to restore the funding, also appeared to criticize the process. Having worked as a “hose puller” himself, Bumstead noted that almost every part on a fire truck is custom ordered, and manufacturing a new unit can sometimes take more than three years.

“To me, a person is only as good as their word, and we can’t lose that,” Bumstead said later in the hearing. “We can’t lose people’s trust.”

Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday heard testimony from a handful of groups which saw the remainder of their 2024-25 fiscal year funding cut following a unilateral move by House Republicans to claw back nearly $645 million in previously approved spending. (Jordyn Hermani/Bridge Michigan)

Senators heard more than an hour of testimony Tuesday morning from impacted groups, including Maggie’s Wigs 4 Kids CEO Maggie Varney, Dr. Mona Hanna with RxKids and Dr. Ramona Benkert, dean of Wayne State University’s College of Nursing.

The college had received a $4 million work project during the 2024-25 fiscal year that Benkert said was meant to create a Center for Nursing Workforce to address Michigan’s ongoing nursing shortage.

The college had already hired staff and completed the necessary paperwork in order to work with other health systems and groups when it was notified its 2024-25 fiscal year funding had been canceled.

Benkert did not say how much of the $4 million in state funds the college had already spent but argued that the scope of the work would take years to implement — “that’s why it was a multi-year project.”

“It’s a residency program. It’s longitudinal clinical relationships and clinical placements. It’s training bachelors-prepared nurses to improve their teaching and educational skills… It’s not a one fiscal year approach,” she said, pushing back on why the school had not spent all funds.

Ahead of Benkert’s testimony, Harbor Springs Republican Sen. John Damoose questioned whether the focus on not spending down a full grant amount within a certain fiscal year “creates almost a perverse incentive to blow all the dollars you get immediately.”

“What does knowing this is a possibility — what does this do to people who receive future grants?” he questioned. Damoose later voted to restore the funding.

Hall slights fellow Republicans

When told of Republican opposition in the state Senate, Hall was dismissive of the criticism.

He argued that the practice of adding legislative earmarks to the budget — sometimes called “pork” or “pork barrel spending” — had gone too far, was not transparent enough and had led to funding for organizations that may not require it.

“I think you start to see who the Republican budget traitors are, people that shove their own pork in these budgets,” Hall said of Damoose.

As for Bumstead, another Republican senator who had raised concerns about trust, Hall accused him of “working against his caucus” and “against the voters that trusted Republicans with elections.”

“My guess is he’s got a lot of secret projects in there he cut deals with Democrats on, and he’s unhappy they got cut,” Hall added.

Damoose-sponsored grants in the 2024 budget included $750,000 to the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians for shelter services and $1 million for a FishPass dam replacement project in Traverse City.

Bumstead’s grants included $3.2 million to help Mackinac Island buy 16 acres of land to build a public access trail to Sunset Rock and $1 million for a new public recreation access site on Muskegon Lake.

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