Senate Rolls Up Budget, Sends To House The Senate on Tuesday rolled up all of its departmental budgets into an omnibus bill and passed it with a slew of placeholders but no major changes to the budget.Only five amendments were either withdrawn or defeated on General Orders when the chamber was asked to adopt or defeat potential changes. Most of the adopted amendments came from Senate Republicans, and most were $100 placeholders for various initiatives.Among those placeholders was one for a sexual assault prevention and education initiative; a statewide e-file system; blight removal in the city of Springfield; the Dort Highway Expansion; prisoner reentry legal services; and the first responder presumed coverage fund. Also included in the placeholder for prisoner reentry legal services, spearheaded by Sen. Vincent Gregory (D-Southfield), was a section outlining whom the department shall contract with to provide what services and where.Sen. Dale Zorn (R-Ida) won an amendment to the Senate omnibus budget, SB 133*, to increase funding for traffic control at the Michigan International Speedway to $831,900, and Sen. Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge) won an amendment to remove $10 million in funding from the Casino Gaming Control Operations Reserve Fund.Sen. Dave Hildenbrand (R-Lowell) won an amendment that eliminated the air quality fee increase contained within the Department of Environmental Quality budget due to legislation, HB 4449*, having not yet passed. And Sen. Patrick Colbeck (R-Canton Township) won an amendment ensuring priority be given to funding reentry or rehabilitation programs that have been demonstrated to reduce prison violence and recidivism such as faith-based initiatives.Sen. Mike Green (R-Mayville) won an amendment to provide $100,000 to the Grand River waterway study in the parks and recreation division of the Department of Natural Resources budget.The decision to roll up the entire budget, excluding funding for educational purposes, was a change from the Senate's long-time practice of voting on individual budget bills for most departments and major budget areas. Mr. Hildenbrand, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that was done as a matter of efficiency."We had subcommittees that met and deliberated in a very open, public way, and then we had full committee where we considered individual budgets throughout that process. I think there's a lot of transparency and openness, and now, just to be efficient, we rolled the budget up into basically two votes," Mr. Hildenbrand said, adding that he still expects to have conference committees with the House on each individual budget.On Third Reading, Senate Democrats offered 20 amendments ranging from reinstating $1 million in funding for a study on the true cost of educating a student through the end of high school, to keeping the W.J. Maxey Boys Training facility open, providing money for body cameras for police and restoring 100 Department of Human Services staff to the budget. All were defeated except for one amendment from Sen. Curtis Hertel Jr. (D-East Lansing) that kept $500,000 in the budget for sexual assault prevention programs at college campuses."A 2007 study found one in five women are the target of an attempted sexual assault," Mr. Hertel said to the chamber in urging support for his amendment. "We cannot continue to turn our backs on young women at our college campuses. When we send our kids off to college, we should be worried about their grades or studying hard enough, not being a victim of sexual assault."Considering the House kept the funding in the budget and considering the nature of the amendment, Sen. Mike Nofs (R-Battle Creek) said, he was "not averse to going ahead and supporting this amendment." There was no recorded roll call vote, but it appeared all but a handful of senators buzzed in in time to support Mr. Hertel's amendment.Sen. Ken Horn (R-Frankenmuth) also won an amendment ensuring the Department of State maintain a full-service secretary of state office in Buena Vista.After all proposed, accepted and rejected amendments, SB 133 cleared the chamber 23-15. Mr. Colbeck, Sen. Phil Pavlov (R-St. Clair), Sen. John Proos (R-St. Joseph) and Sen. Joe Hune (R-Whitmore Lake) joined all 11 Democrats in opposition to the bill.Prior to the vote, Mr. Colbeck said he could not support the bill because, for as much as people were talking about making transportation funding a priority, this budget actually cut that funding, he said."I do not believe this bill is consistent with the priorities of the 7th District, and for that reason I'll be voting no," Mr. Colbeck explained, referencing the district he represents.And although Democrats said there were some good aspects to the bill, there was still much to be desired in what was finally presented on the Senate floor."Democrats did what we could to improve this budget," Mr. Gregory, minority vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on the floor. He referenced the 20-plus amendments his caucus presented both on General Orders and Third Reading, noting only one saw inclusion in the budget."This body is hindering (our) ability of serving constituents," Mr. Gregory said. "I certain hope we can continue to discuss these and other issues in conference committees."But Mr. Hildenbrand was not fazed by the criticism."We're making a huge investment in public education in this state," he said. "We'll have to figure out if, once we have the May revenue estimating conference, if there's more money available next year in the School Aid Fund, we'll be able to do a little more. But we can only do so much. What the taxpayers send us, we have the responsibility to basically prioritize and then allocate and appropriate that money out the door."OMNIBUS EDUCATION BUDGET: The Senate also passed, with much less discussion, SB 134*, the omnibus education budget that included roughly $15 billion in funding for higher education, community colleges, K-12 education and the Department of Education.Mr. Colbeck attempted to get an amendment to add $10 million to an initiative focused on advancing skilled trades and its workers, but that was defeated. Also defeated were amendments by Sen. Steve Bieda (D-Warren) to provide funding to Macomb Community College's cybersecurity academic programming partnership, as well as its advanced energy storage partnership, with Wayne State University."As we all spend more and more time online, we're all aware of the risks involved with internet usage," Mr. Bieda said of his proposed amendment. "Cybersecurity is a growing field, and the program developed is putting students on the cutting edge of that."Sen. Hoon-Yung Hopgood (D-Taylor) also again tried to remove from higher education funding money that he and some others believe should be directed strictly to K-12 education spending via the School Aid Fund. Rather than move the entire $450 million, Mr. Hopgood proposed only moving back to K-12 and the School Aid Fund some $205 million, filling the potential hole with General Fund dollars.Sen. Tory Rocca (R-Sterling Heights), Sen. Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge), Mr. Zorn and Mr. Nofs joined Democrats in supporting that proposal, but Mr. Hopgood was unsuccessful, even with apparent sympathy from Mr. Hansen, chair of the Senate Appropriations K-12, School Aid and Education Subcommittee.And Sen. Rebekah Warren (D-Ann Arbor) again tried to strike boilerplate language requiring universities doing stem-cell therapy research to submit a report to the Legislature, but she was unsuccessful."This boilerplate has been in the higher education budget for the last four years. To my knowledge, the University (of Michigan) has not objected. They worked with different constituent groups to strike a compromise when it came to this issue," Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker (R-Lawton), chair of the higher education budget, said in response to Ms. Warren's proposal. "I think a one-page report is minimally invasive in terms of what we hand over to our universities."Upon final passage, Mr. Colbeck, Mr. Jones and Mr. Rocca joined all Democrats in opposition to SB 134, but it passed 24-14.CONFERENCE COMMITTEES, FEE INCREASES: In terms of whether there was anything he was not willing to budge on once the Senate and the House meet for conference committees, Mr. Hildenbrand said "not really," noting what is now the Department of Health and Human Services is always tough because of how large the budget is (between the Department of Community Health and Department of Human Services, the pair take up one-third of the budget)."There's a lot of programming in there where people have difference of opinions on how to mechanically do those budgets," he said of that budget. "So we'll just work those out, but I don't think there's anything major."The Senate budget does not assume any of the fee increases recommended by Governor Rick Snyder, but Mr. Hildenbrand's Appropriations Committee expects to have a hearing on some of those fees on Wednesday at 2 p.m. Mr. Hildenbrand said his members are still working through those fees and that they "want to make sure we're not putting the cart before the horse."He said in the past, budgets have included fees or fee increases that had not yet passed, but "I think that's a little backwards, so we changed that up this year," he said.Back To Top >>