Almost two months past the statutory July 1 deadline, the House passed a $54 billion omnibus budget bill Tuesday that, when added up with education budgets earlier this summer, totals more than $78.5 billion, around $3 billion less than the current year, $5 billion less than the Governor’s proposal and $6 billion less than the Senate’s.

With an advertised $5 billion in cuts, HB 4706 makes spending increases to only the budgets of the Legislature, Auditor General, Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and Transportation.

For Transportation, Hall fulfilled his commitment to find $3.4 billion in additional revenue for the roads by putting out a record $10.2 billion Department of Transportation budget, a spending plan that’s more than $3.3 billion higher than the Senate’s $6.9 billion transportation budget.

Results from the state’s standardized test showed a slightly higher percentage of students are passing 14 of the 20 testing categories, but that 61.1 percent of third graders are either only partially proficient or not proficient in reading.

Math, science and social studies proficiency scores for the M-STEP test showed marginal improvement. However, State Superintendent Michael Rice concurred that English Language Arts (ELA) scores in grades three and four “remain a concern.”

In pure percentages, 38.9 percent of the 101,069 third graders that took the M-STEP test scored in the advanced or proficient category, while 61.1 percent were in the partially or not proficient category. Fourth grade saw 42.4 percent of the 98,753 students score advanced or proficient and 57.6 percent scored in the partially or not proficient category.

Senate Democrats Tuesday passed legislation raising Michigan’s landfill tipping fees from 36 cents per ton to $1.20 for solid and municipal waste deposits. The bills also aim to halt hazardous waste facilities from expanding in the state.

In March, the state’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) published that Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 saw a 5.43 percent increase in solid waste disposed of in Michigan’s landfills compared to the prior year.

Of those landfill drops, EGLE reported that 3.46 million tons came from Canada, 658,734 tons from Ohio, 173,189 tons from Wisconsin, 131,734 from Indiana and 106,323 from Massachusetts for FY ’24.

On a party-line vote, Senate Democrats moved Sen. Darrin Camilleri (D-Trenton)’s SB 246 and SB 247.

When it comes to general landfill tipping fees, Senate Democrats are asking for less than the $5-per-ton that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has proposed and the $4-per-ton that Republican Gov. Rick Snyder tried to accomplish.

Sen. Joseph Bellino Jr. (R-Monroe), ahead of voting against the bills, called them a “233 percent trash hike.”

“Despite the state budget exploding year over year over year under Democratic control, you’re coming back to Michigan taxpayers asking for more and more,” Bellino said. “This trash hike stinks like my garbage can seven days after little baby Albert, my grandson, has been to my house for four days – I put his diapers in there. That’s what it stinks like.”

Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor) – who chairs the Senate Appropriations EGLE Subcommittee – criticized Bellino’s comments, saying when someone multiplies incredibly small numbers by big numbers, they “still end up with a relatively small number. That’s how decimals and fractions work.”

“Here in Michigan we have bizarrely low tipping fees,” Irwin said. “The states around us average over $5 a ton. Wisconsin, our neighbor, has a $13 per ton fee.”

Tuesday afternoon, MIRS asked House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) if a proposed $1.20-per-ton fee for solid waste could be taken up by his chamber. He said “that has no chance of survival.”

“I think they’d be better off moving some of our House bills,” he said. “We’re not going to raise the tipping fee. You saw they couldn’t even get that done in the House when the Democrats had control of the House. They put that on the board and it failed. So you think we’re going to do that? That’s crazy.”

A week ago, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel Jr. said he would no longer provide the Democrats’ voting list to Democrats running for municipal seats this fall if they supported independent gubernatorial candidate Mike Duggan.

The Michigan Republican Party chair, Sen. Jim Runestad (R-White Lake), signaled Thursday that he has no intentions of penalizing pro-Duggan party members.

Runestad said the ones supporting Duggan on his side are “not your regular, hard-core Republicans.”

“Among the donors, there are a few that have given the bare minimum. They haven’t endorsed. Maybe they had some friendship with him, but we’re not seeing the defection that they’re seeing on their side. I see why Hertel is terrified,” Runestad said. “He sees the writing on the wall.”

Runestad said in the final analysis, “the bark will be off of Mayor Duggan as a hard-core leftist Democrat who supported (President Joe Biden) and (President Barack Obama).”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Friday called the special elections to fill the 35th state Senate District – Bay City, Midland, Saginaw and surrounding communities – left open by former Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Bay City) leaving her seat for Congress on Jan. 3, 2025.

The special primary will be Feb. 3, 2026. The special general election will be May 5 to coincide with the regularly scheduled local and school district elections. Democratic and Republican candidates interested in running for the seat have until 4 p.m. Sept. 30 to file, according to a letter submitted to Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

Whitmer did not provide any commentary in the letter or in the accompanying press release as to why these dates were chosen or why it took her a record number of days to call the special election.

The announcement means the seat had been vacant 238 days before Whitmer called the election, marking the longest period of time a Michigan governor has taken to declare a special election for a vacant legislative seat since the advent of the full-time Michigan legislature in the mid-1960s, according to MIRS research on the topic.

By the numbers, it’s not even a close call. Prior to this vacancy, the longest it took a governor to call a special election was in 1992 when Gov. John Engler took 108 days to call the special election to replace then-Rep. Teola Hunter, who resigned to eventually run for a local clerk position. At that time, the ACLU and NAACP were challenging Detroit’s newly drawn legislative seats. Engler made the claim that he wanted to make sure everything was settled before he called the election.

Prior to Friday’s announcement, the average number of days it took the Governor to fill the 114 vacant legislative or congressional seats since the mid-1960s was 15.