LANSING, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – Governor Gretchen Whitmer, state superintendent Michael Rice, and state board of education president Pamela Pugh are pushing for lawmakers to get a school aid budget passed.
Whitmer wants the overall budget on her desk by September 15 with the next fiscal year starting on October 1, and says “we’re down to a matter of weeks.”
Rice says school leaders are “in a tricky situation” with big differences between what House Republicans and Senate Democrats want to spend on education.
Pugh says House Speaker Matt Hall of Richland and Representative Tim Kelly “abandoned their constitutional and statutory duty” by not getting the budget passed by July 1.
State Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, a Grand Rapids Democrat, appears to be in agreement with legislative Republicans on cutting the pay of lawmakers if they miss the statutory deadline for passing a budget by July 1.
Brinks said yesterday she is “more than happy” to look at that possibility and put some financial penalties into the deadline that was approved in 2019.
Senator Joseph Bellino, a Monroe Republican, said on the MIRS Monday Podcast this week that he would run the risk of giving up paychecks to get the budget done on time.
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