The following column was published by the Lapeer County Press on Saturday, July 12

I’m honored to serve on the House Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for deliberating on the annual state budget and supplemental budget measures. This is my third term serving on the committee, and each year presents new challenges and different perspectives.

I wanted to provide some background on where we stand with this year’s budget amidst a widely publicized July deadline and what I’m fighting for to make communities in Lapeer, Genesee and Tuscola counties an even better place to live, work and raise their family.

The truth is our budget process has been in disarray for some time due to a variety of factors. In 1975, Governor William Milliken and the state Legislature moved the state’s fiscal year from a July 1 start date each year to the Oct. 1 date we have today. While that may have helped address certain fiscal challenges and budget shortfalls the state was going through at the time, it made it more difficult for public entities like school districts who rely on a finalized state budget to set their own budgets for things like transportation, after-school programs, new textbooks, building improvements and more for their traditional school year. It’s tough to know what and where to spend when you don’t know how much you’re going to have to spend.

The practice of combining several budgets into just one or two bills that are sent to the governor has also been an issue. When this happens, legislators have to read hundreds of pages of details and dollar figures often in a short amount of time before voting, making it extremely difficult to raise concerns or take individualized spending plans to the people they represent to get input on if it’s the best way forward.

The House and Senate even used to split up budget bills to work on before coming back and voting on what each chamber came up with. This would often lead to disjointed budgets that were difficult to balance, and both chambers now have their own plans for every individual budget. Sometimes these plans move on different tracks but have a lot of common ground. Other times they clash considerably.

This has led us to this budget cycle. I recently voted for a House K-12 School Aid budget plan for the upcoming fiscal year that includes a 20% foundation allowance increase to establish the highest level of per-pupil funding in our state’s history. The plan also lets local communities decide how these dollars get spent so they can devote them to programs that work for local students and parents, instead of rigid categorical spending mandated by the state.

Unfortunately, the Senate has stuck to a plan that distributes less money per pupil and is filled with categorical spending that would underutilize dollars and ignore specific local needs. There will ultimately need to be a compromise that goes to the governor, but the Senate recently chose to leave Lansing instead of working in good faith and hammering out common ground with the House. As the popular phrase goes: they took their ball and went home.

We are also continuing to go through our state budget plan in the House line by line to provide the best value possible for tax dollars, address priorities like local roads and schools that an overwhelming majority of people across our state care about, and right-size government spending after years of recklessness and unsustainable growth. Government spending has grown by 43% just since the governor took office!

I am hopeful in the coming weeks collaboration and common sense can prevail in our state budget process. Falling short of that is something our state cannot afford.