Jan. 9, 2026 | This Week in Government: Hall Vows Lawsuit After Nessel Opines House GOP Move to Cancel Work Project Funds was Unconstitutional

The law allowing House Republicans to unilaterally disapprove $645 million in work project funds is unconstitutional, Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a formal opinion released Wednesday, prompting House Speaker Matt Hall to threaten litigation.

Hall, R-Richland Township, is vowing to challenge the opinion, which is binding on state agencies unless overturned by the courts. Senate and House Democrats, however, praised Nessel’s opinion, calling the previous cuts “heinous” and “reckless.”

Nessel’s office said they are confident in the grounds of the conclusion in the face of a possible lawsuit.

In an email to state agency budget heads sent shortly after the opinion’s release, State Budget Office Deputy Director Kyle Guerrant said the SBO agreed with the opinion issued by Nessel.

Guerrant said the work projects that were blocked by the House Appropriations Committee vote have been activated to allow departments to begin spending.

Following a request from Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, to review the disapprovals through the Management and Budget Act, Nessel said in her formal opinion that the mechanism violates the Separation of Powers and Bicameralism and Presentment requirements in the Michigan Constitution.

The opinion says the only way the Legislature could influence the appropriation of funds is through enacting new legislation.

She said the law “impermissibly” allows a legislative committee to control the executive’s implementation of already enacted laws, saying the law gives the disapproval statutory authorization but does not align with the Constitution.

Nessel’s opinion says the law extends legislative authority into the constitutional domain of the executive office erroneously.

Hall said Nessel’s decision was clearly political, and if this law is in part thrown out, “Democrats will build their slush funds without any oversight.”

“Incoherent legal theories like this are the reason we have the $5 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse in state government,” Hall said in a statement. “But she has no problem ignoring the law to push welfare for illegal aliens and radical DEI programs, and Michigan taxpayers are going to pay the price.”

House Republicans declined to answer questions on what the process to sue Nessel would look like.

Danny Wimmer, press secretary for Nessel, said Nessel is “confident in the legal analysis and conclusions reached in her opinion and believes the courts will agree.”

The opinion said the House Appropriations Committee vote amounted to a “committee veto,” and does not comply with action needing approval from both legislative chambers as well as the governor, except in narrow circumstances outlined in the Constitution, like when reductions in spending are required if revenues fall below estimates.

“By empowering a single legislative committee to negate the state budget director’s work-project designations, the statute reserves the very administrative control that the separation of powers forbids,” Nessel wrote in her opinion. “This disapproval mechanism effectively creates a ‘legislative veto’ – or, more accurately, a ‘legislative committee veto.’ This comprises an unconstitutional reservation of administrative control that interferes with the executive branch’s core function of executing the laws. Under Article 3, (section) 2, when an appropriation is enacted, the Legislature’s role ends, and the executive branch’s duty to faithfully execute the law begins.”

She said this mechanism is severable from the rest of the budget act. She called for the remaining portion of the statute, including State Budget Office authority to designate projects and reporting requirements, to remain intact and enforceable.

Nessel also released a video on her decision.

House Appropriations Committee Chair Rep. Ann Bollin, R-Brighton, claimed Nessel’s opinion was “wrong on the facts,” and felt “more like a political defense of Democrats’ pet projects than an objective legal analysis.”

She said the committee acted within its legal authority on a statute enacted in the 1980s allowing for disapproval, saying the authority was not new.

“What is new is Democrats’ frustration that the days of unchecked slush funds and blank checks are coming to an end,” Bollin said in a statement. “This opinion comes from an attorney general who has never voted on a budget, never analyzed a state budget, and now appears perfectly comfortable defending a system where hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were shuffled through vague work projects with little oversight and no accountability. That is not how responsible government works, and it is not what Michigan taxpayers expect.”

Rep. Matt Maddock, R-Milford, majority vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, called the opinion “fan fiction” that was built on the false premise “that controlling where unspent money goes is the same thing as running a program.”

Maddock claimed the cases used in the opinion are not applicable to the disapprovals, and should not be considered a legislative veto like the opinion says.

“Under Nessel’s trashy zine, the governor alone decides when taxpayer money stops being subject to legislative control,” Maddock said in a statement. “That is not separation of powers. It is a theft of appropriations and the process from the people’s elected representatives to the governor.”

The provision of the law has rarely been used and certainly not to the degree House Republicans utilized it in December.

Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, said the choice to “steal money” from Michiganders was now not only “heinous,” but also unconstitutional.

“There’s no surprise here – when they can’t win in the Capitol, they try to bend the rules or break the law, hoping no one notices,” Brinks said in a statement. “But this time, people noticed. Pregnant and new moms who were counting on financial support noticed. Folks trying to combat the opioid epidemic noticed. And advocates for child abuse victims and those who help feed Michigan’s seniors noticed. I hope the thousands of people who reached out in distress over the past month can breathe a little easier, knowing that this will not stand. This group of Republican legislators is unscrupulous, and everyone should demand better.”

The decision from Nessel was a “lifeline” for these programs that have been left in limbo for weeks, Anthony said, including Head Start programs, county land banks’ affordable housing projects and schools.

“This opinion makes one thing clear: when you strip away the political theater and headlines, House Republicans don’t have a leg to stand on,” Anthony said in a statement. “Their reckless decision to block funding to these essential programs was not only ruthless, it was also unconstitutional.”

House Minority Leader Ranjeev Puri, D-Canton Township, said in a statement that the Democrats have been fighting back since the weaponization of the rare provision, saying it created both “uncertainty and chaos” in the “unprecedented and completely unwarranted” move.

“Republicans were so desperate to try and claim a win after a year of failures — an overdue budget, an inability to pass meaningful legislation to lower costs for working Michiganders, and the cowardice of party members who can’t actually protect their communities from their showboating leader — they took a chainsaw to funding that had already been promised to communities and organizations across the state,” Puri said. “Even more ridiculous, they tried to call jeopardizing trust in state government ‘eliminating waste.’”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the remaining bills passed by the Legislature this year, bringing total public acts to 74.

Whitmer signed 36 bills on Tuesday from the light flurry of legislation the House and Senate were able to get across the finish line in the final weeks of session.

The House and Senate both adjourned sine die on Tuesday. They will return on Jan. 14, 2026, at noon.

The new laws include the prohibition on the use of bots to purchase event tickets and allow the Department of Attorney General to bring charges and provides schools the ability to opt-out of the work skills assessment previously known as WorkKeys.

Both the bot bills and the work assessment opt-out have been brought up for multiple sessions.

“Bot-scammers have long taken advantage of Michigan consumers by purchasing event tickets in bulk and funneling them into an inflated resale market, pricing far too many folks out of the joy and community built at live entertainment events,” Sen. Mary Cavanagh, D-Redford Township, said in a statement. “As Chair of the Senate Finance, Insurance, and Consumer Protection Committee, I’m always committed to ensuring Michigan consumers are treated with fairness and integrity in the marketplace. I’m proud to see my bipartisan legislation make it across the finish line, enabling more Michiganders to be able to experience the fun of a live event.”

SB 158 is PA 50 of 2025 and HB 4262, sponsored by Rep. Mike Harris, R-Waterford Township, is PA 49.

“Back when I was first elected to the Senate, I made a promise to do everything I could to get Michigan kids back into the classroom where they can learn and grow instead of sitting through hours of unnecessary standardized testing – and my bill to make the Work Skills test optional for eleventh grade students is an important step in the right direction,” said Sen. Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia. “Passed with unanimous, bipartisan support in the Senate, my legislation empowers Michigan students and parents with more flexibility in their educational journey while also ensuring that they’re well-informed about the merits of the Work Skills test.”

SB 349 is PA 57, and HB 4836, sponsored by Rep. Brad Paquette, R-Niles, is PA 56.

SB 96, SB 97, and SB 98, which are now PA 60-62, allow child care centers to install temporary locks on classroom and other facility doors for use in emergencies, like a school shooting.

“We came together in a bipartisan effort to better protect our children in a world that is increasingly dangerous,” Sen. Roger Hauck, R-Mount Pleasant, one of the bill sponsors, said. “This reform will allow Michigan child care centers to put to use the same door locking systems our schools can use to keep out people intent on doing harm. The new laws will also ensure staff members are trained on how to use the system to protect the children in their care.”

Other bills signed by the governor were:

• HB 4285 (PA 48), which will require a model elective firearm safety course to be provided for grades 6-12.
• SB 25 (PA 59), which will allow auto repair businesses to register one nearby auxiliary facility under the same license, update registration and inspection rules, and allow multi-year renewals for large facilities.
• SB 93 and HB 4122 (PA 42 and PA 51), which will raise the threshold for licensing cottage food operations and expand selling options.
• SB 269 (PA 64), which will speed up funding for improvements at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport and help DTW access federal funds by streamlining the state review process.
• SB 685, SB 686, SB 687, SB 688, SB 689, SB 690, and SB 699 (PA 68-74), which will provide clarity to the farmland preservation program, increase funding for the program and improve record keeping and administration.
• HB 4098 and HB 4099 (PA 53-54), which will allow the Tax Tribunal to conduct hearings and proceedings electronically.
• HB 4401 (PA 47), which will eliminate the sunset on the requirement that a person purchase an annual pheasant license to hunt pheasants in the state.
• HB 4493 (PA 43), which will exempt certain operators of concessions in state-owned buildings or on state-owned properties from licensure requirements under the Food Law.
• HB 4045 (PA 52), which will create the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, to let people quickly dismiss meritless lawsuits targeting free speech.
• SB 23 (PA 58), which will increase the number of parcels that can be divided from a single tract of land from 4 to 10.
• SB 136 (PA 63), which will update Michigan’s Radiation Control laws by aligning state standards with the federal Mammography Quality Standards Act, setting minimum training standards, updating fee structures, and more.
• SB 512 and SB 513 (PA 65-66), which will update the Liquor Control Code by allowing college-branded alcohol packaging and advertising, enabling brewers to sell nonalcoholic beer and share samples for research, and clarifying and updating brand and trademark rules.
• SB 595 (PA 67), which will allow the Michigan-Indiana State Line Commission to fund county remonumentation programs to survey and clarify the Michigan Indiana state border. The bill also extends the act to 2030.
• HB 4065 (PA 41), which will allow Macomb Community College and Wayne County Community College to receive permanent liquor licenses for event spaces.
• HB 4282 and HB 4595 (PA 39-40), which will allow the Liquor Control Commission to issue liquor licenses to an entity operating on land owned by Schoolcraft College.
• HB 4543 (PA 55), which will update the inflation adjustment measure used by the Home Heating Credit.
• HB 4666 (PA 46), which will remove references to outdated terms like “colored persons,” in the Insurance Code.
• HB 4726 (PA 45), which will extend an existing rule capping how much counties must pay toward Medicaid-funded nursing home care.
• HB 5078 (PA 44), which will designate a portion of M-22 as the “Company K Indian Veterans 1st Michigan Sharpshooters Civil War Memorial Highway” to honor the service and sacrifice of the Native American veterans who fought in the Civil War.

“I’ll work with anyone to lower costs for Michiganders, protect consumers, keep kids safe, and cut red tape,” Whitmer said in a statement. “We’ve made historic investments in school safety, and our tax cuts for working families and seniors are putting more money back in Michiganders’ pockets. These commonsense bills will build on the progress we’ve made, make a difference for Michiganders, and help more individuals, families, and small businesses ‘make it’ in Michigan. Let’s keep getting it done.”

Michigan politics has a way of producing the unexpected, and 2025 fulfilled that tradition.

The 103rd Legislature opened last January bringing in a new term of divided government.

House Republicans took control of the House and brought an end to Democratic trifecta. At the federal level, Republicans won back control of the U.S. Senate and the White House.

In the subsequent 12 months, lawmakers, advocates, and stakeholders had to learn how to navigate a brave new world. There were controversies, unexpected electoral decisions and much more.

Here are the top 10 stories of 2025 as determined by Gongwer News Service:

10. Dana Nessel vs. Everybody: Attorney General Dana Nessel was at the heart of so many stories this year. She filed or joined nearly 40 lawsuits against President Donald Trump with other Democratic attorneys general. She continued to pursue criminal charges involving alleged corruption in Lansing, winning guilty pleas from Anné and Rob Minard, onetime top aides to former House Speaker Lee Chatfield, with pledges from them to cooperate in her department’s case against Chatfield.

Nessel emerged as something of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party (to borrow a phrase from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and former Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone) in response to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s increasingly devout centrism. She had sharp criticism for Whitmer’s approach to Trump.

Nessel also stunned Lansing when her department executed a search warrant, colloquially known as a raid, on the Michigan Economic Development Corporation headquarters as part of a criminal inquiry into a company that received a $20 million earmark. Her department accused the MEDC of “stonewalling.”

She’s perhaps the most prominent elected official to oppose state efforts to ease the way for new hyperscale data centers.

Her department ruled that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson violated the Michigan Campaign Finance Act when she held a news conference about her gubernatorial campaign in the Richard H. Austin State Office Building in an embarrassing admonishment for a fellow Democrat.

Nessel experienced some setbacks, too. Her department suffered an embarrassing loss on the 2020 electors case, where a judge ruled there wasn’t even enough evidence to bring the Trump electors to trial (her department continues to weigh an appeal). House Republicans  on the Oversight Committee also recommended she be held in contempt of the Legislature, after she declined to testify before the panel, which is investigating a couple of topics, including whether she acted in areas with clear conflicts of interest.

9. The Matt Hall Show: Despite limited action in the Legislature this year, there were very few weeks that went by without Lansing knowing what was on the mind of House Speaker Matt Hall.

Hall, R-Richland Township, seized the news cycle at the end of last year, and after being elected by his House Republican colleagues as their caucus leader and therefore speaker, he was loathe to miss an opportunity to continue to dominate. That opportunity was further enhanced by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s absence from the Lansing scene and lack of public events in the state.

Most weeks, Hall held hour-long press conferences in the speaker’s library for Lansing media, which was streamed live by House Republicans.

In addition to taking questions from reporters, the speaker would take time during the press conferences to message on recent House activity, criticize Senate Democrats, discuss his trips to Washington D.C., with Whitmer, tout an award he won or showcase his new portrait in the library (it’s in color while the other speakers’ portraits are in black and white).

Hall often pointed out that he was the only member of the triad – the power dynamic consisting of Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, Whitmer, and himself – that was regularly available to take questions from the press.

For many months, this was true, with Senate Democrats remaining silent and often declining to comment on Hall’s assertions. Even House Democrats found themselves on uneven footing, seemingly unsure of how to combat Hall’s proliferant messaging.

Eventually, legislative Democrats had enough, with the break seeming to come around the time of the Mackinac Policy Conference, which featured an extremely intense quadrant panel.

During the panel, Hall told House Minority Leader Ranjeev Puri, D-Canton Township, he didn’t need him, which House Democrats largely took as a challenge for the remainder of the year. Brinks, through gritted teeth, spoke at that time of the importance of bicameral and bipartisan legislation and begged Hall to “get in the room” to negotiate with the Senate. She would end the year issuing a statement in response to Hall and House Republicans cutting work projects by telling the speaker there was “a special place in hell for someone willing to yank money away from moms and babies 15 days before Christmas.”

8. An especially long wait for a special election: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer came under withering criticism from Republicans, eventually joined by Democrats, for refusing to call a special election to fill the vacancy left after former Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, D-Bay City, resigned upon taking her seat in the U.S. House.

Finally on Aug. 29, Whitmer called for a special primary election in the 35th Senate District on Feb. 3, 2026, and a special general election on May 5, 2026. There is no other known Michigan legislative vacancy where a governor has taken so long to announce the special election schedule. By the time a new senator is sworn in sometime in mid-May 2026, the seat will have been vacant for more than 16 months, also an apparent record.

Whitmer, in keeping with her communications strategy for 2025, said next to nothing about her reasons for not quickly setting a special election schedule.

Republicans fumed at the obvious reason for the delay. The district is a competitive one, and with the Senate Democratic majority at a precarious 19-18 over Republicans, a potential Republican victory would put the Senate into a tie and end functional Democratic control.

The schedule Whitmer eventually announced was a boon for Democrats. Republicans had hoped to get either Rep. Timmy Beson of Bay City or Rep. Bill Schuette of Midland as their nominee. However, with the general election May 5 – about two weeks after the deadline to file for the full term running from 2027-30 – they would have to forgo reelection to their House seat without knowing if they had won the Senate race.

As a result, neither representative filed for the special election, depriving Republicans of what they anticipated to be a strong candidate-to-candidate advantage.

To what extent the criticism Whitmer took for leaving 270,000 people in the Tri-Cities region without a senator will damage the eventual Democratic nominee, only time will tell.

7. MEDC controversies/earmarks under fire: A series of drip-drip-drip controversies over the $20 million legislative earmark to Fay Beydoun’s Global Link exploded in 2025. There’s an ongoing criminal investigation that included the Department of Attorney General uncorking a surprising raid on the Michigan Economic Development Corporation offices after attorney general investigators deemed MEDC staff uncooperative.

Two signature projects on which Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and MEDC President and CEO Quentin Messer Jr. pinned so much hope – the Gotion plant near Big Rapids and the Sandisk chips plant near Flint – died.

Messer himself was the target of vociferous criticism, attorney general investigation and calls for his resignation.

The MEDC’s signature program, the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve Fund, succumbed to bipartisan loathing, leaving the state without a major economic attraction tool for the first time since the early 1990s.

The agency’s very existence post-Whitmer seems in doubt.

The Global Link controversy was one of several earmarks to earn enmity and prompt Whitmer and the Democratic-led Senate to agree to House Speaker Matt Hall’s proposal to require advance disclosure of earmarks well before the Legislature passes them.

6. The Trump-Whitmer rapprochement: It was one of the two biggest surprise stories of the year (keep reading to find the other). Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and President Donald Trump, arch-foes in the final year of the first Trump administration, suddenly working together and saying positive things about the other.

Recall that in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began, that Whitmer searingly criticized the president’s response, prompting Trump to say he had told then-Vice President Mike Pence not to call “the woman from Michigan.” The two did battle all through 2020 and in 2024, with Trump running to return to the White House, Whitmer quipped in a speech to the Democratic convention that Trump’s first word was probably “chauffeur.”

But once Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20, Whitmer set course on a new strategy to make nice with the president. Trump appointed her to the Council of Governors, and Whitmer was seated at the president’s table for a February dinner with a group of governors. Whitmer had a handful of asks: a new fighter mission at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, releasing CHIPS fund monies for a chips plant near Flint and later in the year, federal disaster assistance after Northern Michigan was hammered by an ice storm.

Days after the first White House meeting, Whitmer name checked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – now perhaps the most loathed member of the Trump cabinet among Democrats – in her State of the State speech. Whitmer met again with Trump at the White House in March.

Through these first two months, while other Democrats sharply criticized Trump’s actions – unilateral funding cuts, mass firings of federal workers, immigration raids, tariffs and more – Whitmer was largely quiet. She had tepid criticism of the president’s new tariffs but not much else. While other states with Democratic governors shouted from the mountaintops about federal funding problems, Whitmer’s administration said little.

Then in April, Whitmer delivered a speech in Washington about the economy and went to the White House to meet with Trump again, but this turned into the viral moment when Whitmer unexpectedly was walked into a live news conference in the Oval Office. She held a folder in front of her face to shield herself from the cameras, but the move backfired when a New York Times photo of her holding the folders rocketed around the globe. Politico reported that later in the year, Whitmer gave a signed copy of a newspaper with the photo to the White House.

Trump came to Michigan to announce a new fighter mission later in April with the first new F-15 EX arriving in 2028. But he did not act on the CHIPS plant request, and Sandisk dropped the project. Whitmer initially boasted that Trump had approved a major disaster declaration for Northern Michigan, but the Trump administration later declined to approve public assistance funding to assist with damaged utility repairs and individual assistance.

Whitmer’s approach has drawn considerable national interest, considering how it departs from other prominent national Democrats.

5. Budgetary burdens: Many observers of the 2025-26 budget process would feel comfortable calling it a fiasco.

During a November policy roundtable, Public Policy Associates CEO Rob Fowler succinctly summed up the process, which began in May and stretched until October.

“It wasn’t pretty,” he said.

The Democratic-controlled Senate passed its proposal in mid-May while the Republican-led House did not do so until late August.

From there, negotiations were slow to develop as education and local government groups urged action given their July 1 start to their respective fiscal years. Schools started their fiscal year and their academic year with next to no clarity on what the K-12 budget would look like, as the budget House Republicans introduced and passed all but eliminated categoricals.

Ultimately, the Legislature passed its budget in early October after passing a short-term spending measure in the days prior to the beginning of the 2025-26 fiscal year.

With that said, as part of budget negotiations, the Legislature was able to enact policy that seemed to be impossible divorced from the appropriations process.

The Legislature was able to deliver a nearly $2 billion roads plan and new laws that increase transparency for earmark projects in the budget.

Still, late in December, budget surprises still weren’t done when the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee unilaterally disapproved approximately $645 million in work project funding from the 2024-25 fiscal year budget. The cuts included a wide variety of projects, such as infrastructure and construction works, funding for Meals on Wheels programs and support for Rx Kids, which provides money to new mothers.

As the Legislature adjourned for the year, it was still unclear exactly how much was cut from which projects and how much of the money disapproved was already spent. Senate Democrats, unable to do anything to restore the funding, attempted to pass a supplemental, which was ignored by House Republicans. The Senate also asked Attorney General Dana Nessel for an opinion on whether the House’s actions were constitutional.

Despite the ongoing chaos, the 2026 Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference, which will springboard the process for the 2026-27 fiscal year, is set for Jan. 16.

4. Tipped Wage and ESTA: For a brief and shining moment in late February, it seemed like the Legislature was going to figure out how to work together.

After a month of negotiations back and forth between the Senate and the House, the Legislature passed a bipartisan compromise to preserve a lower tipped minimum wage than the regular minimum wage, but with an increase, and to amend the state’s paid sick time law just under the wire of the February 21 deadline.

The deadline was imposed by a Supreme Court decision last year about actions taken by the Legislature to adopt and amend ballot proposals on minimum wage and paid sick leave in 2018. The court ruled that the Republican-led Legislature circumvented the will of voters by adopting the proposals and changing them in the same term and ordered that the laws go into effect as written.

The business community raised concerns, saying that, as written, the laws would devastate small businesses, and some tipped wage workers said that doing away with a tipped minimum wage altogether would cut the size of their paychecks with customers reducing or ending tipping.

The unwillingness of Democrats to discuss legislation to address tipped minimum wage and earned sick time at the end of 2024 was the main reason House Republicans gave for walking out of the chamber during lame duck.

The ability to pull together and write better legislation was heralded at the time, with Rep. Bill Schuette, R-Midland, calling it the “first trial balloon of divided government” remarking that, although neither side got exactly what it wanted, the bills brought both sides together for “policy solutions that improve the bottom line.”

With the primary goals of the walk off achieved, the Legislature would not pass another bill to be signed into law until May, and no substantially new policies would clear both chambers until the budget passed in October.

Not all were happy about the compromise. Organized labor and the groups that pursued the petitions considered the moves by Senate Democrats and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer a betrayal.

3. Nine bills in limbo: The House and the Senate started on unfriendly terms this year, with House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, declining to present nine bills to the governor that were not presented prior to January 1.

The Senate responded shortly after by filing a lawsuit against the House.

Among the nine bills in question is one (House Bill 6058 of 2024) that would require governments to pay a greater share of their employees’ health insurance premiums.

The remaining legislation still held in the House includes three bills allowing Detroit history museums to seek a property tax millage from Wayne County voters (House Bill 4177 of 2023, House Bill 5817 of 2024 and House Bill 5818 of 2024); bills that would put corrections officers into the State Police pension system (House Bill 4665 of 2023, House Bill 4666 of 2023 and House Bill 4667 of 2023) and exempting public assistance, disability and worker’s compensation from garnishment to repay debts (House Bill 4900 of 2024 and House Bill 4901 of 2024).

All year, the case has played out in various courts through decisions and appeals.

Most recently, House Republicans filed an appeal to the Supreme Court earlier this month regarding the Court of Appeals decision that Hall must present the nine remaining bills from last term to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

2. Gary Peters decides to hang it up: No one thought U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, would opt against seeking a third term in 2026. There was less than zero energy on the Republican side about a candidate stepping forward. Peters would have unlimited resources as the former chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. And with a Republican in the White House, trying to unseat Peters would be even more difficult.

But Peters, a mainstay of Michigan politics for more than 30 years, decided he was ready to retire from the political scene. The move set off a big scramble in Michigan Democratic politics. 2018 gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed jumped into the race. U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Birmingham, jumped in too, opening up her solidly Democratic seat and triggering an avalanche of candidates for that district. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, who was considering a run for governor, instead decided to run for Senate.

Meanwhile, it offered Republican former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost the 2024 U.S. Senate race, a chance at redemption. He declared his candidacy, swept the key endorsements, most importantly President Donald Trump, and virtually cleared the field.

Peters’ decision sets up the first time in Michigan history that the state will have open seat races for governor and U.S. Senate in the same year, something very rare nationally as well, and makes Michigan ground zero for the midterms.

1. Legislative Inertia: In physics, the principle of inertia is understood, in part, as the natural tendency of things at rest to stay at rest.

Applying natural laws to the workings of government is dicey, but, to some extent, legislative inertia shaped the year.

The tone for the term was set during lame duck of 2024, when House Republicans walked out, depriving the chamber of a quorum, and House Democrats imploded, leaving dozens of bills dead on the floor. The new term, as noted earlier, started with nine bills from the previous Legislature never making it to the governor’s desk and a lawsuit that threw the new Legislature into gridlock.

Things were never really able to pick up from there.

For much of the year, only legislation with an imminent deadline cleared both chambers, as was the case with tipped wage and earned sick time legislation. Other bills passed simply to give lawmakers more time, as was the case with the legislation extending the deadline for filing financial disclosures. In the case of the budget, the Legislature blew through deadline after deadline, dragging the process out for months over the summer, delivering the plan for the new fiscal year three days after it started.

The year will end with only 74 public acts signed by the governor, a historic low. Depending on who is asked, this can be read as a good thing – Hall touted quality over quantity and proof that House Republicans were able to serve as a stumbling block for the cavalier Senate Democrats – or a disappointment. Brinks told Gongwer News Service the year was marked by disappointment and missed opportunity.

Hall said he was focused on the “big things” not the “small things.” But there are hundreds of bills each chamber has passed overwhelmingly collecting dust in the other chamber prompting most of the professional class in Lansing to tear out its collective hair.

Whatever the spin, it’s clear that the Legislature could not get things in motion and figure out how to effectively work together during divided government.

As anyone who has listened to the “Bill Nye the Science Guy” theme song is likely aware, inertia is a property of matter. In terms of having mass and taking up space, the Legislature met the definition. In terms of legislative action, the year was marked more by political theater than meaningful policy.

One of Gongwer News Service’s annual end-of-year stories is our Top 10 Laws of the Year, where we assess the usual hundreds of public acts signed into law and pick the 10 that reflect a combination of the broadest impact on the public, degree of difficulty for the Legislature and governor to enact and general focus the legislation had during its journey.

However, 2025 was something of a Seinfeldian year for the 103rd Legislature. There was a record low number of bills signed into law (74), many of which were items like highway renamings and property conveyances that don’t exactly scream foundational law.

With that in mind, Gongwer found seven new pieces of law (as always, acts tied together as part of a package are considered as one for these purposes) worthy of an end-of-year list.

7. Ticket bots: Long story short, the legislation designed to thwart ticket bots (HB 4262, SB 158) from buying up tickets to concerts and sporting events finally got signed into law after several failed attempts. Inspired by the Ticketmaster fiasco when bots gobbled presale tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, the legislation prohibits retailers from using bot technology.

Truth be told, this legislation probably doesn’t make a top 10 in a normal year considering the practice is already illegal under federal law, even if federal law enforcement seldom brings charges.

But an SEO-fueled news media gave this legislation massive coverage by putting Swift’s name in approximately 11,443,222 headlines. It was rare, we were there, we’ll remember this legislation all too well.

6. Decoupling: Sticking with the music theme, no, it’s not the “conscious uncoupling” Gwyneth Paltrow once dubbed her separation from Coldplay’s Chris Martin. Decoupling was the move in HB 4961to decouple state and federal business taxes as part of the 2025-26 fiscal year budget plan.

The change in federal law would have meant $677 million in less revenue to the state had state tax law remained aligned with federal law. That will eventually drop to $0, but business groups howled at the move to no avail. House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, whose relationship with business groups could be described as tense at best, brushed aside the concerns, and Democrats were happy to gain the revenue for the budget.

5. The HEAT is (partly) on: A key component of the Hall Ethics, Accountability, and Transparency plan – no, not the House Ethics, Accountability and Transparency plan, because Hall named it after himself – was signed into law (HB 4420, SB 596).

Hall used the lever of the budget process to make sure the first-ever advance disclosure of earmarks was put into law. Going forward, legislators who want earmarked funds in a budget bill must have the proposal displayed on the House or Senate website at least 45 days before the date the bill passes.

The items must be presented at a hearing of the Appropriations committee in the chamber where they were requested. Only legislative leaders can request items outside their district.

For-profit organizations would be barred from receiving earmarks. Nonprofits would be eligible only if they have operated in Michigan for three years, have had physical offices in the state for a year and have a board of directors.

Each state department will have to maintain a publicly available website with a host of information about the earmark.

Hall pushed for the legislation after controversies and criminal investigations surrounding past earmarks.

4. The budget: There’s a budget every year, and the particulars of this one are no more interesting than any other, but the completion of the 2025-26 fiscal year budget in HB 4706 and SB 166marked the first time in 16 years and only the third time ever that the Legislature and governor failed to complete a budget before the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year. The budget battle consumed most of the oxygen at the Capitol all year and helped prevent action on much else.
5. Minimum wage changes: A panic in the restaurant industry about bringing tipped workers up to the regular minimum wage under the 2018 initiated act prompted a bipartisan compromise.

SB 8 actually accelerated the increase in the regular minimum wage. It was supposed to go to $13.29 in 2026, $14.16 in 2027, and $14.97 in 2028 with inflationary increases afterward. The bill instead moves it to $13.73 in 2026 and $15 in 2027 with inflationary increases thereafter.

But under the initiated act, the tipped minimum wage would have gone from 38% of the minimum wage to 100% of the regular minimum in essentially 10% increments through 2030.

Instead, the bill will move tipped workers up to 50% of the minimum wage in 2031 with 2% increases each year until then.

The restaurant industry, and a slew of tipped workers fearful of losing tips as customers closed up their wallets due to higher menu prices, exhaled. But many on the left were outraged at the Democratic majority in the Senate and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for agreeing to a change that meant a less robust wage increase. Whitmer and the Senate Democrats who voted yes retorted that the tipped workers were still getting a substantial raise, from $3.93 per hour in 2024 to $4.74 an hour in 2025, $5.49 in 2026, $6.30 in 2027, and 50% of wherever the regular minimum wage stands in 2031 ($8.44 per hour if inflation is 3% per year).

The group that brought the initiated act in 2018 has made noise about a referendum in 2026.

2. Whitmer gets her road funding plan: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer finally landed the big fish she’s been seeking for almost seven years: an increase in regular funding for roads. A combination of replacing the 6% sales tax on fuel with a fuel tax increase, new wholesale tax on marijuana, and other changes is forecast to generate about $1.8 billion in new annual revenue for roads with a big chunk of that concentrated on local roads (SB 578, HB 4180, HB 4181, HB 4182, HB 4183, HB 4951).

The funding comes at a critical time with the bonds from Whitmer’s 2020 bond sale now exhausted.

1. Paid sick time: For the first time in Michigan, every worker has access to paid time off to use when they or their immediate family members are ill or undergoing medical treatment.

A 2018 initiated act was set to take effect in February, but a panic among the state’s employers at how to implement it led to the Legislature and Whitmer replacing the statute with something that removed some of the aspects most worrisome to employers (HB 4002). The biggest change was the removal of language allowing any employee to sue, with the presumption they were correct, that their employer had violated the law.

Other changes were made to ensure that employers could frontload sick time instead of employees accruing some hours for every pay period and clarifying notice provisions.

The new statute essentially assures 72 hours of paid sick time for all employees working for an organization of 11 or more and 40 hours for those working at those with up to 10 employees.

A group pushing to ban political contributions by corporations and companies that hold significant state and local government contracts believes it will have the necessary signatures it needs to get on the ballot by April.

Sean McBrearty, co-chair for Michiganders for Money Out of Politics, said the group has had more than 1,000 volunteers and supporters of their ballot measure turn in petitions with signatures.

McBrearty said the group hopes to have collected between 450,000 and 500,000 signatures to be able to turn in by late March or early April.

The group needs to collect at least 356,958 valid voter signatures to obtain access to the November 2026 ballot.

“Things are going really well overall,” McBrearty said. “We are right on track to reach our numbers.”

Under the proposal, major corporations would be banned from making political contributions as well as large companies that hold or are seeking government contracts. It would also prevent corporate donors from getting around campaign finance law by donating to 501(c)4 and 527 accounts.

It would also ban political contributions from companies that hold state and local government contracts exceeding $250,000. Proponents have said this figure was determined because those with contracts of that size or smaller are typically not major companies that might have the ability to obtain significant influence through money.

McBrearty said the group has been verifying signatures as they come in and that they have been able to verify about 85% of signatures submitted as being valid. He said great effort has been made to ensure signatures validity.

“This has been the most high-tech ballot initiative process I’ve ever been a part of,” McBrearty said.

Protect MI Free Speech opposes the measure. The group’s treasurer is Wendy Block, senior vice president of business advocacy for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.

“Citizen to Protect MI Free Speech continues to monitor the situation and will evaluate any necessary steps at the appropriate time,” Block said in a statement.

Debate over the proposal has included concerns over potential First Amendment affects as well as its constitutionality.

While the measure was being discussed by the state canvassers, opponents said the initiative would affect more individuals than proponents were letting on, and it would silence the voices of rank-and-file employees, among others tied to corporations or contractors.

McBrearty said he was confident the initiative could stand up to legal challenges. He said the language was chosen from programs in other states.

He said the group also expects the opposition to have plenty of money to push back against their initiative, with funding from groups including DTE Energy Company, Consumers Energy Company, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.

McBrearty said while they likely will be massively outspent if the measure appears on the ballot but that polls regarding the proposed measure have shown broad bipartisan support.

“We will not be outworked,” McBrearty said.