Final Budget Passed: What It Means for Our Schools, Roads, and Families

Dear Neighbor,

Two weeks ago, the Michigan Legislature passed the final FY 2025-26 General and School Aid budgets. I voted yes on both bills. Today, I want to share some information about the bills and why I voted for them.

First and foremost, I believe the final budget is a huge improvement over the General and School Aid budgets originally proposed by House Republicans.

Their original General budget would have rolled up or slashed funding for the Michigan State Police, public food assistance, higher education, Medicaid, rural hospitals, and all kinds of programs for our most vulnerable citizens.

Thankfully, these items did not make it into the final General budget. And the same is the case with our School Aid budget: while the original House Republican proposal rolled up or arguably eliminated dedicated funding for free school meals, special education, and English as a Second Language (ESL) services, the final School Aid budget allocates funding for each of these to every school district.

I am also happy that the budget increases funding for road repairs by nearly $2 billion, and contains the largest year-over-year funding increase for public transit in state history, without taking from public education or Medicaid.

The budget also holds billions of dollars in Medicaid funding “in contingency” in case the state can obtain a waiver from the federal government allowing it to delay the implementation of federal Medicaid cuts. Between these measures, and many House Republican proposals not making it in, I believed it was in the best interest of my community to vote for both budget bills.

This budget was far from perfect, though, and I was disappointed to see funding programs that help some of Michigan’s most vulnerable residents cut or defunded altogether.

Chief among these is the Autism Navigator program, run by the Autism Alliance of Michigan, which assists the parents of people with autism in finding appropriate services for their children. This program has helped tens of thousands of families over its ten-year run, so I was outraged to learn that this budget defunds it. As Chair of the Michigan Legislative Disability Caucus, I will fight to have it returned to the budget in the supplemental and restored in future budget cycles.

I also want to express my disappointment in how long it took for a final agreement to be reached. While we now have our budget for the rest of the fiscal year, it was signed into law nearly a week after the Oct. 1 deadline in our state Constitution.

The only way we averted a state government shutdown was by passing a one-week budget bill that kept the government open at last fiscal year’s levels. This delay was especially harmful for Michigan’s public schools, whose fiscal years start on July 1 and had been operating without a concrete budget for months. I strongly believe that much of this could have been averted had House Republicans not waited until late August to introduce one half of their substitute budget bills.

The people of Michigan deserve better from their government, and I hope that both chambers of the legislature will commit to finalizing future budgets much earlier.

As always, please encourage your neighbors and friends in House District 56 — Troy, Clawson, Royal Oak, Birmingham, and Bloomfield Township — to sign up for these updates at RepMacDonell.com. Let us know if you have any thoughts on state-level issues or want to meet with me. Reach out to us by phone at (517) 373-2617 or by email at [email protected].

I can also be found on Facebook, Instagram, X and Bluesky. I would be happy to hear from you and work together to make our community a better place!

In Service,

Sharon MacDonell
State Representative
House District 56