Last week, Gov. Whitmer signed the 2025 state budget into law. You might remember that I voted against the budget, in part because it doesn’t include additional funding for local roads, and because it cuts funding for school safety by more than 90 percent.

What that means for our area is that Fowlerville Community Schools will lose $529,000 compared to the current budget. Howell Public Schools will lose $1.4M.

Meanwhile, the budget includes about $400 million of pork barrel spending, including more than $55 million worth of earmarks for Detroit.

Or, as the Detroit Free Press chose to say it, the budget includes “loads of new money for Detroit.”

Your tax dollars should be used for roads and protecting students, not pork barrel spending projects like free public Wi-Fi for the Greektown casino area.

That’s one of the many reasons why I voted NO.

Now that the budget is finished, don’t expect much more to happen in the Legislature anytime soon. Democrats who control the House only scheduled two session days at the end of July, and a handful of days in August. Rumor has it those days are going to be “no attendance/ no voting.” That’s code for “don’t bother to show up because nothing is going to happen.”

I’m going to use the time to keep meeting with constituents. I’ll also be working to build support for the veterans mental health package that recently passed the House; it still needs to get approved by the Senate so that it can go to the governor for her signature this fall.