Senate refuses to send budget bills for approval

The Michigan Legislature has approved all of Michigan’s 2009-10 fiscal year budget bills, but the state remains without a completed budget because the Senate refuses to send some bills to Gov. Jennifer Granholm for final approval.

Michigan’s budget is composed of 15 separate sections and all of them must pass in the House of Representatives and the Senate before Granholm can finalize them with her signature.

Both branches have passed all 15 bills, but the Republican-led Senate refuses to send six of them to Granholm, who has said she will veto portions of them in order to restore funds for the Michigan Promise Scholarship, Medicaid, revenue sharing and K-12 education, said Liz Boyd, a spokeswoman for the governor.

Boyd declined comment on which specific items the governor would veto.

“The Senate needs to send me the six budgets they are withholding,” Granholm said in a statement Monday. “We must protect (these priorities), but so far, the Legislature has failed to provide the necessary funding.”

After failing to balance the state’s $40 billion budget before the Oct. 1 deadline, lawmakers are working under a deadline extension and now must pass the budget by Oct. 31.

Granholm has accused the Senate of holding on to the remaining bills to force her into a last-minute decision: Either avoid a government shutdown by passing the bills with no changes, or veto parts of them and miss the Oct. 31 deadline.

While working to settle a $2.8 billion deficit, lawmakers passed a higher education budget that eliminated the Michigan Promise Scholarship and about $60 million in additional financial aid funding. Senate leaders fear Granholm’s plans to reinstate lost funding will result in tax increases.

“We can balance this budget with these cuts,” said Matt Marsden, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester.

Marsden said the Senate is not obligated to deliver the bills to the governor until the temporary budget expires.

“We want to understand what it is she plans to veto before we send the bills,” Marsden said. “We will deliver those bills in a time frame that is respectable to the constitution.”

Granholm warned the Senate last week that withholding budget bills could force another government shutdown.

The six bills still in Senate hands include budgets for higher education, human services, Medicaid and state police, and are the most controversial state budgets, said state Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, R-Lansing.

“It’s kind of an immature way of trying to assert power to the last possible minute,” Whitmer said. “It may force us into another shutdown, which I think is about the worst thing for the state of Michigan.”

But other lawmakers said the Senate’s strategy will force Granholm to consider the outcomes of possible vetos.

“By holding on to them, it really forces her to decide, does she really want to veto when there is nothing to fall back on?” said state Sen. Tom George, R-Kalamazoo.

Despite Granholm’s promises to reinstate funding that has been cut from the Michigan Promise Scholarship and other programs, legislators are working to locate other revenue sources to fund them.

Three tax increases passed in the House last week could fund a supplemental bill to restore $120 million to the Michigan Promise Scholarship and lessen cuts to revenue sharing funds.