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The governor has a road fix plan.

A new poll on the governor's race and some gun safety laws appear to be working around the OTR table Correspondents Kyle Melinn, Jordan Hermani, Jonathan Oosting and Zachary Gorchow.

Sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in par by Bellwether public relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thanks very much.

Welcome back to Studio C and boy, what a news week.

Let's start with an unusual vote in the Michigan Senate.

We had Democrats not supportin in the majority the tip thing.

What's going on?

Yeah.

So come next Friday, if we don't have any sort of legislative initiative, there will be a change to the state's minimum wage and sub minimum wage laws that the sub minimum wage is what tipped workers make.

Last nigh we saw a pretty interesting vote where a predominance of Republicans and a chunk of Democrats voted in favor of actually kind of finding a middle ground between this House proposal that's already passed.

And then the Senate proposal, which initially would have raised tipped wages to about 60% of minimum wage.

The middle ground that they found is 50%.

It's a little higher than what restaurants maybe would have wanted, but it is a little lower than what Democrats proposed.

But what's most interesting still is that sick leave portion, the paid sick leave is still on the table.

They said they're going to come back running at it next week.

So we'll we'll see what happens next.

Why is this an important story Kyle?

Well, it's an important story for a few reasons.

I mean, there's there's the functional impact of restaurants and how they're going to pay their workers.

And if they feel like if they have to gradually pay the minimum wage, their wait staff, then they may be in a position wher they're making their product too unaffordable for people to come and dine there.

And then it's important to the workers themselves because then they feel like their jobs are in jeopardy and who doesn't like going out to a restaurant?

But then there's the political aspect of this as well, because the Democrats took a lot of bad and hard votes.

If you are a somewhat moderate Democrat running in a competitive seat and this gives them an opportunity to go to the working class and go to the business community and say, hey, you know what?

We'll find common sense solutions to problems that you have and and we're here to help.

And so it's a signal to them that, hey, we're we're we're good people here.

What's interesting in the politics of this is a majority Democratic majority in the Senate.

There were 18 of the voting yesterday and ten of them voted against this and eight voted for this.

We don't see this happen very often anymore.

The Republicans provided the margin of victory, Republicans, this wouldn't have happened without Republican votes.

And, you know, the Senate Democratic leadership, Senator Brinks, you know, she made a tough call.

This was, I think, like, you know, a real big time decision she had to make, which was, you know, we'r going to put this on the board, even though a majority o my caucus is going to vote no, that doesn't happen that often anymore.

Usually when it does, there is a wink and a nod that the caucus sort of even those voting no says, you know what?

Do what you need to do.

Leader Brinks, We're okay with it.

We're not going to pitch a fit, but big democratic interests.

Unions were saying, don't vote for this.

They want to let this new wage law just take effect.

And it's not every day that Democrats go against some of their biggest allies, the unions.

Sure.

And you did see one fair wage, the group tha sort of spearheaded the petition drive six years ago to enac these changes in the first place came out swinging.

They said, you know, we're not going to forget the Democrats that voted for this.

And they're outraged and they feel like they just got sold out by Democrats who have championed workers rights as a as a campaign issue.

So is this a done deal when it gets to the House, at least on the tip issue, at least on the tip issue, It seems like I mean this was a compromise.

Exactly.

This was something that was floated by House Speaker Matt Hall earlie in the week, along with a sort of sliding plan to implement a paid sick leave.

It would exempt certain people from the law.

It would require certain hour for other types of businesses.

To me, I guess that' sort of where I'm thinking now, how are they going to square this?

Because that's the more immediate in my mind issue.

Paid sick leave goes into effect carte blanche on the 21st.

If nothing happens, at least with the minimum wage, there was always going to be a tiered phase in.

So it was not like it was going to jump to $15 an hour come Friday, but paid sick leave.

I mean, you really got to set up H.R.

stuff.

There are people alread trying to to crunch the numbers.

Do I have the people to work on this?

And if you're going to let it go into effect come Friday and then yank the rug out from under them, Excuse me.

That's that just sets a bad precedent that that is the much mor complicated one to figure out.

I mean, the minimum wage, it's a number pick a number in the middle.

They did that to their credit.

Move forward.

The sick leave law is a very complex piece.

And while the wage situation, basically it was the restaurant industry that was engaged.

Every employer and every worker in the state is affected by the sick leave law.

And like Jordan said, it takes effect in full on the 21st.

So this is a big deal.

Every employer is trying to figure ou how to make this work currently.

And there's a lot of Democrats out there, again, Democratic groups saying let this take effect, let worker be able to earn one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours they work.

And this is going to end.

These bills have now been formally tied together.

So one can't take effect without the other unless they break the tie sometime next week.

So there's still a lot of unknowns.

Yeah.

And the House and Senate so far have been, I think, fairly far apart on the paid sick leave.

I mean, both of, you know, Democrats, Senate Democrats have been saying they want changes.

House Republicans already approved changes.

But the big sticking point is, are you going to exempt small businesses?

The House plan would exempt any business with 50 or fewer employees, which is most companies in the state that collectively employ about 1.2 million workers.

The Senate plan didn't exempt anybody, but would have lowered the amount of hours that small businesses have to provide.

So, you know, yeah how many businesses they exempt.

Speaker Hall is proposing an exemption for businesses with ten or fewer employees.

Still, it doesn't seem lik that was immediately palatable to Senate Democrats and labor groups are going to cry if it if that happens because they can say with a straight face, you're taking away paid sick leave benefits for Michigan workers.

We have a set up piece on the governor's road plan.

But before we go to that, Kyle, what was missing from this plan, if anything?

I don't think anything was missing from it.

I do think, though, that the the paid sick leave thing is on the on the road to getting passed as well.

They're too far alon for this thing to fail now.

To having linked it to the minimum wage, I just think that they couldn't do it this week because there's too many.

They were doing something, as we already mentioned, that was novel.

The Democrats had not passed a bill like this before where they had to compromis with Republicans, where they had a minority of their members and that voting for it.

This thing is now too big to fail.

I would be surprised if this thing crumbled now.

They're just way too far down the road.

There's just too much invested in this.

They're not that far apart, honestly, on the numbers, all they've got to do now is substitute a house bill, a House bill, a Senate bill.

The Senate doesn't want to have to take another vote on this.

So they're not going to break the tie bar.

It's going to happen.

Whoa, Hold that tape right there.

Okay.

All right.

Governor Whitmer with her road plan.

What did she say and what didn't she say?

Smok a joint, help to fix the roads?

No, that is not the governor' new slogan to repair the roads, but it is the only revenue increase that the governor identifies in her $3 billion package on how to pay for the roads.

That is a tax on wholesale pot.

Here are the highlights.

Without the funding sources, for most of them a $1.6 billion contribution from business.

No specifics on how to raise that money.

500 million in undisclosed state budget cuts.

That 470 million tax on po and 1 billion of the new money would go for local roads.

The governor said nothing about boosting the corporate income tax by $1.7 billion despite reports that she would.

But she did talk about raising money from, quote, massive corporations, including Amazon and other entities that haul goods state wide.

The governor says it's time fo business to pay its fair share.

Meanwhile, over at the state Chamber of Commerce, the warning is business tax hike, like the corporate income tax, woul simply trickle down to who you.

There is no magic bags of money in the back room of these companies that pay the corporate income tax.

They have to figure out how to pass that tax on to their customers.

So that will be through higher prices.

The governor also wants to remove the 6% sales tax at the pump.

None of that money goes to the roads.

All of it goes to the schools.

But she does not explain how she would replace that $600 million for the schools.

Meanwhile, House Republicans have talked about boosting the gas tax by over $0.20 a gallon.

To do that, the governor made no reference to any tax hike for gas in her plan.

Representative Sarah Lightner reacts to what the governor did say.

We can sustain a road plan without increasing taxes.

There's a lot of holes in the budget.

Our in her road plan as far as where that money is actually coming from.

Like, you know, where are the cuts going to come from?

You know, where is this additional money going to be?

The lobbyist for 600 highwa construction firms in the state really doesn't care where the money comes from because minus $2 the warning i there may not be enough workers to actually fix the roads.

We are looking at some severe job losses.

If nothing is done over the next couple of years.

So we're open to all and any revenu that the state can come up with.

So two plans now in play, one from the R's, one from the governor.

And what comes out of the wash is anybody's guess.

So, Zach what did you make of this plan?

Well, you know, it's the governor's first new plan in five years.

She is for as much talk as she's had about I' the fix the damn roads Governor.

She hasn't put out a plan in a long, long time.

But it was loosey goosey, I guess, is what I would describe.

You know, it wasn't here's my ten point pla and I'm going to do 300 million from this and 500 million from that.

You know, she doesn't want it.

It was clear she didn't want to come out and say, I'm favoring X, Y, and Z tax increases.

But it's clear from the if you read the tea leaves some of the things they're intending to do.

Why didn't she want to disclose that?

Well, you know the governor got hit pretty hard about wanting to raise the gas tax $0.45.

You still remember that?

I do remember that.

It was a tax increase without saying the word tax.

I think it's I think the main takeaway I had from this is the fabled swap of removing the sales tax from fuel and raising what is now a $0.31 per gallon tax on gasoline by an equivalent amount so that people pay the same amount at the pump.

But all the taxes go to roads.

It's $1,000,000,000 that is that is going to if that doesn't happen, they should all go home for the rest of the term because they all clearly agree on it.

For the first time.

There's a billion there without doing anything else.

Give them credit.

They massaged this message perfectly for the headline that she wanted, which was governor proposes $3 billion road fix plan and everybody hom because, wow, that's wonderful.

The devil is in the details.

She didn't want in that headline.

Well, by the way, we're going to raise your gas taxes even though it's revenue neutral and people go, what?

Okay, She didn't want that.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, there's PR reasons fo framing it this way, of course.

And that's maddening.

As a reporter or journalist, they're trying to figure out all the details.

That said I think there's a strategy here.

The governor, as we saw late last year, didn't want to come out with a specific set of tax increase because she wants to negotiate.

Then say that.

Say look I've got a plan, but I don't want you to know it because we're negotiating.

You know what?

Then she's off the hook.

What was presented last week, this week, sorry, was not a plan.

It was a framework.

It was an outline, an outline for potentially a plan, but perhaps a starting point for more conversation.

Are we making too much of this?

I mean, I don't necessarily think so.

Everybody in the state of Michigan uses our roads.

It's in some places of the state absolutely treacherous to try and drive on them, to say nothing of how terrible the weather is right now.

I guess also of a concern, as noted in your piece, do we even have the folk to be able to fix these roads?

I mean, there' there's any number of questions that still arise around this.

And yeah, I mean, I think it's good to b concerned, but I think worrying and hand-wringing at this point might be slightly premature as we're still talking about.

This is a negotiation.

Mr. Melinn.

Yeah, this one's a little different than the paid sick leave in minimum wage because we have a critical mass of people who really want those changes to take place.

There is like this constant drumbeat, whereas the road thing is is a perennial argument that's been around since probably you started, you know, bac there were no roads back then.

Well, they were all dirt.

But I mean, since we started paving roads, I mean, this is this seems to be a continuous issue.

And so what get stuck with me is that in order to reach a compromise on this, does Matt Hall, the speaker, have Republicans who will vote for an increase in taxes?

I think the answer is yes.

Okay.

Well, if they do five or six, if five or six maybe, but then does he put something like that up on the board?

And if the answer is no, he doesn't have the votes, then does the governor and the Senate Democrats say, okay, well, we'll do a road plan that's $1,000,000,000, or as opposed to 3 billion, which is what they believe they need every year into perpetuity.

So can they settle on a smaller number?

I guess that's where I'm at.

And then if they then at that point, is it even worth it?

Should we even bother with it?

And does the whole thing fall apart?

I guess that's where that I think that's the key is like, do they get hung up on this magical $4 billion number?

What's to be clear i that is a road industry number.

Groups like the Citizens Research Council said you don't need that much.

There's as much a problem in the way the money is dispersed as the amount that's needed to the system.

So like I said, you could get $1,000,000,000 by doing this.

What change with the way the fuel tax is done?

It's not a tax increase overall.

And then it seems like everybody is on board with redirecting existing state government spending.

The governor's opening salvo is $500 million.

Matt Hall seems to think there's 2 to 2 and a half billion dollars that can be repurposed.

Hey, guess what?

There's a number somewhere in the middle there you can probably find.

So to me, you look at this, you say you could probably do a billion and a half to 2 billion without raising taxes.

If the governor is willing to accept that number.

And if to what you were discussing, Matt Hall can marshal enough members of his caucus who are willing to vote for a fuel tax increase, even though they're going to be bringing, you know, taking a sales tax off of it.

If I could just add on this to that.

Part of the issue also is I know, I kno we all said that the governor's plan was pretty vague.

Well, you go right down to it.

The speaker's plans a little vague too.

As far as where they're going to get the $3 billion in cuts.

And the governor's office has made the point, well, they're double counting some places, and you might be able to make that argument.

I mean, it's not lik they detailed $3 billion either.

So we've got kind of two funds for it that went to Democratic districts.

That's where they start.

Okay.

Yeah, sure.

So that gets you a what is that, 200, $300 million, maybe something like that?

I think the challenge the Democrats will have, because they're saying, well, Matt Hall is going to slash and burn the government with his plan.

And yeah, I suppose if you were to take $3 billion out of the general fund, yes, you would cause a lo of upending of state services.

But you know that it's the Democrats who have put a billion to 2 billion into these like pork projects or special earmarks.

It's more than in recent years.

And, you know, I'm sorry, those were you know, that's not ongoing state services.

So there are some level of available money.

What that is, I'm not sure, but it's probably close to a billion dollars.

It's a Hobson's choice or three, a water pool for my district, for my kids to swim during the summer or fix the roads.

This gets me more votes over here.

That's the problem.

It was about 600 million last year.

Certainly there was billion dollar earmarks in some prior years, but it was a little less last year anyways.

And of course, you know the governor proposed a budget that does include any of those earmarks and pretty much uses all the money in the state has anyway.

So.

Well, she's gone for $500 million in cuts.

She hasn't identified them in her own budget.

Didn't really leave room for that either.

So trying to play it both ways.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's look at a new poll from Bernie Porn that Mike Dugga must have just absolutely loved in a possible race between Democratic candidate Jocelyn Benson, former Republican candidate for Governor Dick DeVos and current Independent hopeful Mike Duggan.

The mayor of Detroit does not win the contest.

But six News pollster Bernie Porn reports when you look at the other data on behalf of Mr. Duggan, there are reasons wh the Democrats should be worried.

That's because Mr. Duggan is getting 23% of the Democratic vote, 21% of the Republican vote and 31% of the independent vote.

Plus he is leading in McComb and Wayne counties and is virtually tied with Ms.. Benson in Oakland County.

Pollster Porn says i these numbers hold off for Mr. Duggan, the Republicans could win the governorship as he would take votes awa from the Democratic candidate, Whomever that is.

That spells, I think, the prospects of him if he does not win, pushing the race to the Republican whoever that Republican may be.

Meanwhile, the presumed front runner in the Democratic primary, Secretary of State Jocely Benson, has her own challenges.

According to Mr. Porn, even though she has run successfully statewide, 29% of the voters still don't know who she is, and he thinks her numbers should be higher.

They should be much higher.

She's not doing as well among the Democrats as she should be doing and having a 31% tie.

I think she could be facing some of the same difficulties that secretary of state office holders have had in the past as for Dick DeVos he ran for governor in 2006 against Jennifer Granholm, but still, 31% of the voters don't remember who he is.

But the good news for candidates at this early read, this is still very earl in terms of the 2026 election.

And in an off year, they're probably not thinking all that much about who the next governor is going to be.

However, given the showing that Mr. Duggan has made in this survey, it may not be time for the Democrats to push the panic button, but your finger ought to be prepared to push the panic button in saying things continue in terms of the level of suppor that Mike Duggan is receiving.

Yeah.

So the uh, that was a good interview.

I enjoyed that.

I think, you know, for Mike Duggan, I think there's some real signs to be encouraged.

I mean, this is for, you know, yes, the governor and the the mayor of Detroit are the two most visible political jobs in the state.

So he's got a lot of visibility.

But, you know, to start at the starting gate, for him to be north of 20%, I think is, you know, he's got to be very encouraged by that because this is just purely a name I.D.

test.

So I think that is, you know, really good for him in terms of trying to you know, ascertain, you know, the 31-31 24 spli or whatever is a risky business.

It's meaningless, yes.

because this is a pretty Republican heavy sample, as you'd expect right now, because Republicans are absolutely euphoric.

They're all responding to polls.

Democrats are depressed.

No one wants to pick up the phone.

And this is not going to be the electorat we're going to have in November.

But I do think you look at these numbers and you think, boy, this is a pretty goo starting point for Mike Duggan.

There is a key part of the story that is missing.

The Democrats have yet to go to work against Mike Duggan.

That's true.

But you know what the other thing is, too is that Mike Duggan hasn't gone to work outside of metro Detroit really either.

I mean, as Bernie Porn said in that setup piece, he' doing really well in those areas where people know him.

What happens when super PACs that are funded by a lot of these big corporations start getting into metro Detroit or or are outside of metro Detroit.

And when he starts doing his home roundtables that he does, where he goes into people's homes and he gets like ten, 15 people and he starts doing those in Grand Rapids and Traverse City and Mount Pleasant or whereve he's going to do these things.

His he's got, it seems like a higher ceiling than 24.

And I think that's what's the encouraging thing here that that this is this feels like the floor.

Now as far as the Republicans I think Aric Nesbitt is probably the one who's most excited about this.

He's looking at Dick DeVos and 31%, he's like, holy cow, if Dick DeVis can get 31%, how about somebody who's maybe a little bit more likable and popular than somebody whose family's name has been drug through the mud with b Democrats for a decade or two.

So, yeah, I understand it's really early in this kind of a baseline, but I would I would agree Democrat got to be a little worried here.

I mean, I guess what I look at mostly is the where does Duggan's name ID go?

in the city he is pretty divisive and Democrats do rely heavily on state wide elections by winning Detroit.

There's a huge swath of Democratic votes there.

If we're looking at the fact that Duggan can potentially siphon awa what would be Democratic voters, probably from like the metro area or little more outsid of Detroit, if he can stuff in a way, Democratic votes.

But you have another Democrat who's doing well in the city of Detroit.

It just spells poorer, a poor future for the party.

In any scenario here, I forget which one of us said it here a second ago But I mean, this is this is a Republican's dream.

No offense to Bernie porn.

Appreciate his polling work, but I think there's basically almost nothing you can take away from a poll this far out with a Republican who's not even running as one of the names.

The main takeaway is that Mike Duggan is going to be able to raise money off this.

He's going to be able to go to his would be donors and say, I'm a viable candidate, open your checkbooks.

And, well he's making money off of that.

We watched his presentation over the Kellogg Center last week and he ran it in his clipboard or on the board behind him.

All the headlines of Democrats suing the other Republicans, all of this stuff that's going on in the legislature.

He's going to make a million off of that by because it really moves right into his message, which is Michigan in the legislature is dysfunctional.

I'm the guy to ride i on the white horse and solve it.

I'm the guy to ride i on the white horse and solve it.

I mean and Jonathan makes a great point because Mike Duggan is obviously he's a very good fundraiser.

But that's also when you're running for Detroit mayor, which, yes, is a big dollar race.

But when we get to the fall of 2026, there are going to be tens of millions of dollars spent by outside groups for whoever the Democratic nominee is and whoever the Republican nominee is.

And I don't care.

I don't believe there are ten of millions of dollars available to Mike Duggan in the same way they are for the Democratic and Republican nominees.

So he's going to have to raise everythin he can quickly now while he can.

And this is this is helpful.

There is no independen machine out there at this point.

I mean, Mike Bloomberg maybe has one, but that's about it.

You know, he as Zach mentioned, he's not going to get that.

He doesn't have a built in network of support groups that are going to come in pouring money.

But he does have a lot of donors in Detroit.

He does And they can create a superPAC.

I mean, I don't see the Duggan campaign per se, keeping up with Benson and or Nesbitt or whoever else gets into this race.

But I think the superPAC funding will be there.

And while he may not be able to control that legally, I think that was that is money that will ultimately get spent and he'll be able to remain competitive.

Mike Duggan would not have gotten into this race if he didn't feel like he was going to have some significant aerial support at some point in this race.

Were you do you think he looked at the initial polls and showed Miss Benson basically doing pretty well?

Then he concluded, you know what, there's no way I'm going to get this Democratic nomination.

It was going to be if he could have won it, but it would have emerge battered, bruised, for and broke for the general election.

That's a bad combination, which is not good.

So I don't know this.

He's denied that this was part of his calculation.

But you had to look at it and say like, yeah, could he beat Jocelyn Benson?

Yes.

Would he have been severely beaten up afterward?

I think he would have been.

And this allows, you know, his decision to run as an independent does allow him to just sort of move along more or less unscathe for some lengthy amount of time.

I think the good news for him is that he is systematically taking down the apprehensio that all of us around this table initially said, which is it's really, reall tough to win as an independent.

Is it a little less tough based on the rhetoric that we're hearing or not?

It's really tough.

Yeah, I kno it's going to be really tough, but this just says why this is this is possible, but it is tough.

Yeah, no, I agree.

I mean, it hasn't been done in the modern era.

So, you know, he is a unique candidate.

And this again, this is good for him to raise money.

But the the mechanics of winning as an independent are just very difficult.

And the funding apparatus is going to be the biggest thing here.

I mean, that and whether or not the Democratic votes are just going to cannibalize between themselves for Duggan and whoever the Democratic nominee ends up being.

On that happy note.

Yeah, there you go.

Thank you all for showing up on this Valentine's Day.

Everybody have a peaceful weekend and we'll see you on the other side.

Please come back.

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