Off th record is back and so are you.

And thanks for tuning in.

Up next, the former Hous Republican speaker Jase Bolger, who is now the first CEO o the West Michigan Policy Forum.

Around the OTR table, Simon Schuster, Lauren Gibbons and Chad Livengood.

Here to discuss what's happening in the legislature.

So sitting 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 addition of off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to Studio C on this holiday weekend.

Nice to have everybody on board.

Jocelyn Benson apparently has problem with House Republicans.

What the heck is going on?

Yeah, the House Republicans are very upset with her use of an administrative building to announce her gubernatorial campaign.

This was something that she said she did.

She normally would have done it outside, but brought it inside because of the weather.

There was recently an audit that said she shouldn't have done that, probably, but there were no there were no actionable charges taken as far as we could tell from the report.

So the House Republicans are pretty upset about that and are looking to hold her in contempt.

Yeah.

Yes.

But she she's not supplyin in, quote, the right information to the committee, right?

Yeah.

So on top of that, on Thursday, the House voted to hold her in civil contempt, meaning that they could they're essentially looking to pursue a court action to try to compel the supply of election related materials that she says are very sensitive and that, if not without any guarantees of confidentiality, could har election security in the state.

And even further than that, on Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee held a essentially a public flogging of some State Department contractors and an external vendor over the new Michigan Transparency portal.

And Jocelyn Benson's got a lot of fires and different fronts right now and they're all going to likely show up and play out in her campaign for governor.

I mean, this i kind of the early round there.

They're just fighting really kind of easy shots to take at her.

And I mean, the bungling of the campaign finance and lobbying disclosure lawsuit or the website is, is pretty, pretty stunning.

I mean, let me just interject this.

The lawmakers ordered her to put together websites so they could supply financial data on where they're making their money.

That's that' one part of it.

The other part was it kind of a probably a needed upgrade of a 20, 25 year old system that worked really well but was a little archaic around around the edges.

So they tried it.

They gave this contractor a multimillion dollar project to upgrade this thing.

They flipped the switch and they didn't seem to really do a lot of beta testing or even like just basic searches.

Like every day we are finding this like loads of errors.

I can go o and find lobbyists in this town who are still very much lobbyists, but they were, according to the website they're not lobbyists anymore.

They've their registration has been canceled.

So the information is is at times increasingly now just suspect.

And then Benson's office didn't, for whatever reason, continue to keep running two systems they flipped the switch and it's a it's a real mess now and so they're getting a lot of fire from that.

And to Chad's point, that is really unfortunate because that used to be a pretty reliable source of information for campaign finance data.

It was, yeah, at times a little wonky.

You had to finesse it a little bit, but you could usually get to the information you needed and could pretty reliably count on it to be accurate to to the date it was uploaded.

And now you could just hardly tell.

It is really a much more difficult website to use.

As Simo has reported a number of times.

Yeah, I mean, fundamentally the point of this portal is to provide ethics and disclosure information to the public about the money their politicians are raising and who is getting taken ou for free dinners from lobbyists.

Right now you can't see which lobbyists are which clients excuse me, a lobbyist has.

You can't see how much money a candidate has raised in a fundraising period.

So sort of the fundamental qualities that we, the public and reporters rely on thi portal for are not accessible.

She has said basically my words, not hers.

We made a mistake.

Yes.

No, no, we we didn't do all the checks or something along that lines.

I mean, I think she is really her staff has taken a lot of browbeatings already in front of the House Oversight Committee, which has become kind of th the only thing that's actually sort of working around, you know, doing anything around this town right now is holding all these hearings, dragging Democratic officials in.

I mean, a lot of it is politics, but also a lot of i is very revealing about the way the government is operating right now.

And so, yeah, so Benson got all these different fights going on and she, you know, she you know, got dinged this week by the attorney general, Dana Nessel, for holding this this press gaggle inside her own office for her own campaign for governor.

I mean, when that first happened, everyone in town was like, you know what?

There's a lot of offices in town.

You could have taken this little gathering to.

Of course they want to say, well, it was because we're filing our paper and usually they do it outside.

And yes it was like 15 degrees that day.

So they brought everybody in.

And now their argument is w were trying to avoid frostbite.

And the attorney general said now you use the state resources for your campaign for governor.

In the case of a court case, she has basically said, bring it, I'll meet you in court, because some of this information, it has to do with the election.

It goes out t the clerks, is really sensitive.

She says course, no one knows it because nobody's read it.

We don't we don' this is not like a hypothetical.

There are manuals that they give to clerks that have like essentially the codes, th to how all the machinery works.

It's not something we actually really want in the circulation of the public.

And we have just a recen example where we had a state rep Daire Rendon go around in northern Michigan and collect voting machines, pick them u and take them downstate and to meet up with some Republica allies allied with Donald Trump to to essentially dissect the machines in hotel rooms in Oakland County.

And this is real.

This is still under under, under litigate around under prosecution right now.

Crimes were were committed, accordin to the attorney general's office and so like we have a what this recent example of of tampering with machines and so the idea the notion we're going to hand over the manuals to the machines kind of kind o what will will likely possibly add to some more election interference in 2026.

I think if you zoom back a bit to this, also speaks to something that's kind of fundamental about the evolution of the Republican Party right now, which is that you see now like sort of a bringing into the fold of elected official who are fundamentally skeptical about the administration of our elections.

And when you see that reflected in sort of like the legislature, the legislature looking to enact its powers, they're going to want to see the nitty gritty of the procedural actions that that happened in th administration of our elections.

If you make that information public, then, as Jocelyn Benson has noted, she argues that it'll make it easier for individuals to impersonate election officials because they effectively know how to carry out our elections down to a tee.

So if you're scoring this on who's been on offense the most since the first of the year, you have to give it to the R's, right?

I mean they've been all over the place.

And the best example of this happened this week.

I went bac and asked the speaker's office how many news conferences, weekly news conferences he had since January 14th.

The number is 17 or 18.

How many have the house excuse me, House Democratic leader, How many has he held in that same period of time?

Anybody?

One, one or two.

And it was this week.

And let's see what he had to say.

We Republican House Speake Matt Hall has staged nearly 20 weekly news conferences dating back to January 14th in which he blaste the Democrats for this and that.

So have the Democrats held weekly news conferences to respond to the attacks?

They have not.

Until today, the House Democratic leader took on the speake with a list of his allegations.

It's really, really bizarre to me.

The I guess, the desire from Matt Hall and the other side to continue to just find ways to bully, vulnerable kids.

It's just really weird to be doing things like that.

When unserious people are put into positions of power, it can have very dangerous consequences.

I don't understand wh Speaker Hall is not standing up for the people of Michigan.

The House Democrats accused the speaker of following an alleged broken down agenda coming from President Trump.

And those Democrats argue the Republican speaker ought to be rejecting the president's tariffs.

Tell Donald Trump that, hey, maybe a trade war isn't good for our state of Michigan.

The Democrats also argu the speaker is wrong for missing the July 1st budget deadline that could force some schools to lay off teachers during the summer.

Teachers are pink slipped.

Hundreds of teachers in individual districts who will be put on leave this summer.

Of course, Speaker Hall deflects the criticism, saying he is taking more time on the budget to find more waste in it in order to save Michigan taxpayers more money.

He also accuses Lansing Democratic Senator Sarah Anthony for writing a budget that is $1,000,000,000 out of whack.

With all this rhetoric going on, one could say that the budget piece is not at hand, but the rhetoric sure is.

So Simon is just too little too late or what?

I mean, this has been the strategy that I think House Speaker Matt Hal is employed from the beginning, which is sort of flooding the zone with rhetoric, sort of trying to frame the arguments, you know, because he controls one chamber of the legislature when Democrats still hav the Senate and the governorship.

And so really his ability to sort of steer policy in Lansing is relatively constrained.

But I think his gambit here is that if he essentially just talks his way, he can increases in negotiating position through public arguments.

Don't they teach you in poly sci that if your opponent says something bad about you, maybe you ought to say something?

Well, many of the members of the legislature aren' exactly graduates of poly sci.

And I mean, a lot of them had what were, you know, agriculture majors.

Well, I'll just say this.

They had real jobs and they did things in the private sector.

And so Chad It is not that deep.

Winnie Brinks is not a person who goes out and floods the zone.

She doesn't even really talk to the media very much at all in general.

She just it's just not her.

It's not her shtick.

And then find somebody else to do it.

They are trying to figure that out right now.

You can very much tell that is they realize that after after months of getting beaten down and just the the weekly, the weekly, you know, bombs coming from the speaker's library, they have to finally respond because their governor is not doing it either.

I mean, there's an odd thing about that, that she's just showing up in the White House with the speaker.

And and so they have a lot of problems, the Senate Democrats trying to figure out what their messaging is.

And Matt Hall is he made it very clear he is just going to run the clock down.

And if they're not going to do a deal that he wants to do on roads or other subjects, he's he has already made it clea he's just going to wait them out unti and try to get them voted out.

It's just so interesting t compare this legislative session to the last legislative session and see like where legislative Democrats stand now, like how far they've fallen almost from a holding the entire majority.

And to Chad's point, it is really interesting to see Governor Whitmer working with and making public appearances with Republicans who she views as someon who's, like active negotiator.

You're not seeing too much of an alliance with her Democratic colleagues at least publicly at this point.

You know, certainly I'm sure they agree on certain issues.

But in terms of like economic development, some of these big ticket items, she's talking with Speaker Hall, Nobody nobody wants to confirm this, but this is just a guess from 30,000 feet.

I'm going to guess tha the governor has talked to Mr. Hall and Ms. Brinks and basically said, boys and girls, we have a job here to do.

We got to get a budget done.

Let's get our act together.

Let's stop this acrimony and work on the project.

This is this is this is getting ugly.

Well, it's only May, too.

I mean, listen.

Yes.

And still, we still have a long ways.

We really have a summer of malaise ahead of us here.

And that's I mean, that's very much apparent when the House hasn't passed any kind of a budget yet.

And in that thing that they did back in in March doesn' really count in the emergency.

If we shut it down, if we shut it down, here's here's the money that was authorized, that that doesn't really count as a budget.

So s they're clearly waiting it out.

And then you got all the uncertainty in DC.

You got the one big beautiful bill that has one big, beautiful Medicaid cut coming with it as well.

And that's going to create one big headache at the state capitol.

All right.

Speaking of speakers, we have with us now, joining us from West Michigan is the new CEO of the forum over there, Jase Bolger, representative and speaker.

And welcome back to Off the Record.

Nice to see you again, sir.

Well, good to see you.

Let's let's start with a softball, okay.

Do you think SOAR and other incentives to bring businesses into Michigan, which this governor does support, is a form of corporate welfare?

Yes, I do.

And so it's not working is worse.

You've got the best incentives are the icing on the cake, but you got to build a much better cake before people are interested.

And so you look at the actions from 23, 24 and they went the wrong direction.

And unfortunately, Michigan workers are paying the price as we see natio leading growth and unemployment.

We see just this week an announcement of 400 jobs leaving for Georgia.

So those jobs aren't going away.

They're just leaving Michigan.

And we see education failing.

And so we've got to turn those things around.

But your speaker has said basically we shouldn't be doing this at all.

To which the governor retorts that's unilateral disarmament.

Well, you know, there was a time when we didn't have them and jobs were growing in Michigan.

You recall back in 2011 the tax reform of 2011 and eliminated them completely.

We honored what we had out there.

However, there weren't new incentives created and but there were a lot of new jobs created.

And so I would argue that they shouldn't be doing them.

I would argue that they need to be sure that they're focused on the fundamentals and not those because those fail repeatedly to live up to their promise.

Bridge means a bridge has done a lot of good reporting on how those have not delivered what they were promised.

But taxpayers are still stuck with the bill.

Jase the SOAR fund was set up after in late 2020 when Ford announced they were going to invest $11 billion in two different factories, complexes for EVs and batteries in Kentucky and and western Tennessee.

And it had bipartisan support.

Republicans rushed to to to pass this cash for jobs is what I've called it, because that's what it is.

Because because the southern states have been doin cash for jobs for for decades.

And that's why that's one of the reasons why they have all the foreign automaker plants down there.

What what, what wha have we done wrong here, Then?

Why why are we not competing for this?

Is this is was the, you know, match the self strategy.

I would argue that they do it a lot less and they have a lot better base.

They have a lot better business climate.

So as you look over the las 20 years, Mackinac did a study showed that there's over $20 billion that we've spent in these incentives between mega and good jobs and solar yet.

And those overwhelmingly have been, as you just pointed out, supposedly to help the autos.

And yet we have over 100,000 fewer auto jobs.

Not only did it not create jobs, not only did it not retain jobs, but we still paid it off and lost jobs.

So as you look at those southern states, they've got things like no income tax, they've got things like right to work.

They've got a much better unemployment system, worker's comp system, legal structure.

There are a lot of underlying basis things that we can do, like cutting red tape.

Now, a lot of those states have one stop shops where if you want to operate in the state, you want to create jobs in the state, you go to one place and they'll help you through any licenses that you need, any permits that you need, and they'll delivered on tim and transparency transparently.

Those are the kinds of things that we can do.

Those are the kinds of things we need to do in Senate if they happen.

They're the last thing, not the first thing.

So, you know, during the Snyder administration, when you were in the legislature, we obviously had some significant regulatory changes, including the the passing of right to work.

But I don't I mean, are you saying that there was a significant momentum shift in the auto investment that we saw in the state?

Because I'm not sur if that necessarily plays out.

Oh, there was a significant shift in job creation in the state.

And what we did then and what I think we need to do going forward is embrace job creation and not try to engineer from Lansing exactly what kind of jobs we want.

There was manufacturing growth, even if it wasn't in autos in Michigan during that time.

And so we saw unemployment fall, we saw jobs go up, we saw manufacturing added.

So all of those things were happening because we had much better policy.

We need to get back to that, and especiall considering some of the changes at the national leve when it comes to manufacturing tariffs, just the overall business climate, what can Michigan do to position itself to, you know, capture any jobs?

And also deal wit any potential economic fallout?

As you look today, we're following the leads of California, New York, Illinois, and their outbound states, along with Michigan, top ten worst outbound states.

But if you look at inbound states, the states that are growing, it's Tennessee, it's South Carolina, it's Florida.

And before you tell m about the weather, it's Idaho.

So we need to look at th policies that they're deploying to attract the jobs that are coming that should be coming to Michigan, that are instead going there.

And so, again, you can talk right to work.

You can talk that permitting and licensing.

You can talk about energy and the cost of energy.

You can talk about right to work.

The list is long, but unfortunately, in each one of those, we'r headed in the wrong direction.

We need to look at education a well.

We need to look at that.

Next generation of Michigan is failing miserably.

They look at those other states.

They've got a lot more accountability.

They've got better support for third grade reading.

They've got that accountability is offering transparency to parents so they know how their kid's school performs and they're providing more options so that parents and kids can get access to that uniqu option that works for their kid.

And in all of those fronts, Michigan has taken a turn.

Speaker You are also part of a new organization that the DeVos family i funding that basically becomes an ancillary part of the state Republican Party.

Why is it necessary that we have this new group to help?

Why don't you just combined forces with Mr. Runestad and work with him?

You know where you're talking about the West Michigan Policy Forum?

No, no, I'm you know, I'm talking about the DeVos group that was just announced this past week that they're going to b like a second Republican Party.

There was no such announcement.

There were some reporting of rumors.

Ahh.

And I'm not here to make any announcement.

Well, well, is it true?

I'm not here to make any announcement.

I'm happy to talk to you about policy and I'm happy to talk to you about the Western Michigan Policy Forum, where we are fortunate to have Dick DeVos and Doug DeVos on our board, Doug DeVos on our executive committee, but dedicated business people in Michigan who want to see Michigan better so that it's better for Michigan workers.

They want to empower individuals.

That's what, Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, you've been an advocate of transparency.

Why can't you speak about this other group?

Was the story incorrect?

Again, I'm not her to make any announcement there.

I'm not asking you to make an announcement, sir.

I'm asking you to confirm whether the story was right.

I understand.

I understand, bu I'm not going to do that today.

I suspect you'll have that knowledge in not too far distant future.

But that's still at work.

That is still being further developed.

Maybe I can tr a different angle, which is that I think when you've seen from Democratic politics over the last decade or so a real centralization of resources, Democrats have the one campaign where they sort of tr to have a centralized message, an agenda, and have resources flow out through the party should tha we haven't seen the same thing from the Michigan Republican Party.

Should we have them operate in the same way?

And if not, why?

I think the parties to play an important role.

They have a legal role to play, but elections matter.

And so I think you see people engaging in elections because a policy has consequences.

And so I think that there's a very strong reason, an I think that Michigan is going to be the epicenter here in 2026 of national politics.

Jase as your new role as CEO of West Michigan Policy Forum.

The group's been around for many years, but you've never had like a a structure, much of a staff.

And it seems that now you'r staffing this up a little bit.

Are you trying to build a competing organization with the business leaders from Michigan, Detroit Regional Chamber to be like the policy thought leaders in in economic policy Well you're right about their structure?

I had been a policy adviser and they've asked me to lead the organization to broade support, to elevate their voice.

The thing we're competing with is other states.

We're competing for better opportunities for Michigan workers.

And that's what we're focused on.

We're not focused on other groups.

We're going to work with other groups instead, we want to focus on the right policies.

And what was done in 23 or 24 is taking us in the wrong direction.

Speaker Hall is leading firmly.

I when I saw that interview I couldn't help but feel that, you know, success breeds envy and in many cases, envy breeds anger.

Speaker Hall is charging full speed ahead.

And so we need to make sure that the state is charging full speed ahead with the right policies that will attract more opportunities for Michigan workers.

So go are going off of that a little bit.

What do you make of Speaker Hall's performance so far and what, if anything, do you think he could do differently at this juncture?

Man, he is dominating.

He is dominating since he won the majority.

And so that does date back to the lame duck session where he wasn't yet speaker But he was going to be the next speake and he dominated that session, I think saved us from a lot of bad policies, saved us from the continued rush of special interest legislation that has hurt Michigan, that what did get done.

But there was more at threat that could have been done.

And then you come into this session and the earned sick leave reform, minimum wage reform wouldn't have happened without him.

I do also smile at the angst over a July one deadline.

It just does not seem very long ago that Tim Skubick was telling me there was no way we could get the budget done by July 1st, and now everybody expects it to be done by July 1st.

Are you sure it was that Tim Skubick.

Remember you said There is no way we could reform our tax code before doing the budget.

And then there was no way we could do both in this budget by July 1st.

Mr. Speaker, let me take you back to the Snyder administration, As I recall, and correct me, please, if I'm wrong, he came into office saying, let's garden for jobs, which was basically let's just spend money in Michigan and not compete.

And by the time he left office, he was competing with all the other states.

So was he wrong?

I think he was.

I think he was wrong to go on the latter front.

He was wrong to go.

He had it right.

And gardening and gardening is making the soil better.

Gardening is making the ground better.

You can't take Roundup to the ground and then think you're going to transplant things from other states there.

So he had the first part, right?

I think the second part, he got badgered into doing it and I don't think it's what's necessary.

One of the things that he uses your word got badgered into was the transformational brownfields incentives that Dan Gilbert wanted to build a new skyscraper in downtown Detroit.

And now a bunch of West Michigan businessmen are also using it in Grand Rapids for a bunch of major projects down there.

Is that a bad incentive to basically get it, get a tax capture on the sale tax and income tax generated by a redevelopment of of a of an underutilized or obsolete property?

I would say two things.

Number one, it is not inconsistent to push against incentives.

And yet when they become available to to avail yourself of them just like your own tax return, if it's if the credit is available, you take it.

The second is transformational.

Brownfield is very different than SOAR or mega or good jobs for Michigan.

It is not writing checks out to big companies.

It is instea only creating capturing from new from what happens later.

So there is no advance.

So that is on the back end and that is otherwise opportunity cost.

In those cases where true transformational brownfield, there's nothing happenin on that property, Mr. Speaker.

Okay, I know the government wouldn't get any revenue.

We have to put a ribbon on this.

But before we go on a scale of 1 to 10, ten being Boffo, how is the governor doing?

Ooh a four.

Yeah, I'll give her credit for going to the White House.

I will absolutely applaud her statement in the state of the state where she calle for transparency and permitting so that we can track permitting, just like we can our pizza.

Yet I wish it had happened.

It hasn't happened yet.

Let's work together to make that happen.

Mr. Speaker, always great to see you.

Thanks for doing the program, sir.

Good to see you guys.

All right.

Thanks to Chad, Lauren, Simon.

See you next week.

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