(upbeat music) - Michigan lawmakers have cleared the K-12 budget before leaving the State Capitol for summer recess.

However, they failed to finalize the state budget before heading out of town.

What are the sticking points?

For that and all things, Michigan politics, we talk with the co-hosts of the MichMash Podcast on West Michigan Week.

(upbeat music) Thank you for joining us on West Michigan Week, the podcast MichMash is featured each week throughout the Michigan Public Radio Network.

You can hear it during WGVU FM's Midday West Michigan, or wherever podcasts are available.

It focuses on Michigan political issues that typically fly under the radar and each week, WDET Jake Neher, and Slate Networks, Cheyna Roth, unjumble those issues affecting you.

Joining us is Cheyna Roth and Jake Neher.

How are you?

- Good, how are you?

- Doing great.

- I'm probably one of your biggest fans.

I don't know if you know that.

(giggling) - Oh wow.

- You're the one, we've been so excited to meet you.

- I love it for so many reasons.

I think because you do boil it down and you make it so conversational.

And the two of you are so conversational and so very real about what your topic is dealing with.

I think a lot of that has to do with your time in the State Capitol, following the political issues, but then also, how do you make it digestible for the masses?

I think, is that the trick?

Is that what you're going for here?

- I think that we recognize from working both, we both had the same job.

She had actually followed me working in the legislature and covering on a daily basis.

And so we knew how much coverage was coming out about, like the big stories of the day that existed, and we knew that it was all out there.

And I think at some point we thought to ourselves, what can we do that's a little different, and something that might be more, as you said, digestible, a little more fun, sometimes not all the time, but a little more fun sometimes.

And that would focus on issues that really affect people, and talk about specifically how they affect people as opposed to here's what's happening, here's the politics of it.

And we really wanted to, originally the working title for MichMash was, Who Cares, which was sort of, we decided we couldn't really call it that because it might be a self fulfilling prophecy, but that was the idea, it's like, why should you care?

And here's why.

- Yeah, I mean, politics is something that honestly I did not follow or care about until maybe just before I got my job at MPRN, like I wanted to be in radio, and the politics job was open, and I was like, "Hey, I better figure this out."

And the longer I was in it, the I realized that it is something that you people realize how much it affects their day-to-day lives.

Like all of the nitty-gritty things that are going on at the State Capitol or in different committees and things like that.

And it was something where I was like, "What is something that I would like to know, me like a year ago?

What is something that I would listen to so that I can understand politics and make it feel like this is something I should be caring about?"

- Now we're gonna go in a whole nother direction.

And I started out as a consumer investigator, so how I ended up following politics, who knows, but do you get a sense that, you talk about, you wanna care about something, but do you feel right now politics are just really overwhelming, and maybe people care a little too much about politics?

- Yeah.

I mean, I think that, and that's something that we kind of struggle with right now, is like a lot of stuff isn't necessarily, like the things that you have to cover are not necessarily things that are under the radar.

A lot of what we've been doing lately is mostly unpacking and digging into the nuances of the big things that are going on and that are affecting people.

And I think it's very easy to feel overwhelmed by the news right now, to feel like there's too much going on and there's too much to follow, and like everybody's insane, and I wanna stay away from it.

And I think that's where Jake and I, because he's become basically my brother, our ability to just have a conversation about stuff I think helps make it accessible to people, and make it digestible to people.

- I'm not sure I would say that people care too much.

Maybe they care too much about the politics and not the policy, which I think is a sweet spot for us.

That we try to, and sometimes we do get into politics, so don't get us wrong, but we wanna always bring that back to, there's a lot of noise around a lot of issues, and there's a lot of things that are out there that people talk so much about that don't affect you directly so much, that are mostly just about fundraising and trying to get people open up their pocket books, really.

So, let's talk about the things that if there is politics involved, why it's important.

But mostly, I think that we found a sweet spot during the pandemic, especially figuring out, "Okay, these are the things that actually could happen and that would change people's lives."

- It's interesting you mentioned the politics and policies.

I'm keeping track of, I guess some of the new political leaders out there and how much of them are caught up in the noise, but I'm really following the ones who are policy driven, the ones who are trying to move policy and advance policy to, that really impact and influences our lives.

Are you kind of following the same personalities at the State Capitol?

- I think that, yeah, absolutely.

And the thing is that we're in a weird time in Michigan politics right now where we have the split government situation.

So, when you have a Democrat in the governor's office and you have a Republican led legislature, and then Democrats serving as attorney general and secretary of state, it seems like there's less of those opportunities for people who wanna go into politics and actually get things passed and do things.

So, finding those people that do still find a way to do that is always interesting to me, obviously in executive positions, you have a lot more opportunity to do that through executive orders and changes and agency policy and things like that.

But I think that if you do, if you go into politics and you're like, "Yeah, I wanna actually make a difference."

You have to find unique routes to that, you have to make unique relationships.

Otherwise, I mean, it's really easy to just go to Lansing and be a bomb thrower and get a lot of attention for that.

- And I think that's one of the reasons why Jake and I always try to, not necessarily, we wanna make sure that we're also talking about things that maybe aren't going to happen.

So, we've brought up different bills and things like that, and talk to them and brought in people to talk about, like the tampon tax.

Because of the Republican legislature, they haven't been on board with getting rid of that tax.

It's probably not gonna happen, but it's something that people should be aware, that there are certain people that are worried about this, that are concerned about this thing or something else that's probably not gonna happen, but hey, these are the people that are on that side.

So, if you're interested in that and you're passionate about that, this is something to know about and maybe you want to become active in when the people who are against it are up for election.

And that's something that Jake and I are always trying to do, is we're constantly telling people, you need to vote, you need to get involved.

It's okay to go to a committee hearing, I mean, now it is, I guess sort of.

(giggling) It was as a little difficult, but it's good to participate in your government, and it's more accessible than people think it is.

Like, I didn't know before I became a reporter that anybody can go to a committee hearing and make a statement to lawmakers.

Like you can do those things.

And so, we're constantly trying to bring people in and explain to them the policies, but also to be very pro, get out there, and be an active participant.

- Well, let's bring people into the MichMash stratosphere that we get to hear every week.

This is your most recent podcast.

It's 'Historic' K-12 Schools Budget Clears Legislature Right At The Buzzer.

Let's take a listen.

(upbeat music) ♪ Look at you ♪ - This is MichMash, a weekly conversation where we try to unjumble an important, and sometimes under the radar statewide issue that affects you.

And it is that time of year again, while the kids have been saying goodbye to their teachers and their books, the legislature has been trying to sort out how much to spend on K-12 schools next year.

- In this past Wednesday, they finally cracked it.

The legislature approved a 10% increase in K-12 spending over the current year.

The total plan is $17.1 billion for K-12 schools, which proponents say is a historic balancing of funding for all districts in the state.

- I mean, they really went down to the wire on this one and let's face it.

That's not very surprising with the legislature and budgets.

Jake, I'm pretty sure our regular listeners remember the many times that we have told them about our own late nights at the Capitol - Oh yes.

- Because lawmakers were trying to hammer out a budget.

We will save those for another day.

- So, $17 billion for schools in Michigan, that is a historic number.

All right.

So, let's dig into the weeds on this one.

Where are we at?

Where did that money come from?

- A lot of it came from COVID relief.

I mean, and that's one of the things that lawmakers have really been fighting about with the budgeting for a while, is we've gotten this federal money because of COVID, are we going to spend it and how are we going to spend it?

So, that's something that we've definitely been covering for a while, and this is something that there was finally some sort of an end point, other than, hey, they're fighting about this.

- Yeah, I mean, one of the things that's been happening is, and this also plays into the reason we're seeing a budget delay in other areas, is that they essentially had to start from scratch because they were going on this assumption, "Oh, we don't have any money to spend this year.

Well, we have billions of dollars, but we don't have as much money as we would like to spend on things this year."

And there were these like really strange, like cuts across the board in the original budget bills that went through, but then as the pandemic started easing up, the economy started moving again.

Suddenly, they were dealing with these big surpluses and money that they weren't expecting.

And so, a lot of that is coming from those surpluses.

And that's something that actually all those school advocates are really excited about that, in this big $17 billion number, they're a little bit concerned about what it might mean for next year when they don't have these surpluses.

- That's the follow-up question.

So, we'll get through this year, there's all this money there, but again, that begins to level off as you've mentioned.

So, what do you anticipate going forward?

I mean, granted, we don't know what kind of revenues are gonna be out there with sales tax, income tax, everything else next year, but what sense do you have of what might be approaching?

- My sense is that it's gonna go back to, essentially the way it was, I mean, because keep in mind, at the end of the day, we're gonna continue to have a Republican legislature for the next cycle, a Democratic governor.

And so, they're going to have to keep trying to find those sweet spots and meeting in the middle when it comes to spending.

So, I don't think we're going to see massive changes from last year when we no longer have these surpluses.

I think it's just gonna be very similar where Republicans keep trying to cut in certain areas, the governor keeps trying to move money around in different areas, and at some point somebody calls one call and they find somewhere in the middle to meet.

- Yeah, I think that one tricky aspect of this is that next year is an election year.

Here we go with the politics.

Republicans have hung their hat on the idea and this is debatable, and what's not getting the weeds on the debate, but they've been saying for years and years that they've increased money for schools year over year in the budget.

So, what do they do next year if they come back and they're like, "We're gonna make a less than inflationary increase or even a decrease in the school's budget.

How does that play with people in their districts in an election year?

I mean, it's probably not a great thing to run on that we cut the school's budget year over year this year.

So, I think that they might have to find a way to keep this up.

Although I can tell you that school district officials, at least the one that we talked with on MichMash, most recently, he's really concerned that will they actually be able to pull that off?

Nobody knows at this point.

- What are the dynamics playing out?

You mentioned next year is an election year.

Typically there's the finger pointing, which maybe I just answered your question, Jake, but what is that relationship with leadership at the Capitol and the governor?

Because I've heard many different tales of, I don't know, butting of heads, what is the true relationship there?

- Nobody knows.

- Really?

- Honestly, like I don't think anybody really knows because, and it may have changed since I was there, but I just, you would put either the relationship between Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

I mean, when I was still there a couple of years ago, there was just this insane back and forth where he would say something, might be about her, she would send him a cake or she would send him a cake, like they have this dynamic where you can never quite put your finger on.

Are they being serious?

Is this how they really feel behind closed doors?

Is it more for their constituents?

Because Mike Shirkey's people don't like Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Governor Gretchen Whitmer's people really don't like Mike Shirkey.

So, I mean, as far as like their true relationship, it's always hard to tell.

What has played out, however, between not just Senator Shirkey and the governor, but between the entire Republican legislature and the governor's office and the attorney general's office, and really Republicans and Democrats in general is very frosty.

- And it is really hard to separate out what they're saying publicly and to their own basis, compared to what they're saying behind closed doors.

I don't suspect that there's a whole lot of love lost at this point, considering some of the things that especially Mike Shirkey has said about the governor publicly, and not just the governor but also other Democrats in Lansing.

But I think what really matters right now is sort of one of those things that's really hard to put your finger on, which is after all of these orders during the pandemic that were so badly received from Republicans, you could say that was a really nice way of putting it.

And now, the fact that the state is open again, although you could argue that most sectors of the economy had been open for a long time, but now that the orders are mostly gone, where does that put this dynamic?

Where does this put this relationship?

And we've been so sort of in the weeds of the budget for the last couple of months since that's happened, that we haven't seen as many of those like open public debates between legislative leaders and Governor Whitmer, especially because I think that one of the reasons that her schedule for taking those orders away had a lot to do with freeing up a lot of this federal COVID money that the Republicans have been trying to do for a long time.

A lot of people interpreted that as in a way of sort of appeasing Republicans and start getting things moving.

So, I would say that things are less tense now than they have been, just because there haven't been sort of all these high profile back and forth.

- And I will say, I think COVID really changed their relationships.

Before COVID, there was some sort of typical back and forth.

They seem to sometimes sort of take it, take on the chin when one would say something bad about the other one, but they came together on some pretty big issues including auto insurance.

Then you had the pandemic, and then the governor has these powers where she doesn't need the legislature to get some things done.

And you saw a lot of, I think resentment from Republican, you saw them being like, how dare she utilize these powers.

You saw the governor utilizing those powers in a way that she thought was necessary.

And I think that because they also, at the same time, while this was going on, couldn't meet in person.

They used to have Quadrant meetings where the governor would meet with the Republican and Democrat leaders in the house and Senate.

They couldn't do those anymore.

So, there wasn't those opportunities to like have the sort of closed chats together or in-person and to sort of try and smooth out any of those ridges that were coming up.

How much of that is going to carry over in a semi post COVID world now that people are starting to get back together?

And like Jake mentioned, the orders are for the most part gone, unclear, particularly given that there's elections coming up, I'm sure a lot of Republicans are going to be using those math mandates in quite a few commercials.

- Didn't the two of you have an episode on misogyny in the legislature and when dealing with the governor.

- Yeah.

And I mean, and that's something that's come up several times.

Shirky calls the Governor Whitmer bad.

I don't know when I'm allowed to say on your show, gone crazy.

- Not that.

- He talked about how he spanked her on the budget.

I mean, there's been a lot of this sort of back and forth, and it's always been hard to tell how much of it the governor holds onto, and how much of it she lets affect her relationship with Shirky and with other Republicans.

But yeah, and that's just them.

I mean, that's not even the sort of like day to day misogyny that goes on at the State Capitol.

- What did you come up with in that episode for our viewers who haven't had a chance to listen to that episode?

I just, I do remember that, see, I do pay attention.

I am listening to the podcasts.

- You're our number one fan, of course you do - I know.

But what did you find there?

Who did you talk with on that episode?

- Oh man.

(giggling) I want to scroll all the episodes.

- That's okay.

Just, Jake, do you remember how you approached that?

- It's actually, I'm looking it up myself right now.

(giggling) I remember the episode, but it was - The March 8th episode for (indistinct).

- Yeah, I believe we talked with Lauren Gibbons of the Mlive, who's been, actually, Mlive, Lauren Gibbons and Emily Lawler, huge shout out to both of them.

Cheyna's former colleagues here.

If you wanna learn about what's going on in the legislature, in terms of misogyny and Lansing and so forth, look up their reporting.

I mean, it's like, it's amazing the amount of work and it's brave, very brave.

- But what we talked about is that language, it affects voters, and it also affects people's decisions to run for office.

If it's a hostile work environment, not a lot of people are super excited to go, I mean, you don't wanna just, nobody's gonna sign up for a job where you're like, "Yes, I'm gonna go and get harassed maybe a few times a month."

Like, it's hard.

And when you hear that type of language, it can impact voters and it can impact their decisions.

And it also impacts policy discussions.

You need all participants in the room when you are working on bills, legislation, orders, things like that.

And if a significant portion of the people in the room don't feel comfortable, they're not able to voice their opinions freely, that's perspective that's being missed out on.

- And it's no secret in Lansing, and Cheyna and I both worked at the Capitol for a number of years, and it's out there.

I mean, you sit on the house or the Senate floor and you're experiencing it.

And there's no secret, the fact that it's a misogynistic environment.

I think anyone who's honest will tell you that it is.

- And just, I wanna say two or three weeks ago, similar concept of a work environment, election officials leaving jobs amid threats and attacks.

- Yeah.

- Walk us through this one.

- Yeah, that's a big one.

And that's one that's still going on right now.

So, I mean, following the 2020 election where you had this big blow up, there's all these lies being spread about how security election was, there's people who legitimately believe that Donald Trump won, which he did not.

And there's people who believe, I'm sorry, they don't legitimately believe that, they do it factually if that not a legitimate belief, but they believe that.

There's people who have sort of taken that to an incredible extreme, and they are reaching out to clerks and they're threatening them.

They're threatening their families.

They are really just under fire right now, and a lot of clerks are leaving.

They don't wanna put up with it anymore, they just think they can't do it.

And what was interesting was when we spoke with Adam's County Clerk Byron, for that episode, she said, essentially the fear is that the good clerks are all gonna leave, and the new clerks are gonna be the people who have been harassing them essentially out of office, and then the inmates are gonna run the asylum.

So, she's really out there trying to, one, make these people who are doing this harassment, making sure that they're being held accountable and encouraging accountability.

But she's also just constantly out there trying to get people to volunteer, to be election workers, to run for office, to become clerks.

- And one thing that's especially heartbreaking about this is that the county clerks and local clerks in Michigan are some of the people that, if you follow them on Twitter or just know who they are, we talk to them all the time.

Some of the least partisan people that you'll meet in politics, I mean, just people who are trying to do their jobs and do it well and are doing it well, and it seems like usually the ones that are the most honest, the most competent, are the ones that are getting targeted in this.

And that is just really, I'm really sorry to see that because Michigan's losing some serious talent in our elections because of this.

- What's on deck?

We've got about three minutes here.

What are you working on for next week?

- We just finished up.

We literally finished up the episode before we started taping this.

So yeah, we are going, "Oh God, what are we talking?"

No, I'm just kidding.

(giggling) We're talking about state parks and local parks.

The governor is proposing, I believe a total of $400 million infusion from federal COVID dollars into state and local parks, and what that means.

But there's also this big issue where state parks are having trouble, like a lot of businesses in Michigan trying to find people to work.

And so you put a lot of this money into the backlogs of park projects that haven't been able to be done, who's gonna maintain those things.

And I think that's a really interesting topic.

- But I'll let you know our little secret.

We usually don't come up with our topic until maybe the day before.

(giggling) - Because we want to be current, but we're also very busy.

- So, but this is like right in the wheelhouse of Michigan.

I mean, the tourism dollars that will come out of this as well, I mean, it's gotta be huge.

- Yeah, I think that Governor Whitmer said in her press conference about state park money, was that for every dollar we spend on recreation in Michigan, it generates $4 in economic benefits.

So, I haven't, I like to look to see exactly what that study is, but it's a big number.

- Usually particularly given that COVID, and people have been outside, and they've really, parks have been taking hit from having such an influx of people, and will probably continue to have an influx of people.

- Before you go, the funk music, the open to the podcast.

(giggling) Where does that come from?

- That is my good friend, Sam Beaubien, who is one of our creative managers at WDET.

He does a lot of our audio production.

He's in this amazing band called Will Sessions, check him out, I think I can say that.

They are one of my very favorites, and they do most of the music for WDET, which is a pretty lucky for us to have that just on our staff.

- All right, 20 seconds, plug the podcast, go.

- It's a great show.

If you got three minutes, three to four minutes, so you can listen to the first half, save the interviews for later.

I mean, if you wanna know what's going on, and what's important and what you should be paying attention to, listen to MichMash, we have fun.

- wdet.org/shows/MichMash that's M-I-C-H-M-A-S-H. And you can also find the podcast, wherever you get podcasts.

- You made it easy.

I still have to get used to these virtual interviews and the timing and everything else.

Jake Neher, Cheyna Roth, Co-host of MichMash.

Thank you both so much.

- Thank you.

- Thanks Patrick.

- And thank you for joining us.

We'll see you again soon.

(upbeat music)