Representative Ranjeev Pur is the House Democratic Leader.

What's his take?

Insiders take o what's happening on the budget.

And that clock is ticking awa towards an October 1st deadline.

How are they doing it resolving the shutdown?

Here with the answers, Lauren Gibbons, Beth LeBlanc, and Colin Jackson.

Sit in with us is we ge the inside out, Off the Record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by bellwethe public relations, a full service strategic communications agenc 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.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to Studio C. And the budget clock is ticking.

Let's we'll talk about shutdown but first we've been there before in the year 2007 to 09.

And we talked to somebody who was also there, the legal adviser to then Governor Jennifer Granholm.

Take a look.

The state budget shutdown clock is getting louder by the moment as the October 1st deadline looms.

27 days and counting.

And if there is no state budget, what then is the governor calling the shots on what happens next?

According to this legal adviser to former Governor Jennifer Granholm, who confronted her own downs.

The governor is calling the shots.

The governor has no need to invoke emergency powers if a budget has not been adopted.

The governor has all of the powers, the ordinary powers the governor has.

Governor Granholm had those shutdowns in the year 2007.

It lasted for hours and in 2009.

And it lasted for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, House Republican Speaker Matt Hall is looking at all this.

He held a secret retrea on Tuesday with his legal team ordered to come up with what exact powers the governor does have.

Should there be a shutdown?

And as representative of the citizens, the speaker wants to kno what role could he play, if any?

Turns out, accordin to this attorney, he has none.

So there is no voice in that process from the legislature?

No.

The the Constitution vests the duty to faithfull execute the laws and supervise all the department and agencies of state government exclude simply in the governor and Governor Granholm exercised that authority.

She laid of 66% of all government workers.

She paused.

Road construction projects.

All the secretary of stat offices would have been closed and the state police and correction officers, well, they stayed on the job.

The governor's key responsibility is to protect the public health and safety.

But the longer the shutdown continues, it's asserted here that it becomes more of a challenge.

The state workers could eventually decide they won't work for an IOU anymore.

And so whether it's a state police officer, a vendo with a contract from the state, at a certain point, they ma decide, I'm no longer interested in performing these services until I have cash in hand.

Governor Whitmer say she will have contingency plans just in case.

For example she could ask lawmakers to pass a continuation budget to get them over the hump until a new one is done.

But complicating the impact in Michigan of all this, the possibilit of a federal government shutdown on exactly the same date, October 1st.

Suffice it to say, nobody in this town has ever confronted that budget double whammy.

And it's a good guess that in th So why is Mr. Hall concerned about the governor's powers?

I think that this is a continuation of what you've seen from legislative Republicans over the years since Governor Whitmer has been in office, which is they want to limit executive powers.

You know, during the COVID 19 pandemic, there is a lot of focus on the emergency powers, whether it's emergency health orders, etc.. And I think that if you're going to play chicken with a government shutdown, you want to know what the different possibilities are, what all the different eventualities are.

And you want to make sure that whoever's on the other side of the table from you, be it the governor, or be as a majority leade when he Brinks or whoever else.

You want to know what they're capable of and what they can do if you do continue to play hardball in negotiations.

What do you make of this?

I mean, I think the authority they have now is to pass a budget.

Right.

And I think that's the limits of the legislature right now.

Pass the budget or we go into a shutdown.

And right now, that doesn't get very many positive prospect on on the passage of a budget.

There's some pretty nasty remarks being exchanged between the two legislative leaders.

There is, you know, an inability to come to an agreement on what should be a priority in the budget or how it's achieved.

And yeah, it's not looking pretty right now.

Nobody wins in a government shutdown.

There's a lot of finger pointing, There's a lot of blaming.

But well, we get a lot to write about.

Sure.

But it's not a fun proposition for anyone.

It's not something that, you know, certainly a lot of state workers are probably looking with a lot of concern about what's happening right now.

But the whole state generally, it's not an outcome that is desirable in any sense of the word.

So, yeah, to Beth's point, you know, they've got they've got a timeline.

What powers come afterwards?

You know, certainly it's it remains to be seen, but it's not a it's not a positive outcome for really any party necessarily.

It's hard to spin a shutdown into something good.

Well, if you're a governor of a state, whomever you are, and you have headlines that your state has shut down, is that good for PR?

Is that good for attracting jobs?

I think that is a bigger impact than a short term shutdown.

I mean, they always say business likes stability.

Right?

And so.

That ain't it.

It's not it's not good fo PR is not going for stability.

It's not good for saying I'm a proven leader that can get things done, that can make work across the aisle, etc..

If the first bipartisan legislature that you've worked with ends up in a shutdown.

And I think that I'm not saying that's part of the calculations here, but I'm saying I think everything is being taken into consideration.

Will somebody?

explain to me, doesn't it work when one House passes a budget in the other they form a conference committee and they sit in a conference committee and they draft it.

Is that going on?

Have conference committees met?

They have not.

Right?

Right.

I mean to have a conference committee, you need a non concurrence vote.

Right.

So there is a whole process that normally happens.

Both sides pass their budget, both sides of the chamber, zero each other's budget.

They vote to they send it back to the the chamber or the chambe doesn't vote down those changes.

Then they go in a secret room and figure it out and then pop out at some time and the after dark and they have a boom, a budget.

It's kind of out, I mean Beth and Lauren can speak to this, too.

They've been covering this for a long time, but I don't think that's necessarily the Republicans appetite this year to have that process.

Nothing they've done so far as follow that traditional process going so far.

And I think they're holding the cards close to the chest, holding the cards close to their chest in terms of what this fina budget process will look like.

Yeah, I think, too I mean, it seems like usually they go to conference committee when they're pretty close to an agreement and just to to, yo know, tie of the last strings.

So if they're not going to conference committee, I assume they're pretty far away from each othe still in terms of an agreement.

The other complication that you have here is that the governor who will have to sign this budget is on a multiday trip to Japan and Singapore.

She says she can zoom in and conference into it to speak to thos who are negotiating the budget.

But I think that may be complicating things right now is that she's not physically here in person.

Well, in the report the other day was that the state budget director was in the room and not the governor.

And nobody said she was on Zoom and were I mean, am I missing that story or not?

Yeah, no, I don't.

I don't believe the budget director was there.

I don't believe the governor was there on Zoom.

Yeah, definitely.

The budget director can can negotiate on behalf of the governor.

But I think it says something to the legislature when the governor is actually there.

Well, and I think that also says something to the governor' perspective of how close it is.

You know, maybe if there was an indication from either chamber that this was something that she needed to be there for the 11th hour, maybe she would have mad different travel plans.

Right.

And this is not the first contentious budget cycle that Governor Whitmer has had with Republicans.

Thinking back to 2019, for example, where there i there is a lot of consternation.

They did end up passing a budget, though.

It was it was still complicated and there was a lot going on afterwards in the weeks and month following it, but it was done.

So I think I think a shutdown to your point, kind of Mars, the Mars, the state's record o getting bipartisan budgets done.

I'm going to assume that the governor didn't give carte blanche to the budget director to go in and in Wheeling dea and make a deal without checking with the governor and getting a sign off first, wouldn't you think?

I would think so.

I think that's why it complicates thing that she's not here in person.

Well if you're the budget director, you say, well, you let me just check.

And I just constantly record.

I'm ready to go into the fall and then come back.

And it's sort of it makes an ugly proces even uglier, I think, to many.

To a large extent.

We had 400,000, 400,000.

They wish they had 400,000.

4000 protesters on the front lawn.

Why were they here this week?

Yeah, they were here because they want roads to be part of this budget process.

Road Workers.

Yes.

Adding a layer of complication to all of this is that the governor, Republicans, a lot of folks on the Capitol law have said we want a roads deal, a long term road funding plan to be part of this package.

Now, whether you know, whether their advocacy made a huge difference I guess that remains to be seen.

But it's certainly no secret that they have been trying to get long term road funding.

Governor Whitmer had a bonding process that funded a lot of a lot of freeway projects, but that only counted for state roads that didn't really get to the local road issue.

And it's ending.

The state' about to come do with the bill, and there's not really much left to replace it.

So so there's there's a lo of a lot of talk about getting something in this budget, but we've been talking about how hard that could be.

Go ahead.

Well, I think, too, it wasn't just this protest, which they made a pretty a pretty impressive showing, everybody wearing their neon colors out on the Capitol lawn and construction trucks, you know, kind of circling the Capitol for a few hours.

But also, I mean, I kno personally I've been getting ads from the infrastructure associations for months now, tellin telling people who are listening to contact their lawmakers to get a road deal.

So this is a multi-pronged approach from the infrastructure group and they want funding for roads.

I hate to throw water on demonstrations because obviously it' the people's right to protest, but my experience tells me that this is not a stimulus response.

People don't show up on the front steps and things happen in a building.

Am I right or wrong?

No, I don't think so.

In this case, I think for the most part, all the lawmakers that were in favor of passing your roads plan today are still the same.

Lawmakers that were in favo of passing a roads plan before.

And this is something that the governor has been very vocal where she doesn't see a budget as being don until the roads plan in steel is completed.

And part of that budget.

So I think to that standpoint, you know, there's already going to be something there for the most part, already likely to be something there.

Now, when you talk to Senat Democrats who now Speaker Hall bringing it back to the last discussion, he's saying the next step for budget negotiations is now that the House passed its budget proposal, something Senate Democrat have asked for for a long time.

He wants to see a rose plan from the Senate.

Senate Democrats and leadership are saying they don't need their own roads plan.

They can work with whateve the governor's infrastructure is or the speaker's infrastructure and go from there.

So now that's the latest part and where potential impasses in negotiations are.

But I think that the roads is where it's at.

What are the chances that they take roads out of the thing in order to get a budget?

I mean, it's a possibility.

But, you know, to Collin's point, it's something that the governo would be loath to do, I think.

And it really does show that just how far apart some things are.

I think I think Senate Democrats probably would prefer to just do the budge and then talk about roads later.

But but the issue is being forced right now and and for better or for worse.

Well, if you're the governor and you want to look at those two together, let's see, shut down the government, take a hit and take roads out and work on it later.

You might be tempte to take the alternative route.

Well, she'd have to.

She'd have to backtrac on some very public statements about there not being a negotiated budget without a road plan in place.

Republicans have also sai very publicly that this is that they want to get this across the finish line.

So for any of the parties to backtrack would be pretty significant on this.

Well, but she could make the excuse look at shutting down the government was important to every single person in this state.

And I'm sorry I said I would what I was going to do, but for the good of the state, I'm going to make a change.

She could.

But do you think she wasn't looking at that possibility down the road when she made that public statement?

She knew this was coming and she still said roads need to be part of that deal.

So I think she I think she weighed our options and and said it publicly because she is insisting on that.

Now, the other thing, too, is the tying of the roads plan to an education plan, because both the governor's plan and the Republican House plan that passed deal with taking money from sales tax at the gas pumps that would otherwise go to school and putting that toward roads.

And so you see, seen speaker halls consistently say that you need to pass road and education as side by side.

And lately I've even been hearing som Senate Democrats say, you know, we think that could be appropriate.

But at the same time, we've seen Democrats consistently take this tone that they don't want to see any roads plan passed that takes money away from schools.

And so if that's what the Ross proposals do right now, taking potentially taking money from schools, you know the difference?

Some parties will say there's ways to backfill that money.

It's hard to separat those two in the conversation.

And that's part of wh we got here in the first place and why a school negotiation fell apart back in July.

Yeah, I. I also think, too, like the the deadline for passing the budget isn' the only deadline we're facing.

The governor's bonds plan, which which provided funding for roads for the past several years, is running out.

And that's another deadline that the state is facing.

So it's it's not it's not just the budget.

It's also this ticking time bomb on funding for roads.

And speaking of powerful lobbies weighing in on the budget process, education groups have been furious for the last several months because they their budgets are already hit.

They already needed to plan for the year.

And so they have been really advocating we need a schools budget right now and they're not necessarily getting it.

That hasn't moved the needle either.

No, no.

And I don't want to downplay the demonstration because their message was very clear.

Their message is people that are now helping to build the roads will leave the state and you can't get them back.

All right.

Let's call in our guests and discuss this and other budget issues.

Representative, Representative welcome back to Off the Record.

Good to see you in person, sir.

It's good to be here.

Thanks for having me.

All right.

Let's let's begin.

What what do you have in the pool for the government shutting down?

I think just as Matt Hall's designed I think it's going to shut down on October 1st.

You know, we are have been in this position since we started this term.

You know, he's been posting breadcrumbs as early as January and February and press conferences hinting at a government shutdown.

And so I think everything's going to plan here.

Have you and he talked about this?

We have not.

I'm not Donald Trump.

I'm not a reporter nor am I paid to laugh as jokes.

So he does not talk to me.

So when's the last time the two of you spoke?

I don't remember.

That's sort of not a good story.

I think that's a problem.

I think there's absolutely a problem.

I think, you know, when you have someone that's leading the institution that is insecure and and wants to be a bully and lead with disparaging and name calling and just being being mean, that's going to obviously have a devastating effect to what happens and and cause a deficienc and in how the institutions run.

With all due respect, though he says you're a lousy leader.

Yeah, well, you know, he doesn't have a budget.

He didn't pass a budget until last week.

He's leading us to a government shutdown.

A lot of his members are going around very unsatisfied with the budget that he made them vote on.

And so I guess he's entitled to his his opinion.

But, you know, I'm not at the end of the day, I'm not the speaker of the House.

I'm not the one that's responsible for makin sure our budget is done on time.

You know, if you, as you say, are not speaking with the speaker, what is your role in all of this?

How how are you and your caucu responding and what do you view your role in The budget process is?

Right now?

You know, for us, it's jus making sure that we can salvage the institution to the best of our ability.

You know, the reality i that we are the minority caucus.

And so there's a limited role that that we can play.

But I think we have an outsized role this term.

You know, I think in years past I can't think of as many times that the minority caucus has been called out, called upon that the minority leader has been brought up.

And so I just I think for us, the value that we can provide is we are a vessel and communicate, communicate with legislative Democrats an Lansing Democrats around town.

And the reality is, is that we are in split government.

And so as much as Matt Hall wants to project that, you know, he's the judge, jury and executioner of all thing Lansing, the reality is, is that he is not the Senate majorit leader.

He's not the governor.

And so without true bipartisan work, nothing's going to get done.

Yeah but do you believe that a long term road funding deal can be mad with with current tax revenue, or do you think new taxes goin to be introduced to fund roads?

I think really, realistically, we're going to nee some new revenue to get it done.

You know, I think that this is a conversation that a lot of Democrats around town, including the governor, are very motivated to to see through.

In my own experience as serving as chair of the Senate subcommittee on Transportation, it's a conversation that I became familiar with last term.

I know it's a complicated conversation, but the reality is tha we need to find a multibillion dollar solution that's sustainable.

That's not just a patchwork of a couple of talking points that's going to work for a year or two.

And if we want to do this the right way, then we are going to have to bring some new revenue into the equation.

How do you make the argument to residents who have seen their costs increase, their wages stay somewhat stagnant and also have seen the state budget increase pretty significantly over the years?

I mean, isn't if they're looking at how the budget has increased and they're looking at their own paychecks that haven't?

How do you make the case that they should be paying more in taxes for this?

The the reality is that costs have gone up across the spectrum.

I think that we're having a affordability crisis right now.

I think it was the mandate of the last election.

And I think we should be doing whatever we can right now to get costs under control.

The budget has increased in size, but everything is more expensive these days.

And so I think it's a little too early to to to take broad strokes of thinking that we can cut billions of dollars on this budget.

We don't know what the next five, ten years of economic outlook looks like for the state and the country.

And so, you know, I think it's too quick to to to take the approach that we can just move money around in the budget and think that that's going to b some sort of long term solution.

We should absolutely be doing whatever we can to to bring costs under control.

But there is the reality that the roads get fixed.

And so with the limited amount of money, you're going to have to pick between priorities.

And so like we were discussing in the earlier segment, I don't think everyone's read to just take billions of dollars out of critical programs just to check the box that we have a plan that's going to work for a year or two.

And so we're motivated if there's a way to actually have real conversation to not do this through press conferences, to actually get good faith actors to a negotiating table and have robust conversations, we can figure this out, but that's not the reality of the current dynamic.

Speaking of setting priorities, you know, the state's been on a string of setting a record, passing record breaking budgets.

At some poin that money's going to run out.

And for a lot of people I've talked to on both sides of the aisle, they think this is the year where this budget is going to have to be shorter than last year just for the absence of federal dollars or what have you.

Where would you be oka with cutting back in the budget?

Well, yeah, I mean, look, the realit is that there's just less money at the table, right?

And so regardles of who the speaker of the House is, there's going to be a smaller budget this year because a lot of those funds are are running out.

Democrats knew that with the way that the budgets were planned in prior years, you know, there's obviously a difference of funding things one tim and or with re-occurring ongoing ongoing payments.

And so I think there's obviously ways to pick up efficiencies in the budget.

I think can collect a coupl of dollars doing that, I think.

But I think the priority should be is protecting our state from the devastating cuts that are coming out of the federal government and the the the big beautiful bail act and and the effect that that's going to have on our state government was not designed to have the pendulum swing so, so far and to just take strong way sweeping cuts to two critical programs, I think we need to be much more meticulous in terms of ho we approach those conversations and then again, move to kind of future years of figuring out if there is money that is in excess in any one area that we can be used to leverage in other areas of the budget.

So for us, it's I think a just a very holistic assessment of all the things that are at play here.

But, you know, as myself and my colleagues continue to hammer home, you know, we want to continue to find programmatic wins across the budget to making sure that these critical programs remain in place and that the budget doesn't need to look wildly different than it has in years past.

Do you believe there's $ billion in waste in the budget?

Absolutely not.

You know, I think the so.

That's a fictitious Number?

Absolutely it is.

You know, and I encourage them to.

They went over the budget line by line, quote unquote, said that's the number they came up with.

Look, anyone can close their eyes and grab a bunch of lines out of the budget and say that they found a bunch of waste, waste, fraud and abuse.

I think the the waste, fraud and abuse in Lansing is that that budget document.

Right?

It's just it's wasting our time.

It's abusing people's trust.

And it's just a fraudulent display of actually what's happening in our budget.

Right.

And so, of course, are there efficiencies to pick up?

Yes.

There's not a legislator in Lansing who doesn't want to find efficiencies.

Yes, that can absolutely happen.

But to think that there's 5 billion and to project that upon Lansing, if that's the budget that that that they thin exists, I think is is fraudulent and and and it's not even a Democrats perspective and that I think that budget has failed from a Democratic accord and a Republican accord.

But reall just from the lens of every day Michigan people lik if I showed up, you know, this maybe come across as talking points.

But if we walk this back and if I showed up and I talked to one of your neighbor and I said, hey, you know, Mr. Beth's Neighbor, I have a plan for you in terms of how I want to run the state.

And you asked your neighbor asked, hey, what is that plan?

And I said, hey, you know, I have a plan but I'm not going to show you.

What I am going to do is disparage anything that any idea that you have, any plans that you have.

I'm going to disparage those things, but I' not going to show you my plan.

But we need to get this done.

And trust me, I do have a good plan and we're going to wait it ou and we're going to wait it out.

And then as we get closer to that deadline, I and say, you know what?

Here's my plan and I'm not really going to give you time to look over it.

I'm just going to go over and just tell you what in my plan real quick.

I'm going to defund the police.

I'm going to rip foo out of school children's hands.

I'm going to make it as much anxiety as possible for our teachers are our nurses, our police, our police and our fire.

Do not kno if they're going to have a job.

And then, oh, by the way, we're also going to shut down hospitals around the state.

And guess what?

That's just page one of 800.

And then your neighbor is going to ask, why do you want to do that?

And I'm going to say and I don't really know.

And then your neighbor might ask, well, who's going to benefit from that?

I'm going to say, I couldn't tell you.

I think that neighbors clearly going to understand that I'm kind of crazy.

I don't really have a plan and I shouldn't be running the state.

And that's kind of where we'r at with the speaker right now.

Do you view these current budget negotiations as as your caucus, Senat Democrats, the governor's office versus Speaker Hall and Republicans, or is it more complicated than that?

No, that's that's what it is.

It's a very fair characterization.

You know, that that we have to remember that this is not the governor's first budget.

She's passed this.

I think she's on her sevent budget, if my math is correct.

She's passed six on time every time the Senate majority leader has passed multiple budgets on time.

There is one rookie leader her that is making rookie mistakes.

And so I think, you know every piece of the conversation that we're talking about in the government shutdown that he's leading us to should emphasize the fact that he doesn't know what he's doing.

And so the governor ha her recommendation out on time.

The Senat passed their bills out on time.

And so the the the speaker just spent the last couple of months disparaging the ideas that were out there without really having a budget passed of his own.

And so if you have this wonderful budget that you want to shar with the neighbors of Michigan, why would you hide it?

Why would you cook it up in a in a dark room with your political allies in the lens of how this is going to help me win political elections and then not give anyone time to review it?

And then that's just if you have a good idea, that's just not how you act.

If you are embarrassed about your budget or if you're hiding something, that's what you do.

Will you stay for an overtime?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Quickly, is there a wa to avert this budget shutdown?

Yes.

You know, I think it's a mischaracterization to thin that the institution is failing.

Right.

This is not a Democrat or Republican thing.

You have one bad actor.

So what are the chances it will be averted?

Very low.

All right.

On that happy note.

All right.

We'll pause here for those credits and come back for more of our conversation with the leader of the House Democrats right here on Off the Record, Go to wkar.org.

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