THE BUDGET SCORECARD:

EVERY WIN WE SECURED, EVERY SCHEME WE STOPPED

The vote record below tells you how I voted and why, bill by bill. This section tells you the larger story: what House Republicans actually won in this budget, and just as important, what we killed. Because a budget is measured two ways: by what is in it, and by what we refused to let into it. Here is the complete accounting.

HOW WE EARNED THE LEVERAGE

None of this happened by accident. Last year, House Republicans secured the largest ongoing road funding investment in Michigan history: an additional $2 billion every year for roads and bridges, without raising taxes. That took roads off the bargaining table permanently. Your roads no longer compete with selfish pet projects because we made road funding a fixture of the law rather than a favor to be traded.

At the same time, we ended the Whitmer administration’s practice of quietly rolling over billions of dollars in unspent funds year after year, the slush-fund mentality that let departments stockpile your money and spend it without a vote. And we enacted the HEAT process (Hall Ethics, Accountability, and Transparency), which drags every earmark into the public eye long before a budget vote takes place.

Fewer slush funds. Fewer hiding places. Fewer trading of essentials for pet projects. That is why Democrats had to come to the table this year, and it is why the wins below were possible.

A GOVERNMENT THAT SPENDS LESS

Under Governor Whitmer, state spending grew 43 percent, with some departments doubling in size. Last year, House Republicans shrank the state’s general fund by $800 million. The Governor answered this cycle by proposing a 16 percent spending increase.

She did not get it. The new budget totals $75.191 billion, down from $76.003 billion in the current fiscal year. State general fund spending is reduced by $859 million, and on top of that we eliminated an additional $800 million in waste, fraud, and abuse. Read that plainly: government in Lansing will be smaller next year than it is this year. When is the last time you could say that twice in a row?

NOT ONE NEW TAX. NOT ONE NEW FEE.

The Governor opened this budget cycle asking Michigan families to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars more through new taxes and fees. Senate Democrats piled on with their own stack of new and higher fees that would have made everyday life more expensive: every trip to a state office, every renewal, every transaction.

House Republicans said no at every step, and we won. The final budget contains no new taxes and no new statewide fee increases. We proved you can fund roads, classrooms, and public safety while balancing the books without reaching one inch deeper into the pockets of working families. Taxpayers should never be forced to foot the bill for the Democrats’ pork, and this year they were not.

THE RAINY-DAY FUND: NOT ONE DOLLAR TOUCHED

Earlier this year, House Republicans proposed putting an additional $300 million INTO the rainy-day fund. The Governor and Senate Democrats went the opposite direction: they tried to raid the state’s savings account to pay for new spending, the fiscal equivalent of cashing out your emergency fund to remodel the kitchen.

We drew a line in the sand and held it. The new budget does not take a single dollar from the rainy-day fund. That account exists to protect taxpayers during economic downturns and genuine emergencies, and thanks to House Republicans it will still be there, intact, when Michigan actually needs it.

250 MORE GHOST EMPLOYEES OFF THE BOOKS

For years, Lansing funded positions that did not exist and programs that did not deliver, letting departments collect the money and park it in slush funds. Last year we eliminated more than 2,000 of these vacant ghost positions. This year, the Democrats tried to create new ones.

They failed. We stopped every attempt to add ghost employees to the payroll, and we forced the elimination of 250 more of them: 250 more phantom paychecks that bureaucrats can no longer use to pad their budgets. Taxpayers should pay for work that is actually done, by people who actually exist. It is remarkable that this sentence needs to be written, but in Lansing it does.

SAVING THE SAFETY NET BY POLICING IT

House Republicans have led the investigation of fraud, waste, and abuse in Michigan’s welfare system through the Oversight Subcommittee on State and Local Assistance Programs: hearing after hearing, weakness after weakness exposed. Democrats resisted acknowledging the problem at every turn. They lost that argument in this budget.

Here is what we secured: chip-enabled Bridge cards to stop cloning and skimming, stronger eligibility verification standards, interstate and federal database cross-checks to catch people double-dipping on food assistance in multiple states at once, tougher reporting standards, faster implementation of Medicaid work requirements, additional fraud investigators for both Medicaid and food assistance, and the elimination of $185 million in program inefficiencies.

Understand what this is really about. Last year’s tax reforms saved billions in federal Medicaid funding for Michigan, and this budget increases Medicaid funding to fully meet the needs of the people who genuinely rely on it. But if fraud and misuse are allowed to bleed these programs dry, they will not be there for the vulnerable residents who need them. Every dollar stolen by a fraudster is a dollar taken from a disabled neighbor, a struggling senior, a child. Policing the safety net is how you save it. Democrats fought us on this for years; the reforms are now in the budget anyway.

EDUCATION: FUNDING STUDENTS, NOT SYSTEMS

House Republicans believe every Michigan student deserves support, whether they learn in a traditional public school, a charter school, a cyber school, or a nonpublic school. The final budget reflects that conviction.

Classroom funding reaches a record high: the foundation allowance rises $250 per pupil to $10,300, with real accountability attached so those dollars support students and teachers in the classroom rather than administrative overhead. We secured funding parity for cyber charter school students, who Democrats have treated as second-class for years. We expanded dual enrollment opportunities and teacher fellowship programs to nonpublic schools. And House Republican priorities like teacher bonuses, school buses, dual enrollment, and early learning programs are funded throughout the budget.

The principle is simple: the money is for the child, and the child belongs to the family, not to a system, and certainly not to Lansing.

SCHOOL SAFETY: REBUILT BY US, DEFENDED FROM THEM

In 2024, Democrats slashed school safety and student mental health funding. House Republicans have spent two years rebuilding those protections for kids in every classroom, public and nonpublic alike, and our House budget this year carried $321 million to continue that commitment.

Senate Democrats responded by proposing to cut the funding by $21 million and to eliminate dedicated support for school resource officers, the trained officers standing between our children and the unthinkable. In a state that has lived through what ours has, that proposal was disgraceful.

It is also dead. The final budget maintains full support for school safety and mental health services in both public and nonpublic schools. Michigan classrooms keep their resource officers, and Michigan kids keep their protection.

TEACHING MICHIGAN KIDS TO READ AGAIN

The numbers are a scandal. Michigan ranks 44th in the nation in education. Fourth and eighth grade reading scores have dropped nine points since 2019. Third grade reading proficiency has fallen nearly 12 percent since 2015. Thousands of children are being left behind every single year, and reading proficiency by third grade sets the foundation for everything that follows in a child’s life.

House Republicans made literacy a top priority and delivered: $222.5 million for literacy supports, including training for teachers in instructional methods proven to help students with dyslexia. That is the classroom counterpart to the teacher-training requirement I explain in my vote on House Bill 5697 below. On top of that, $50 million goes to tutoring and reading interventions for kids who have fallen behind.

And inside that tutoring money is a reform I want every parent in our district to know about: a $5 million pilot program that gives grants to school districts to reimburse families directly for private tutoring. When your child is struggling to read, you should not have to wait on a bureaucracy’s schedule or live in the right zip code to get help. This puts the parent back in the driver’s seat, where God and nature put them in the first place.

ROOTING OUT CHILD CARE FRAUD

Alongside the state’s child care investments, including the Tri-Share model I supported in the vote record below (where the employer, the parent, and the state each carry a defined share), House Republicans built in hard accountability: funds do not go out the door unless attendance is actually confirmed. Other states, most notoriously Minnesota, watched fraudsters loot their child care programs on an industrial scale. We wrote the safeguards in before the looting, not after. Working parents get real help; con artists get nothing.

BACKING THE BADGE

Keeping communities safe is a core duty of government, one of the few duties everything else should bend to. This budget puts real resources behind it: an additional $11 million statewide investment in the public safety trust fund to support law enforcement in high-crime areas, building on the fund we established last year, plus funding for two new Michigan State Police trooper schools to recruit and train the next classes of troopers. That means shorter response times and more officers on the road in every corner of Michigan.

MAKING THE BUREAUCRACY ANSWER TO YOU

House Republicans spent two years exposing how state government actually operates: agencies sitting on half-empty buildings while employees stayed remote, permitting delays that strangled jobs and investment, departments blowing deadlines with zero consequences. This budget starts changing that culture with teeth.

If state government misses its deadline and unnecessarily delays your project, your permit fee gets refunded. Departments must meet workplace occupancy targets and produce real return-to-office plans, so taxpayers stop paying to heat and light empty buildings. And the budget restores the Legislature’s authority to conduct investigations and enter departments when concerns arise. For too long, state departments acted as though they answer to no one. That ends. If an agency is wasting your money, hiding information, or failing the people it serves, your elected representatives will walk through the door and get answers.

SLAMMING THE REVOLVING DOOR SHUT

You can see in my vote record below that the House passed the ban on legislators-turned-lobbyists (House Bills 4062, 4063, and 4064) during the all-night session, with my enthusiastic yes on all three. As part of the budget agreement, House Republicans secured the commitment to make these reforms law: former legislators, governors, lieutenant governors, secretaries of state, and attorneys general prohibited from walking out of public office and straight into a lobbying paycheck, and the loophole closed that let sitting state officials lobby in other states while supposedly serving you here.

Public office is a trust, not an audition for the influence industry. This is HEAT doing exactly what we built it to do.

REINING IN THE SECRETARY OF STATE

After years of mismanagement, IT failures, and serious concerns about election administration, the Secretary of State’s office is finally getting adult supervision. The budget reins in unnecessary technology spending by shifting major IT decisions to the Department of Technology, Management, and Budget. That is the same department whose contracting failures I have been grilling in Oversight, and it will now at least centralize accountability instead of scattering it.

Just as important, the budget includes new requirements to improve the accuracy of Michigan’s voter rolls: removing deceased voters, identifying voters who have moved, and strengthening list maintenance. Clean rolls are the foundation of an election every citizen can trust. This should never have required a budget fight, but it did, and we won it.

NO BLANK CHECK FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL CAMPAIGNS

Taxpayer-funded lawyers exist to do the state’s legal work, not to bankroll political crusades. House Republicans have raised this concern for years. You may remember my yes vote on House Bill 5650 requiring the Attorney General to account for any litigation costing more than $250,000. This budget goes further: it requires legislative approval before the Attorney General can take legal action against oil and gas companies.

If the state’s top lawyer wants to launch a massive, costly lawsuit that puts Michigan jobs, energy prices, and our economy on the line, the elected representatives of the people will have a seat at that table. No more lawfare on autopilot with your money.

ANSWERS ON MENTAL HEALTH SPENDING

Michigan spends billions of taxpayer dollars every year on mental and behavioral health services, and yet family after family testified to the same experience: barriers, delays, gaps in care, and no way to find out where the system is failing. Fragmented services and zero transparency, at a cost of billions.

House Republicans secured funding for an independent review of Michigan’s entire mental health system to identify fraud, improve quality control, and determine whether those billions are actually reaching the people who need help. Families deserve answers, patients deserve outcomes, and taxpayers deserve proof. We intend to get all three.

ENDING GRANHOLM’S AUTO-CORPORATE WELFARE

For years, $75 million of your money was deposited automatically into the 21st Century Jobs Fund, a Granholm-era program used to bankroll corporate subsidies. Every single year, no vote, no questions. Whether it produced results or not, the checks kept flowing, because that is what autopilot means.

House Republicans ended the automatic deposits in this budget. Government does not get a standing blank check for corporate giveaways anymore. That funding now remains in the Tobacco Settlement Fund instead of being funneled to the politically connected. If you have followed this newsletter, you know why this matters: the Faye Beydoun scandal showed exactly what happens when economic-development money moves without scrutiny. Turning off an autopilot pipeline is how that era ends.

A LEASH ON THE BIGGEST CORPORATE GIVEAWAYS

I will be straight with you, as always. I voted no on expanding the Transformational Brownfield program, and you can read exactly why in my vote on Senate Bill 723 below. I do not believe developers should pocket the income, withholding, and sales taxes their projects generate while your family gets no such deal, and I will keep voting that way.

But since the votes existed in both chambers to keep this program alive, House Republicans made sure it will never again operate in the dark. We secured independent third-party financial reviews for major projects, annual performance milestones, stronger transparency and reporting requirements, public access to project data, affordable housing standards, and, for the first time, real consequences for developers who fail to deliver the jobs and investment they promised. If a developer takes the people’s money and does not perform, there is now a bill that comes due. Every corporate incentive program in this state should live under exactly this kind of leash, and I will keep working to tighten it.

THE DEFEAT LIST: WHAT THEY WANTED AND DID NOT GET

For the record, here in one place is everything the Governor and her allies demanded and House Republicans killed:

The Governor’s tax hikes: dead. Hundreds of millions in new taxes she demanded from Michigan families, including roughly $200 million in new gambling taxes, all rejected.

The Senate’s fee stack: dead. Every one of their new and higher statewide fees, gone. Not one made it into law.

The 16 percent spending increase: dead. The Governor asked for government to grow 16 percent. Instead, it shrank by $812 million and shed another $800 million in waste, fraud, and abuse.

The rainy-day fund raid: blocked. The Governor and Senate Democrats both reached for the state’s savings account. They came away with nothing. Not one dollar.

New ghost employees: blocked. They tried to create more phantom positions. We stopped every one and eliminated 250 more.

The $21 million school safety cut: reversed. Senate Democrats tried to cut school safety funding and eliminate dedicated school resource officer support. Full funding stands, in public and nonpublic schools alike.

Unwatched welfare fraud: over. Democrats spent years resisting fraud reforms. Chip cards, database cross-checks, verification standards, work requirements, and new investigators are now the law of the budget.

The corporate welfare autopilot: unplugged. The automatic $75 million annual deposit into the Granholm-era jobs fund is finished.

The slush funds: still dead. The quiet rollover of billions in unspent money remains banned, and departments now operate under HEAT’s sunlight, occupancy requirements, and legislative inspection authority.

Dark earmarking: exposed. HEAT forced every earmark into public view before the vote and has already stripped hundreds of millions in political giveaways from the process. I remain candid with you: roughly $125 million in special-project earmarks still survived this deal, and I explain so plainly in my vote explanation below. That is $125 million too much, and shrinking it to zero remains my target.

THE BOTTOM LINE

A smaller government. No new taxes. No new fees. The savings account untouched. Fraud on the run. Classrooms, troopers, and reading fundamentals funded. The revolving door slamming shut. The Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and every department in Lansing on a shorter leash. And the pork machine of slush funds, autopilot giveaways, and dark earmarks dismantled piece by piece, with the pieces that remain marked for demolition.

That is what happens when you go into a negotiation having already taken the other side’s leverage away. It is your money, taken from your family’s table before it ever reaches Lansing, and we are commanded to be faithful stewards of it. This budget is not perfect, and I told you exactly where it falls short, but it moves Michigan’s government in only one direction: smaller, humbler, more honest, and more accountable to the people it serves. The fight continues, starting with the elimination of the property tax, and I will be at the front of it.

This was budget week in Lansing, and it did not end until the sun came up. The House gaveled in Wednesday afternoon for a full slate of votes, spent Thursday locked in negotiations with the Senate and the Governor’s office, then gaveled back in at 12:01 a.m. Friday and worked straight through until 9:00 a.m. to finish the state budget. Below is what happened each day, what we won, where the budget still falls short, and an explanation of every single roll call vote I cast on your behalf. You elected me to show my work.

Vote Record Update

Since my first day in office, I have upheld my promise to regularly share to the public every single vote I have made with an explanation for each one. This is something done by only 8 of 110 Representatives in Michigan. Accountability can only be achieved when there is transparency. Here’s an update of my votes and reasons:

Senate Concurrent Resolution 14: Suspending the Summer Fuel Mandate to Fight $4 Gas

YES- ADOPTED 103-2

Gas has been running higher than four dollars per gallon. On top of that, state law forces a special low-vapor-pressure summer gasoline blend on eight southeast Michigan counties, including Oakland, Macomb, and St. Clair, which squeezes fuel supply and pushes pump prices even higher. The Governor’s April energy emergency suspended that mandate as far as a federal waiver allowed, but it expired July 1. The House adopted a stronger substitute from Rep. Steele and approved extending the emergency another 77 days so the mandate stays suspended through the summer driving season.

I voted yes because a government fuel recipe was making it more expensive for families in our district to drive to work, church, and the lake. Suspending it costs taxpayers nothing and delivers relief at the pump immediately. Only two members, both from the far left, voted no. My longer-term position is simple: if a mandate has to be suspended every summer to keep it from hurting people, the mandate itself should be repealed.

Senate Bill 878: Forcing the Senate to the Table on the Budget

YES- PASSED 104-1

This is the omnibus bill funding state government for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2027. The law says the budget is supposed to be done by July 1, and the Senate had run out the clock. So the House discharged the bill from committee, adopted our own substitute written by Appropriations Chair Ann Bollin, passed it, and sent it back across the rotunda. The Senate refused to concur that same evening, and both chambers appointed conference committees. Reps. Bollin, Maddock, and Tate carried the House position into negotiations.

I voted yes because you cannot negotiate from the sidelines. Passing the House framework put our priorities in writing: no new taxes, real spending restraint, and dollars aimed at roads and public safety instead of pet projects. This vote is what forced the all-night negotiation that finished the budget two days later. The full breakdown of that final agreement is below.

House Bill 4833: Right-Sizing District Court Judgeships

YES- PASSED 101-4

This bill, as substituted by the Judiciary Committee, amends the section of the Revised Judicature Act that sets the number of district court judgeships in specific districts, so that local benches line up with the actual caseloads coming through the door.

I voted yes because justice delayed is justice denied. Courts should be staffed according to their workload, not according to how things were drawn up decades ago. Keeping dockets moving matters to every family, farmer, and small business waiting for their day in court.

House Bill 5152: Protecting Homeowners from Foreclosure Equity Strippers

YES- PASSED 102-3

There are operators in this state who scan foreclosure filings, then show up at the door of a homeowner in distress, very often a senior citizen, and pressure them into signing over the deed for a fraction of what the home is worth. A lifetime of equity vanishes in one signature. This bill requires the foreclosure sale notice for residential property to be recorded, and requires plain-English written disclosures, including an estimated value of the home, along with a mandatory 7-day cooling-off period before anyone can ask a homeowner in foreclosure to sign the house away. It also warns the homeowner in writing to seek legal counsel or a certified housing counselor first.

I voted yes because a home is most families’ single largest store of wealth, and it is their property. Government’s first duty is protecting people from fraud and force, and no widow or retiree should be conned out of decades of equity at the most vulnerable moment of her life.

House Bill 5153: Guarding the Right of Redemption

YES- PASSED 102-3

This is the companion bill. After a foreclosure sale, Michigan law gives the homeowner a redemption period, one last window to save the house or capture the surplus value in it. The same predators buy up those redemption rights for pennies on the dollar. This bill extends the identical written-notice and cooling-off protections to any assignment of a homeowner’s redemption rights.

I voted yes for the same reason. The redemption window exists to protect the family, not to open a hunting season for scam artists.

House Bill 5727: Ending Lansing’s Work Permit Mandate for Teen Jobs

YES- PASSED 57-49

Michigan currently requires a teenager to obtain a government work permit before taking a job, and a 2024 law was about to hand that entire permit operation to a new bureaucracy inside the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity this October. Rep. Mike Hoadley’s bill scraps the permit mandate altogether. Instead, the employer verifies and keeps proof of the minor’s age, using a driver’s license, a school-issued age certificate, or a passport. Every hour limit and workplace safety protection for minors stays on the books, and schools can still flag an employer when a student’s grades or attendance start slipping. Every Democrat in the chamber voted no.

I voted yes because a first job builds work ethic, punctuality, and respect for a dollar earned. Whether a teenager bags groceries in Oxford, scoops ice cream in Romeo, or bales hay outside Ortonville is a decision for that young person, their parents, and the employer who hires them. It is not Lansing’s decision. This bill peels a layer of paperwork off families, schools, and small businesses while keeping every real protection for young workers in the law.

House Bill 5630: Rejecting the Senate’s School Aid Rewrite

NO ON CONCURRING- SENATE SUBSTITUTE R 1-105

House Bill 5630 is the education budget: K-12 schools, community colleges, and the universities. The House passed a responsible version back in April. Senate Democrats gutted it with a substitute of their own and sent it back to us. This vote was on whether to swallow their rewrite whole. The House said no, 105 to 1, which sent the bill to a conference committee where Reps. Bollin, Kelly, and Tate negotiated the final education budget on the House’s behalf.

I voted no on concurring because accepting the Senate’s version as written would have surrendered the House’s seat at the table. Rejecting it is precisely what forced a negotiated education budget, which passed at the end of the all-night session and is broken down in the budget section below.

Every vote below was cast between 12:01 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. You deserve to know how I voted and why, no matter what hour the votes come.

Senate Bill 966: A Quarter-Billion-Dollar-a-Year Tax Credit Program for Housing Developers

NO- PASSED 95-13

This bill creates a state low-income housing tax credit program run by the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. The authority would reserve up to $250 million in state tax credits every single year for housing projects it selects, with the cap growing automatically with inflation. It is tie-barred to companion bills letting recipients claim the credits against their income taxes.

I voted no because this is a permanent subsidy machine for developers, with an unelected authority in Lansing picking which projects get the money. Michigan’s housing problem is that government mandates make homes too expensive to build. The answer is to cut those mandates, which is exactly what I voted for a few hours later on House Bills 5570 and 5571, not to tax working families and hand the money to project developers with the right consultants.

Senate Bill 723: Billions in Tax Capture for Big Developers

NO- PASSED 82-26

This bill expands the Transformational Brownfield program, roughly doubling the statewide cap on the taxes developers can capture and keep to about $3.2 billion. Under this program, developers of selected mega-projects pocket the income taxes, withholding taxes, and sales taxes their projects generate, money that would otherwise fund roads, police, and schools. The projects lining up for it include the billionaire-backed Renaissance Center overhaul in Detroit, a shuttered Macomb County mall, and a proposed aquarium out west.

I voted no because your taxes exist to fund the basic duties of government, not to be gifted back to the wealthiest developers in the state. When politicians pick winners, the politically connected win and the family diner on Main Street loses. If a project only works because the developer keeps the taxes, the project does not work.

Senate Bill 81: Growing the Indigent Defense Bureaucracy

NO- PASSED 95-13

This bill expands the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission’s mission to cover juvenile defense statewide. It adds a new commissioner, requires roughly half a dozen new state employees to start, creates a new grant program with required local shares from county systems, and empowers the commission to haul local systems into circuit court if it decides they are out of compliance.

I voted no because this grows a Lansing bureaucracy and hands it both a bigger budget and the power to sue our counties. Every mandate and every new grant program lands on the same taxpayers in the end. Kids in the justice system deserve competent counsel, and our local courts and counties are the right ones to provide it, not a commission with an expanding payroll.

Senate Bill 423: Keeping Families in Their Homes During Tax Trouble

YES- PASSED 106-2

Under current law, tools that help families catch up on delinquent property taxes were set to expire. This bill extends and removes those sunsets, keeping alive the delinquent tax payment reduction option, installment payment plans, and tax foreclosure avoidance agreements of up to five years for people fighting to keep their homes.

I voted yes because no Michigander should lose the roof over their head to the government because of back taxes. My position on the property tax is well known: it should not exist at all, because you should not have to rent your own home from the state forever. Until we win that fight, every off-ramp that keeps a struggling family in their house stays open.

Senate Bill 293: Forfeiting Animals Before a Verdict

NO- PASSED 84-24

This bill rewrites the animal cruelty statute’s seizure process into a bond-or-forfeit system. When animals are seized in a cruelty or neglect case, the owner must post cost-of-care money within a short window or permanently forfeit the animals before the criminal case is ever decided, and the impounding agency can euthanize an animal during the case on a veterinarian’s determination. Dog owners’ organizations objected that the bill runs over the presumption of innocence, and farm families worry how neglect allegations get applied to ordinary animal husbandry.

I voted no because in this country you are innocent until proven guilty, and your property is not taken from you before a verdict. Anyone who tortures an animal should face the full weight of the law after conviction. But a system where an accusation plus an unaffordable bill equals permanent forfeiture, and possibly a dead animal, before trial is not justice, and it puts every farmer, breeder, and hunter one disputed complaint away from losing everything.

Senate Bill 294: The Companion Forfeiture Bill

NO- PASSED 84-24

This is the companion to Senate Bill 293, applying the same pretrial bond-or-forfeit system to the felony section of the penal code covering the killing or torture of animals.

I voted no for the same reason. Punish the guilty severely, after they are proven guilty. Do not strip property and destroy animals on the front end of a case.

Senate Bill 616: Shielding Opioid Companies from Michigan Communities

NO- PASSED 102-6

This bill amends the Opioid Liability Litigation Act to bar every Michigan city, county, and township from filing or continuing lawsuits against the companies covered by the newest national opioid settlements, including the $1.2 billion Kroger settlement, the $7.4 billion Purdue settlement, and $720 million in settlements with eight drug manufacturers. Locking the courthouse doors is what maximizes the incentive payments under those deals.

I voted no because I will not vote to permanently bar our own communities from the courtroom in order to sweeten a deal for the companies that flooded this state with pills. We have buried too many sons and daughters. If a corporation poisoned your town, your town should keep the right to look that corporation in the eye before a judge. Only six of us voted no. I stand by it.

Senate Bill 721: Extending Tax Carve-Outs for Commercial Developers

NO- PASSED 96-12

This bill extends the Commercial Redevelopment Act’s special property tax abatements for selected commercial projects all the way through 2035.

I voted no because tax abatements for the connected shift the burden onto the homeowners and small businesses who never get a deal. If property taxes are too heavy for a developer to build under, they are too heavy for the widow on a fixed income, period. Cut them for everyone.

Senate Bill 722: More of the Same Carve-Outs

NO- PASSED 97-11

The companion bill, extending the Commercial Rehabilitation Act’s property tax exemptions for selected projects through 2035.

I voted no for the same reason. Equal treatment under the tax code, not favors handed out by resolution.

Senate Bill 106: Making the State a Fundraiser for a Private Group

NO- PASSED 86-22

This bill creates a brand-new fundraising license plate designed with the Michigan Pet Alliance, a private nonprofit, creates a new fund in the state treasury for the proceeds, and directs the State Treasurer to hand that money over to the Michigan Pet Alliance for spay and neuter efforts.

I voted no because the Secretary of State and the Treasury should not operate as the fundraising arm of any hand-picked private organization. If you love that cause, and many good people do, write the check directly. Government collecting donations for chosen nonprofits is a door we should not keep propping open. Note the difference with Senate Bill 421 below, where I voted yes on simple housekeeping for a plate that already exists in law.

House Bill 5485: Dam Safety After Edenville

YES- PASSED 100-8

Michigan watched the Edenville and Sanford dams fail in 2020, wiping out homes and draining lakes that families had built their lives around. This bill overhauls the dam safety part of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act from top to bottom, adding roughly a dozen new sections covering inspections, emergency planning, and accountability for the condition of dams across the state.

I voted yes because protecting lives, homes, and lakefront property from a preventable catastrophe is a core duty of government, the kind government should be doing instead of everything else it dabbles in. Our lakes are our heritage in this part of Michigan, and the families living below an aging dam deserve to know somebody is actually checking it.

Senate Bill 604: A Raise for the Liquor Monopoly’s Middlemen

NO- PASSED 100-8

Michigan runs a state liquor monopoly, and the state’s contracted authorized distribution agents warehouse and deliver every case of spirits. This bill locks the per-case offset fee at the top of the current range, $12.50, puts it on automatic annual increases tied to inflation, and mandates an additional $1.75 per case paid to the distribution agents. The state’s own analysts estimate it drains $4 million to $5.1 million from the General Fund over the next decade.

I voted no because this is an automatic, permanent raise for the mandated middlemen of a government monopoly, passed in the middle of the night, with the cost skimmed from the fund that pays for everything else and rolled downhill to the corner party store and your receipt. The monopoly is the problem. Fattening it is not the answer.

Senate Bill 418: Strengthening the Fight Against Child Abuse

YES- PASSED 99-9

This bill updates the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Act, the law behind the state board known as Children Trust Michigan, the only statewide body whose entire mission is preventing child abuse and neglect before it happens. The bill modernizes the board’s structure and its rules for supporting direct services.

I voted yes because protecting children from abuse is one of the few things everyone in that chamber should agree government must do, and prevention spares a child a lifetime of scars and spares taxpayers the far greater cost of the aftermath.

Senate Bill 421: Housekeeping for the Existing Child Abuse Prevention Plate

YES- PASSED 103-5

This bill simply updates the Michigan Vehicle Code’s existing child abuse prevention fundraising plate so its references match the updated board under Senate Bill 418, to which it is tie-barred.

I voted yes because keeping a plate that already exists in law working properly is basic housekeeping. That is the difference between this vote and my no on Senate Bill 106: maintaining what is already in statute for abused kids is not the same as creating new state fundraising channels for private groups.

Senate Bill 105: Fair Payment Rules for Dental Claims

YES- PASSED 107-1

This bill adds a new section to the Insurance Code setting ground rules for the payment and reimbursement methods insurers use when paying dental benefit claims. Bills like this exist because providers around the country have been pushed into payment schemes that shave processing fees off every single reimbursement.

I voted yes because the dental office on Main Street should receive what it actually earned for the work it actually did. Insurance giants do not need the government’s help taking a cut off the top of small practices.

Senate Bill 716: Keeping Drug Schedules Current

YES- PASSED 102-6

This bill amends the controlled substances article of the Public Health Code, updating the section that governs how substances get scheduled under Michigan law.

I voted yes because in the age of fentanyl and an endless parade of new synthetic poisons, our drug schedules cannot have gaps that handcuff police and prosecutors. The handful of no votes came mostly from members who favor loosening drug laws generally. I do not.

Senate Bill 989: Opening the Classroom Door to Accomplished Professionals

YES- PASSED 108-0

This bill modernizes the interim teaching certificate, Michigan’s alternative route into the classroom for degreed professionals who did not come up through a traditional education school.

I voted yes, along with every single member of the House, because Michigan has a teacher shortage and a retired engineer, nurse, or accountant with real subject mastery should not be turned away by a one-size-fits-all pipeline. Put capable adults in front of our kids.

Senate Bill 501: Implementing the Physical Therapy Compact

YES- PASSED 106-2

This is the implementation half of the physical therapy licensure compact, updating Michigan’s physical therapy licensing sections and setting the modest fee for out-of-state therapists practicing here under the compact. The compact itself is House Bill 4101, explained below.

I voted yes for the same reason as the compact: fewer bureaucratic walls between a patient and care.

Senate Bill 456: Finding Missing Seniors Faster

YES- PASSED 106-2

This bill updates the Mozelle Senior or Vulnerable Adult Medical Alert Act, the statewide alert system used when a senior citizen or vulnerable adult goes missing.

I voted yes because when a grandmother with dementia wanders from home in January, every hour matters. Bringing our vulnerable neighbors home safely is exactly what these alerts are for.

Senate Bill 18: Stop Taking Foster Kids’ Own Money

YES- PASSED 107-1

Here is something most Michiganders do not know: when a child in foster care receives Social Security survivor benefits because a parent died, or veterans benefits, or other income, the state has been collecting that money, millions of dollars a year of it, and using it to reimburse itself for the cost of the child’s care. This bill ends that practice and protects a foster child’s benefits, assets, and income as the child’s own.

I voted yes because the government was pocketing orphans’ survivor checks. That money belongs to the child whose mother or father died, not to the department. This is as simple as right and wrong gets.

Senate Bill 71: Protecting the Mackinac Bridge as Critical Infrastructure

YES- PASSED 96-12

Michigan law already makes it a felony to trespass on key facilities like refineries, water treatment plants, and power infrastructure. This bill extends that key facility protection to the Mackinac Bridge, so climbing past the barriers onto the towers, cables, or structure is a felony carrying up to four years. It follows a 2021 bomb threat that shut the bridge down in both directions.

I voted yes because the Mighty Mac literally holds this state together, for families, for tourism, for commerce. It deserves the same legal protection as a power plant. The dozen no votes came from the left. I will always vote to protect what keeps Michigan running.

Senate Bill 133: Insurance Licensing Housekeeping

YES- PASSED 107-1

This bill makes a technical update to the chapter of the Insurance Code that governs the licensing of insurance agents and producers.

I voted yes on what was straightforward housekeeping, passed with one dissenting vote.

Senate Bill 52: Modernizing the Port of Detroit’s Governing Law

YES- PASSED 104-4

This bill delivers the first serious update in decades to the 1978 law governing port authorities, the statute behind the port authority serving Detroit and Wayne County, revising its powers, financing, and operating rules.

I voted yes because Great Lakes shipping means Michigan jobs, including for the trades families of Macomb and Oakland counties, and a port operating under a law written in 1978 needed its rules brought into this century with proper accountability attached.

Senate Bill 903: A Midnight Rewrite of School Funding Rules That Nobody Vetted

NO- PASSED 101-7

This bill adds a new section to the school code spelling out the conditions districts must satisfy to receive the new weighted per-pupil funding created in the school aid budget, which is tie-barred to it. Here is the problem: it was introduced days before, never received a committee hearing, and was adopted in the dead of night as part of the budget rush. A Republican senator formally protested on exactly those grounds.

I voted no, one of only seven, because I do not rubber-stamp sweeping rewrites of how billions in school money flows when nobody in the building has had time to read or vet the mandate. I voted for the school funding itself in the conference report below. I will not pretend an unexamined mandate written overnight is good lawmaking, no matter whose name is on it.

House Bill 4101: The Physical Therapy Licensure Compact

YES- APPROVED 106-2

This bill enters Michigan into the interstate physical therapy licensure compact. A licensed physical therapist in good standing in a member state can treat patients here, and Michigan therapists can do the same elsewhere, without duplicating a mountain of licensing paperwork, with a shared discipline database as the safeguard.

I voted yes because a government form should never stand between a patient and care. These compacts help rural communities and are a blessing for military spouses who move every few years and have to beg a new state for permission to work every time.

House Bill 6126: Wiring the Budget to the Sportsbook

NO- APPROVED 105-3

This bill reshuffles how money in the internet sports betting fund is spent and distributed, part of the maneuvers used to patch the budget.

I voted no, one of only three, because every year Lansing leans harder on gambling receipts to balance its books, the state becomes a business partner of an industry that preys on families, feeds addiction, and empties the accounts of the people who can least afford it. I will not help wire the state budget to the sportsbook.

House Bill 6127: Same Play, Online Casino Edition

NO- APPROVED 105-3

The companion bill, reshuffling expenditures from the internet gaming fund, the online casino money.

I voted no for the same reason. A state that needs its citizens to lose money to pay its bills has its priorities exactly backwards.

House Bill 6130: Ending Autopilot for a Special Detroit Debt Fund

YES- PASSED 60-48

This bill amends the Michigan Trust Fund Act’s community district education trust fund, the special account created in 2016 to pay down the old Detroit school district’s debt with tobacco settlement dollars, revising that arrangement as part of carrying out the budget agreement.

I voted yes because special funding pipelines built for one district’s bailout should not run on autopilot forever while every other district in Michigan, including ours, lives within its means. Once the obligation is covered, those dollars belong to the priorities of the whole state. This one split almost perfectly down party lines, and Democrats voted no.

House Bill 5482: Budget Process Housekeeping

YES- PASSED 108-0

This bill makes a technical amendment to the Management and Budget Act, the law governing how the state’s budget machinery operates, needed to execute this year’s budget cleanly.

I voted yes along with every member of the House. Housekeeping.

House Bill 5109: Vehicle Code Plate Cleanup

YES- PASSED 108-0

This bill makes a technical cleanup to one of the Michigan Vehicle Code’s license plate sections.

I voted yes along with every member of the House. More housekeeping.

House Bill 6043: Putting Tri-Share Child Care into Law

YES- APPROVED 99-9

This bill writes the MI Tri-Share child care model into statute. Under Tri-Share, the cost of child care for a working parent is split three ways: the employer pays a share, the working parent pays a share, and the state covers a capped share, with a fund established to run the program.

I voted yes because this is the right shape for help: parents working, employers invested in their own people, and the state’s portion limited, instead of another open-ended government daycare entitlement. Around here, where both parents in a lot of households are working to keep up, this keeps families working without surrendering child rearing to a bureaucracy.

House Bill 4350: Grandma’s Bird Feeder Is Not a Crime

YES- APPROVED 76-32

Under the state’s wildlife feeding ban, ordinary people feeding birds and wildlife in their own yards have been left in legal gray territory. This bill creates a clean exception: you may feed birds and wildlife within 300 feet of your residence, up to two gallons of feed.

I voted yes because a retiree filling a bird feeder on her own property should never have to wonder if the DNR considers her a criminal. Your land is your land. Most Democrats voted no. I will take the side of the homeowner and the bird feeder every time.

House Bill 4805: Updating the Children’s Trust Fund

YES- APPROVED 102-6

This bill updates the law governing the state children’s trust fund in the Treasury, the fund that finances the child abuse prevention work of Children Trust Michigan, and moves as part of the same package as Senate Bills 418 and 421.

I voted yes for the same reason as those bills: preventing the abuse of children is a duty, not a debate.

House Bill 4808: Keeping Public Meetings Open and Honest

YES- APPROVED 100-8

This bill fine-tunes the Open Meetings Act’s rules on when members of public bodies may participate in meetings remotely.

I voted yes because the people’s business belongs in the open, in person, in front of the public as the rule, with narrow and honest exceptions where the law allows them. This keeps the guardrails on.

House Bill 4518: Modernizing the Amber Alert

YES- APPROVED 107-1

This bill updates the Michigan Amber Alert Act so the system for finding abducted children reflects how alerts, law enforcement coordination, and communication actually work today.

I voted yes because when a child is taken, minutes decide everything. Whatever sharpens that system gets my vote.

House Bill 4750: Finishing the Foster Care Benefits Protection

YES- APPROVED 106-1

This is the House companion to Senate Bill 18, completing the reform that stops the state from raiding the benefits, assets, and income of children in foster care to reimburse itself.

I voted yes for the same reason I gave on Senate Bill 18. The state does not get to spend an orphan’s survivor benefits on itself.

Senate Bill 585: No More Fire Sales of a Ward’s Home

YES- PASSED 107-0

Before a probate court allows a court-appointed conservator to sell or mortgage a protected person’s property, this bill requires the court to weigh a real appraisal conducted within the previous six months.

I voted yes because Michigan has seen too many cases of a senior’s home sold out from under them for a fraction of its worth by a court-appointed stranger. An honest appraisal in front of the judge is the least we owe people who can no longer defend their own property.

Senate Bill 586: A Guardian Cannot Just Uproot Someone from Their Home

YES- PASSED 107-0

This companion bill bars courts from handing a guardian blanket authority to change an incapacitated person’s residence, adding safeguards before a ward can be moved out of their home. Testimony documented professional guardians juggling enormous caseloads who parked wards in facilities based on convenience, not the person’s needs or wishes.

I voted yes because our elders are not inventory. The ward’s own wishes and the ward’s own family come before the caseload convenience of a paid stranger. Both of these guardianship reforms passed unanimously, and they were overdue.

House Bill 4062: Slamming the Revolving Door for Legislators

YES- APPROVED 89-18

This bill imposes a two-year cooling-off period before a former state legislator can register as a lobbyist, with a misdemeanor penalty of up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine for violations. Michigan has long been one of the few states with no waiting period at all, and members here have gone to sleep as legislators and woken up as lobbyists.

I voted yes because you were sent to Lansing to serve the people of your district, not to audition for the influence industry. Two years between the people’s business and the lobby corps is the bare minimum.

House Bill 4063: The Same Ban for Governors and Department Heads

YES- APPROVED 92-15

This bill extends the identical two-year lobbying ban to former governors, lieutenant governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general, and directors of state departments.

I voted yes because the revolving door spins hardest at the top of the executive branch, where officials regulate the very industries waiting to hire them. Slam it shut there too.

House Bill 4064: No Lobbying Paychecks for Sitting Legislators

YES- APPROVED 94-13

This bill prohibits current state legislators from accepting compensation to lobby, in Michigan or anywhere else, while holding office. It was prompted by a sitting Michigan lawmaker who took payment to push policy out of state while serving here.

I voted yes because you get one job in this building: the people’s job. Anyone who wants a lobbying paycheck can resign and wait their two years like everyone else.

House Bill 4187: The Budget’s Revenue Plumbing

YES- APPROVED 107-0

The Senate rewrote this bill into the budget’s revenue plumbing, adjusting how individual and corporate income tax dollars are divided among state funds so that the budget agreement and the road funding plan already in law stay on track, all without touching anyone’s tax rate.

I voted yes along with every member of the House. This is the bookkeeping that makes a no-new-taxes budget add up.

House Bill 5630: The Education Budget

YES- CONFERENCE REPORT ADOPTED 99-8

This is the conference agreement on the education budget: roughly $19.8 billion for K-12 schools, plus community colleges and the universities. The vote came as the sun was coming up. Here is what is in it and where I stand.

The wins are real. Base per-pupil funding rises $250 to $10,300 for every district, including every school serving our communities from Oxford to Romeo to Brandon. There is $75 million for literacy training so teachers are equipped with reading instruction that actually works, paired with House Bill 5697 below, because Michigan sitting near the bottom of the country in reading is a disgrace we stop tolerating now. The budget consolidates at-risk and bilingual money into a new weighted per-pupil allowance instead of a maze of categorical programs. It adds real accountability: penalties for districts that fail to post their budgets publicly and for employing uncertified personnel. It funds the universities largely from the School Aid Fund, as the constitution permits, which freed up general fund dollars to balance the whole budget without raising a dime of taxes. And overall education spending came in about a billion dollars below the current year, because government tightened its belt instead of tightening yours.

Now the honest part. A conference report of this size landed on our desks overnight with almost no time to read it, and that process is indefensible no matter which party runs it. I weighed a flawed process against real substance: more money following every student, a hard turn back to reading fundamentals, accountability with teeth, and no tax increases. The substance won my vote. The process still needs to change, and I will keep saying so.

House Bill 4309: The Physician Assistant Licensure Compact

YES- APPROVED 104-2

This bill enters Michigan into the interstate physician assistant licensure compact, letting PAs licensed in good standing in member states practice here without duplicating the licensing gauntlet, backed by a shared discipline and investigative database.

I voted yes for the same reason as the other compacts tonight: more caregivers, less paperwork, and real help for rural communities and military families.

House Bill 4396: Second Chances for Kids Who Straighten Out

YES- APPROVED 104-2

This bill updates the record provisions of the Juvenile Diversion Act, the law that lets minor youthful offenses be handled outside the formal court system.

I voted yes because a kid who makes a mistake, takes his medicine, and straightens out should not drag a government paper trail behind him for life. Families, churches, and communities correct young people better than the system ever will, and diversion respects that.

House Bill 6074: Michigan Homes for Michigan Families, Not Wall Street

YES- APPROVED 104-2

This bill prohibits large institutional investors, meaning entities that already control more than 100 single-family homes and carry a net value around $375 million, from buying up Michigan’s single-family housing stock. It includes commonsense exceptions for buyers who add new housing, substantially rehabilitate a home, or run a genuine rent-to-own pathway for a tenant.

I voted yes, enthusiastically. When a hedge fund with a billion dollars bids cash against a young couple from Oxford or Romeo trying to buy their first house, that is not a free market, it is a feeding frenzy that turns family neighborhoods into rental portfolios. Homeownership is the foundation of the family, and the family is the foundation of everything else. This one was worth staying up for.

House Bill 5697: Teach Teachers to Teach Reading

YES- APPROVED 103-3

Beginning with the 2029-2030 school year, this bill requires districts to ensure their K-5 teachers and related personnel complete professional training in reading instruction, the classroom companion to the $75 million literacy investment in the education budget.

I voted yes because Michigan ranks near the bottom of the nation in reading, and you do not fix that with another program or slogan. You fix it by making sure every elementary teacher is trained in instruction that actually teaches children to read. Back to basics.

House Bill 5806: The Housing Credit Program, House Edition

NO- APPROVED 94-12

This bill creates the housing opportunity tax credits in the Income Tax Act, the House half of the same state housing tax credit program as Senate Bill 966: government-allocated credits steering money to selected housing developments.

I voted no for the same reason I voted no at the start of the night. Subsidy programs do not build affordable housing, they build a permanent class of subsidized developers. Cutting the mandates that inflate construction costs, like I voted to do on the very next bills, is how homes get cheaper.

House Bill 5807: A Tax Offset for Insurance Companies

NO- APPROVED 94-12

The companion bill, allowing insurance companies to claim those housing credits against the retaliatory tax they owe the state.

I voted no. A special tax offset for insurance giants, attached to a developer subsidy program, in the middle of the night. Working families got no such favor in this budget, and I was not going to pretend this one was for them.

House Bill 5570: Cutting a Costly Building Mandate to Lower Housing Prices

YES- APPROVED 102-4

Michigan’s construction code effectively bans apartment buildings designed around a single exit stairway, a design common in much of the world, which forces costlier layouts that price out smaller projects. This bill allows single-exit-stairway multifamily buildings under strict safety conditions written into the statute.

I voted yes because this is the honest way to make housing affordable: find the government mandate inflating the cost of a home and remove it, with safety requirements intact, at zero cost to taxpayers. Compare this vote to the quarter-billion-dollar credit programs I opposed tonight. Deregulation builds. Subsidies bill.

House Bill 5571: The Same Reform for Buildings Up to Six Stories

YES- APPROVED 102-4

The companion bill, extending the single-stairway allowance to multifamily buildings of up to six stories under the same strict conditions.

I voted yes for the same reason. More homes, built by builders, not by bureaucrats holding a checkbook full of your money.

House Bill 4103: The Occupational Therapy Licensure Compact

YES- APPROVED 104-2

This bill enters Michigan into the interstate occupational therapy licensure compact, on the same model as the physical therapy and physician assistant compacts.

I voted yes. Same principle: let qualified professionals work.

House Bill 4104: Implementing the Occupational Therapy Compact

YES- APPROVED 104-2

The companion bill, integrating the occupational therapy compact into Michigan’s licensing process.

I voted yes for the same reason.

House Bill 4824: Clear Rules for New Drink Products

YES- APPROVED 102-4

This bill updates the Liquor Control Code’s brand definitions and requires a supplier registering a multibranded product, a drink carrying the brands of two or more suppliers, to appoint the wholesalers that already hold the rights to the underlying brands.

I voted yes because clear rules of the road in the distribution system mean new Michigan-made products reach store shelves through contracts instead of courtrooms. Certainty for the makers, the distributors, and the party store alike.

Senate Bill 878: The State Budget

YES- CONFERENCE REPORT ADOPTED 99-7

The final vote of the marathon: the conference agreement funding state government for the coming fiscal year. Here is what we won, what it means for our district, and where it still falls short.

What we won. It contains zero new taxes and zero fee increases. The Governor opened this cycle demanding roughly $200 million in new gambling taxes among other revenue grabs, and House Republicans killed every one of them. The rainy day fund was left untouched. A billion-dollar revenue shortfall was closed with cuts and efficiencies instead of your wallet: another 250 empty ghost positions on the state payroll were eliminated, ten state departments take real reductions, and the Pure Michigan advertising budget, arts and culture grants, and the Office of Global Michigan all got trimmed. New anti-fraud measures were attached to public assistance programs. Roads and bridges get $52.7 million more on top of the long-term road funding law already steering corporate income tax dollars to local roads. Revenue sharing for our local governments continues, with additional help for overloaded county prosecutors and disaster response.

What it means here at home. The Blue Heron Environmental Area project in Oakland Township, detailed at the top of this newsletter, moves forward: $400,000 in royalty-funded trust fund dollars opening 107 acres to the public for the first time. Every school district serving our families gets the $10,300 per pupil funding. Our county road agencies in Oakland and Macomb see the road dollars, and our townships and villages keep their revenue sharing.

Where it falls short. I will not sugarcoat it. This budget was good, but it wasn’t perfect. About $125 million in special project earmarks survived. The total is still an enormous sum of your money.

I weighed all of it. Assessing every realistic alternative on the table, I could not ignore that this budget spends less than last year, raises no taxes, protects savings accounts, cuts bureaucracy, funds roads and serves the next generation.

I voted yes, and then the House adjourned at 9:00 a.m after a marathon Floor Session that lasted nearly 24 straight hours.