Governor Gretchen Whitmer said Wednesday it is time again for drivers to be on the lookout for orange barrels and construction workers.
Whitmer accessorized with a star-spangled red, white and blue helmet as she moved some gravel and rolled out an orange barrel at a construction site on M-14 to launch the warm weather road repair season and celebrate the nearly $2-billion-a-year road funding deal with the Legislature.
“This is a big investment that was long overdue,” she said. “There’s still going to be more work to do here, no question, but this will represent a significant improvement in the infrastructure we all rely on."
This is Whitmer’s final year in office and she said the road package substantially fulfills her signature campaign pledge to “fix the damn roads.”
While not everything she initially sought (including an ill-fated 45-cent per gallon increase in the gas tax), Whitmer said the almost $2-billion-a-year road funding deal she signed last year is a long-term funding source to fix roads and bridges, although more will be needed at some point.
“I’m talking about the nature of infrastructure – it’s never done,” she said. “You’re always re-building and we’ve let it go for so long without a real infusion of sustainable dollars.”
The package includes eliminating the sales tax on fuel purchases and replacing it with a separate gasoline tax, which ensures all taxes collected at the pump go to roads. Some corporate tax revenue is also now used for roads.
But a significant portion of that road funding is in question because it relies on revenue from a new wholesale tax on cannabis products. That tax is being challenged in two separate lawsuits filed by the state’s recreational marijuana industry on the grounds it violates a 2018 voter initiative because the Legislature did not adopt it with super majorities and that it exceeds the sales tax rate set in the Michigan Constitution.
An industry spokesperson said it would be a mistake for the state to continue to count on revenue from the wholesale tax on marijuana for road revenue.
"There’s nothing sustainable about the road funding plan,” said Rose Tantraphol, spokesperson for the Michigan Cannabis Industry Association. “It was established through an unconstitutional process and sets up a tax structure that is illegal. The road funding compromise singled out the cannabis industry and has already triggered business closures and job losses. Undercutting one industry isn't going to raise the revenue that the state hopes to raise."
