Gretchen Whitmer’s Unfulfilled Populist Pledges — ProPublica

With a conspicuous presence this week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and a bestselling new memoir, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is celebrated as an ascending leader — someone who won over a decidedly purple state in 2018 by promoting commonsense solutions to issues affecting millions of people.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi effusively praised the governor at the Michigan delegation breakfast on Wednesday morning, saying: “She has been remarkable. Every time I hear her speak, I think sharp. Sharp in her message. Sharp in her effectiveness.”

But time is running out in Whitmer’s second and final term as governor to follow through on some key campaign promises.

Whitmer vowed as a candidate to “fix the damn roads,” bring transparency to state government, fight for a $15 minimum wage, repeal the emergency manager law and get a handle on companies that extract and sell large quantities of Michigan groundwater.

Six years later, those populist pledges are partially or entirely unfulfilled.

Advocates and even some allies are waiting for Whitmer to take up the causes she campaigned on during a critical period, when Democrats still have firm control over how the state is run. “Obviously, I would welcome the governor’s support,” said House Majority Floor Leader Abraham Aiyash, a Democrat who is working to replace the emergency manager law that has been so controversial in the state.

But it’s not clear if that support will come during a busy election season; nor is it clear what Whitmer will focus on once she leaves Chicago.

Whitmer’s office didn’t provide a response to questions from ProPublica for this story.

She’s heralded by some political observers for navigating both a divided state government and a pandemic in her first term, while still making progress on many priorities. When her gas tax proposal for road repairs fell flat, for example, she turned to bonds to help with immediate needs.

Heightened expectations from her supporters came in 2022 when Democrats won the governor’s office and both chambers of the Legislature for the first time in about 40 years. With a projected $9.2 billion budget surplus to boot, Whitmer and her party were virtually without obstacles for whatever they wanted to do.

Her supporters point to successes since then. She and the Legislature were able to codify abortion rights; repeal the “right-to-work” law that allowed workers in unionized jobs to opt out of union dues and fees; enact policies aimed at preventing gun violence; pass juvenile justice reforms; expand the earned income tax credit; and provide free breakfast and lunch to all public schoolchildren.

“Whitmer has overcome obstacles to keep many of her campaign promises. But there are more promises to keep,” Mark Brewer, former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, said in an email.

Figuring out how to fund ongoing road improvements, for example, fell off the radar. “Now she has a Democratic House and Senate, and still nothing’s getting done,” said Eric Lupher, president of the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonpartisan policy organization that has studied road funding.

Whitmer has also not publicly advocated for pending bills that would open up the records of the governor’s office and the Legislature. And, to date, the minimum wage is just $10.33. A recent ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court puts the state on a path toward a higher wage, including for tipped workers, but business groups are pressuring lawmakers in the capital to intervene and Whitmer has been quiet about whether or not she supports a compromise.

“Her last two years have just been so consumed by the pent-up priorities of 40 years for Democrats that a lot of those like first-term promises took a back seat,” said Susan Demas, editor in chief of Michigan Advance and a longtime political columnist.

A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks said in an email that “we anticipate having a productive second half of the year and conversations about the fall agenda are ongoing.”

Demas sees a talented leader in Whitmer, one with a future on the national stage — in part because she governs as a pragmatist. And that same pragmatism helps explain Whitmer’s shifting agenda, she said.

“Making State Government More Open”

From misbehavior by legislators to the Flint water crisis, scandals revealed the cost of secrecy. Whitmer said she was committed to “making state government more open, transparent and accountable to Michigan taxpayers,” according to her 2018 Sunshine Plan.

Expanding the Freedom of Information Act was a key part of the strategy. Michigan is the rare state where both the governor’s office and Legislature are exempt from open records law.

In the plan Whitmer laid out while running for governor, she pledged that even if the Legislature didn’t act on the need for transparency, she’d voluntarily “extend FOIA to the lieutenant governor and governor’s offices. Michiganders should know when and what their governor is working on.”

She has yet to do so. And to some, the governor’s promises of transparency contrast with reports about her administration’s use of nondisclosure agreements with lawmakers regarding economic development deals and a memo asking to review record requests sent to other departments that include one or more communications with the executive office.

“To me, that is just an unforced error, the height of hypocrisy,” said Abby Mitch, executive director of Michigan Rising Action, a right-leaning watchdog group.

Whitmer has defended the use of confidentiality agreements for economic development projects, according to Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit news service, saying there is “a lot of proprietary information” shared as states compete for these investments.

Regarding the memo, Bridge reported that Whitmer’s spokesperson described the policy as a way to increase efficiency and said that the governor’s office never approves or denies the release of public records.

Sen. Ed McBroom, a Republican, and Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Democrat, have been trying to expand FOIA for nearly a decade, dating back to when they served as representatives during the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, who served from 2011 through 2018. Their latest bills passed the Senate for the first time in June.

If signed into law this year, the bills would take effect on Jan. 1, 2027, the day the next governor takes office, and retroactive requests could be excluded, according to an analyst with the Senate Fiscal Agency.

Lawmakers needed a start date that allows time to build capacity and protocols to meet new requirements, Moss said. McBroom noted that since there aren’t currently record retention rules, retroactive requests would “just be causing a lot of work to get a paper back that says there isn’t anything to show you.”

After years of negotiation with diverse stakeholders, including the governor’s office, Moss said, “we feel we got it right.”

Lisa McGraw, the public affairs manager of the Michigan Press Association, said the bills aren’t perfect, but they’d be a huge step forward. Local government officials are subject to FOIA, she pointed out, as is the attorney general and secretary of state. “I don’t know why we don’t put the governor and the Legislature to the same level of accountability and transparency,” she said.

It’s now up to the House to take up the issue, and to do so during a crowded campaign season. “We’re down to the wire,” McGraw said.

Whitmer could accelerate the process and set an example by giving the go-ahead to pass the measure opening up her own office first, McBroom said. But he understands why she wants to take the leap together. “It’s always very difficult to unilaterally disarm in the political world,” he said.

“Fix the Damn Roads”

Dangerously deteriorating roads are a perennial complaint of Michiganders. Leaders from both parties have struggled to maintain them. Pavement quality ranks 40th nationally and 10th in an 11-state peer group, according to the Citizens Research Council.

In 2019, after Whitmer’s proposal of a 45-cent gas tax increase died before the GOP-led Legislature, the governor opted for $3.5 billion in state bonds. That was later supplemented by Michigan’s cut of federal infrastructure money.

The result: State spending on road and bridge programs nearly doubled between 2015 and 2023, according to a recent CRC report. But with rising construction costs over that period, the purchasing power of Michigan’s road agencies only increased by about 50%. And the spending relies on short-term funds that will soon dry up. State officials have still not established a sufficient and sustainable revenue stream for roads.

Bonds are “pulling revenues from the future to pay for the fixes now,” said Lupher, CRC’s president.

Former Gov. John Engler, a Republican, made a similar move in the 1990s, Lupher said, and the state “paid the price in the years that followed” — literally. Paying the principal and interest left less money for upkeep, which then deteriorated the value of the investment, he said.

Subpar roads contribute to Michigan’s long-running struggle to retain and grow its population, according to a report last December from an advisory council appointed by Whitmer. “Instead of being an asset to Michigan residents, visitors and businesses,” the council said, “the current inadequate maintenance and funding of our roads, highways and bridges is a liability.”

The year Whitmer was elected, the Michigan section of the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the state’s roads a D- in its report card. Last year, it gave a D. The report said that within 10 years, without further action, the proportion of paved roads in poor condition will increase from 33% to 48%.

Even with the new state and federal investments, Michigan’s funding gap is $3.9 billion per year, according to researchers commissioned by an industry group to study the issue. Michigan’s complex and decentralized funding system also likely leads to inefficient spending. “The only thing more broken and busted than Michigan’s roads,” the CRC said in a 2022 report, “is the funding system that we’re using to try to fix them.”

Whitmer has indicated that she no longer supports a gas tax increase, according to news reports. But she and Democratic leaders have yet to develop another funding source.

“Once the Legislature said no to a gas tax increase and she introduced the bond idea,” Lupher said, “they washed their hands of it. So definitely, the next governor, two governors from now, is going to have to figure it out. But for this one: problem avoided.”

“Return Power Back to Local Governments”

Whitmer’s Sunshine Plan also promised to repeal Michigan’s emergency manager law, which gives state-appointed administrators unusual authority over distressed cities and school districts. Under Snyder, Whitmer’s predecessor, managers were dispatched to Detroit ahead of its bankruptcy and to Flint during a period that overlapped with a cataclysmic water crisis. Their takeover powers — which essentially replace local representative decision-making — are widely seen as contributing to the catastrophe in Flint.

“I fought against the ill-conceived Emergency Manager law when it was pushed through the Legislature — not once but twice — during the early days of Governor Snyder’s administration,” Whitmer said in the 2018 plan. “I will return power back to local governments and will provide meaningful investment, support and assistance to partner with local elected officials.”

Part of the controversy is that, in 2012, voters rejected lawmakers’ initial effort to expand the power of emergency managers in a statewide referendum. The following month, the Republican Legislature passed a similar version of the law — this time with an appropriation attached, making it immune from future referendums.

The Whitmer administration has never appointed an emergency manager, but the law remains active. Brewer, the former head of the Michigan Democratic Party, said in an email that one of the promises he’s looking to see Whitmer fulfill is “repealing the anti-democratic emergency manager law which led to the poisoning of Flint.” To date, though, efforts to do so have stalled.

A statement previously provided to ProPublica from Whitmer’s press secretary said that the governor will “work closely with the legislature if they take up legislation reforming the state’s emergency manager law.”

Some legislators have said that repealing the law must come alongside a new policy for the state to respond to struggling cities and schools. Aiyash, the House majority floor leader, told ProPublica that he’s collaborating with another lawmaker to propose such legislation this fall.

“It’s not like this is a hypothetical,” Aiyash said. “We saw what emergency management did to these communities and know that it can happen again at any moment. So we have to make sure that they’re not going to give folks the opportunity to utilize this archaic, punitive law anymore.”

Whitmer, as a candidate, centered Flint in her campaign — and not only in her opposition to the emergency manager law. She also criticized the state for allowing a bottled water company to dramatically increase how much groundwater it extracts in exchange for nominal fees while there were residents who struggled “to pay past-due bills for undrinkable water,” as her campaign’s water plan put it.

In her plan, Whitmer said her administration would “control the siphoning of water for water bottling,” but there’s been little change, as ProPublica reported this year.

“Focus on Raising Wages”

Whitmer made a $15 minimum wage part of her platform in 2018, phased in over three years, and promoted the Fight for $15 cause, which has since rebranded as Fight for a Union.

“To build an economy that works for everyone, we need to focus on raising wages for all working families,” she said in her campaign’s jobs plan.

Then things got complicated.

At the time, Michigan seemed headed for ballot initiatives where voters would decide whether to increase the minimum wage, phase out the lower wage for tipped workers and require employers to provide paid sick leave. But the Legislature, then led by Republicans, kept it off the ballot by adopting the petitions as law — and then, after the election, promptly watering them down. It increased the minimum wage by a smaller amount, retained the tipped wage and scaled back what is required for paid leave.

This summer, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that this “adopt-and-amend” tactic is unconstitutional. The court instructed the state to phase in the provisions in the original laws, with adjustments for inflation. The state has yet to determine what the increases would look like over time. The Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association projected that the minimum wage would reach $13.50 by 2028.

While organizations representing workers are celebrating, business groups are pushing back.

The MRLA said on its website that it’s working with Lansing leaders on a legislative solution to offset the ruling’s impact on the hospitality industry. “This is an existential, all-hands-on-deck moment for our industry,” the MRLA notice said.

Justin Winslow, MRLA’s president and CEO, told ProPublica that his group has heard nothing from the governor since the ruling, which he interprets as a positive: “She’s going to let the Legislature do what it needs to do to correct this.” He said he’s encouraged by quotes in the Detroit Free Press in 2022, where, he said, the governor “stressed the need for a compromise.”

Some Democratic legislators have also been quiet on potential modifications to the laws.

Justin Onwenu, a point person in Michigan for the nonprofit One Fair Wage until recently, said that given their strong track record, he expects Whitmer and the Democratic-led Legislature “to continue to have the backs of workers.”

Whitmer has not publicly stated if she supports or opposes any change to the laws.