Educators Blast Speaker Hall for Suggesting Education Budget Might Wait

Another Week Without a Budget Is Another Bipartisan Lansing Failure

After a week in which the Senate missed two session days and no progress was made toward a budget deal by either chamber, today, Michigan Speaker of the House Matt Hall suggested he may wait until after the November elections to negotiate a budget, a move that would be as illegal as it is irresponsible to the 1.4 million K-12 students in Michigan who already have suffered from his failure to get a budget done on time last year.

K-12 Alliance of Michigan Executive Director Robert McCann released the following statement in response to Speaker Hall's comments:

"It is infuriating for anyone who cares about this state, and especially for those who care about our schools, to hear Speaker Hall once again act as if his legal responsibility to get a budget done by July 1 is something he can simply choose to ignore because he isn't getting his way on unrelated policy issues. That deadline is not optional, and it is certainly not contingent on the Speaker getting everything he wants.

To be clear, policy disagreements have nothing to do with the urgency or the ability to get a budget done immediately. Michiganders have done their jobs and sent billions of their tax dollars to Lansing and filled the School Aid Fund. There is not a single parent, educator or student in this state who condones Lansing politicians playing games with the resources meant to be invested in our classrooms and kids.

No serious person in this state honestly believes that you can responsibly overhaul Michigan's property tax system in two weeks when there is no plan on the table currently that would do that without causing irreparable harm to Michigan's schools, local governments, public safety and more. The Speaker has had 18 months to advance those priorities on their own merits and has chosen not to, now threatening to hold the school budget hostage to a plan he himself doesn’t know the details of. 

We’re 20 days from the legal deadline for the legislature to get the School Aid Budget done. The time for excuses is over. Speaker Hall, Majority Leader Brinks and Governor Whitmer need to sit down, set aside the unrelated policy fights and get this budget done immediately."