Governor Rick Snyder and Republican leaders in the Legislature have reached a budget deal for the coming fiscal year.
The plan will use hundreds of millions of dollars from a tax revenue windfall to lessen proposed cuts to K-12 schools.
Democratic leaders say the plan violates a deal they agreed to last week, because the money doesn’t go directly to replace the cuts. Instead it will be used to urge schools to cut costs, and help make retirement payments.
"I think that we should motivate people to do the right thing and to find efficiencies where they can," said Democratic Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer. "And if you want to incentivize them with extra dollars, I’m comfortable with that idea. But this violates the agreement that we had, and the agreement was that we would mitigate the per-pupil foundation allowance so that the dollars would get right into the classroom with the kids."
Republican Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville says negotiations could have gone more smoothly with Democrats.
"There was no malice, there was no intent to mislead or anything like that, we don’t have that kind of a relationship. But this is the first time that this group of people is actually getting together and negotiating a deal, so there may have been some improvements laid out, we could probably do things better than we did, and we’ll continue to work toward that."
There is about a week and a half left before Governor Snyder’s self-imposed, May 31 budget deadline.
Richardville says he expects the Legislature to meet that goal.
