Host: Stephan Currie

Guests: Deena Bosworth, Samantha Gibson and Jimmy Johnson of MAC

Topics: MAC’s Podcast 83 team discussed concerning trends this week as the state awaits Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s formal budget presentation on Wednesday afternoon.

“Over the weekend, we saw (Whitmer) talk about property taxes,” said Deena Bosworth, “which, you know, … I'm a little nervous about what that means.

“It’s a theme we've heard a few times now from different people,” replied host Stephan Currie.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Bosworth said. “Speaker (Matt) Hall (R-Kalamazoo) talks about it quite a bit. He talked about it again last week at his press conference. …

“We’ve been told over and over again that it would be revenue neutral, that they're not looking at decreasing the revenue available to local units of government. But you know how these things shake out, so it's something that we will watch very, very closely, and make sure that it's not any kind of cut to local property tax revenue.”

Also looming over a fiscal 2027 budget will be Medicaid resources:

“Jimmy, you've spoken to it before, we still haven't seen what the budget's going to look like as far as Medicaid goes, right? Because what are the numbers you're hearing as far as the range that it could impact the state budget?” Currie asked.

“It's a very wide range,” replied Jimmy Johnson. “It's honestly scary numbers when you hear $200 million to $600 million. I know that is a huge discrepancy, but what we have to factor in is there's different Medicaid eligibility rules that they're factoring in here, the SNAP error rates. So, again, you know, bottom line, it's going to be about $200 million that you either have to backfill it, or we have to find out what is the best service to cut so then the state can have a good return on investment. I don't want to be in their shoes for that.”

See video versions of all Podcast 83 episodes on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@michiganassociationofcount2606

Visit the Podcast 83 page at www.micounties.org