In their newest legislative update, MAC’s Podcast 83 team again took a deep dive into the no. 1 issue in Lansing right now: roads.

“Huge talk in Lansing is about an influx of dollars into the local road system,” said Deena Bosworth, MAC’s governmental affairs director. “The vast majority of the money that they're talking about right now (would be) going to county roads, then to city roads and, lastly, to (the Michigan Department of Transportation).

“It's about a $3 billion package,” Bosworth continued, “They've carved out a little bit of money for bridges. I want to say a little. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, but money for bridges, money for county road systems, money for city road systems and then some money for actually township roads, too, so that they don't necessarily have to come up with a big match on the design part of the projects, where county roads are or where the county is responsible for the roads.”

MAC testified in support of the package in a House committee on Tuesday, Bosworth noted, joining such groups as the Michigan Municipal League and the County Road Association in support.

“(W)e're slightly concerned about what some of this decrease in General Fund (to finance the road investment) will mean later down the road, but again, you can't really look a gift horse in the mouth with your $1.4 billion additional every year going into the county road system,” she said.

In other news, Jimmy Johnson gave an update on work for a permanent fix for trial court funding: “(The Legislature) created the Trial Court Funding Act of 2024, which is requiring the Supreme Court Administrative Office, under the direction and supervision of the Supreme Court, to analyze and determine these certain costs and revenues that trial courts are working on. So that sunset right now and for them to have that report completed and presented to everyone is going to be May 1, 2026.”

As part of this work, Johnson said, is a Funding Distribution Team: “Now this group is going to be charged with recommending a plan to establish the Trial Court Fund, and that's going to be designed to centralize all the generated revenue from the trial courts.

“Their most recent update was that they held a vote on which functions currently receive money from court assessments, and what should be considered court operations and therefore continue to receive money from court assessments via the Trial Court Fund. They were able to reach a consensus, it says, on two-thirds of the votes. Now, again, we don't know exactly what those are. We're basically getting kind of like a high level ‘this is what we're discussing.’”