Whitmer signs budget, vetoes 147 line items
LANSING — Some big news coming out of Lansing, as Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed the $59 billion budget that was passed by the state legislature, but it was not without some vetoing. Whitmer issued a total of 147 line–item vetoes totally almost $1 billion from the complete budget.
In a video posted to her twitter account last night, the Governor defended her decisions to veto the certain aspects of the budget.
“I took my role as governor very seriously,” said Governor Whitmer in the twitter video. “I had to use the line-item veto to try to clean up budgets that were a complete mess, built on phony numbers, using funds in the wrong way, usurping executive power. These are important things that I had to eliminate from these budgets. I’m always going to put the safety and the health and the welfare of the people of the State of Michigan before anything else.”
Among the vetoes she issued was one of a shift of $375 million from the general fund to the transportation budget, which she said would not be enough to fix the road issues around the state.
Whitmer used a state board to transfer roughly $625 million worth of funds between individual state agencies, something that hasn’t been done since 1991, which she called necessary because the budgets sent to her were “fatally flawed.”
Governor Whitmer also said she was willing to negotiate more with the legislature to work on some of the line–item vetoes that she issued, and ABC10 will continue to follow this story as it progresses.
To see the full list of line-items that were vetoed, click here.