Michigan has a lot of infrastructure needs! We’re talking roads, bridges, highways, and byways! The state government plans to talk about and solve those problems in their 2024 budget. But what exactly will be involved? There’s way more in this budget than we can address here, but let’s take a look at a few of the big things and see what’s coming!
Here are Five Fast Facts on infrastructure upgrades in Michigan’s 2024 budget:
- 🔍 The Focus - Gov. Whitmer has been making a big push to “Make it in Michigan” over the last few months. The idea is to create jobs here at home, and attract businesses from elsewhere to open up shops here.
- 🚧 Road Work Ahead - Since Whitmer took office, the state has fixed (or is planning to fix) almost 20,000 miles of roads and 1,400 bridges around the state, at the cost of around half a billion dollars. Don’t worry, we’re certain they’ll get to the potholes on your road soon.
- 🌉 Water Under The Bridge - The budget also allocates $600 million for water projects like lead service lines and sewers. Um, yeah, let’s make sure the sewers are working correctly. PLEASE.
- ⚡ Feel The Power - Over a quarter of a billion dollars is allocated for power needs and related things like reopening the Palisades plant, moving to electric school buses, improving air quality, and reducing road noise. Gotta have power for people to drive on all those thousands of miles of newly fixed roads, right?
- 🐖 But Wait - Not everything is rosy with the budget, though. A non-partisan think tank reviewed the budget and identified 342 earmarks for a cost of $1.6 billion of taxpayer money. That’s more pork than a pig farm!
🔥Bottom line: While we’re not at all happy about that pork spending, it’s great that so many necessary infrastructure projects are slated for the next year. These things provide for the safe and effective functioning of our state’s economy, and that’s good for everyone. The fact that a lot of these efforts will bring lots of good paying jobs is most definitely icing on the infrastructure cake!
Which of these projects do you think is most important?
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