A Michigan judge has issued a preliminary injunction to stop the state from spending roughly $645 million from a past budget cycle.
Last month, the Michigan House Appropriations Committee voted not to let the state budget director reclassify those spending items as work projects, which would allow departments to keep spending the money. But the state attorney general later found the law that the House used to block the funds was partially unconstitutional.
In response, the House of Representatives sued in a continued effort to keep state departments from using that money.
Lawyer Sean Dutton, representing the House, said there needs to be a check on the executive branch’s spending.
“We appropriated these funds for one year. They think that once we appropriate them, we’re done and they can just spend that money for essentially five years if they want to without any involvement from us. And that just cannot be right. The constitution assigns to us the appropriations power and frankly for them to wield it without any oversight is its own constitutional violation,” Dutton said Friday during a court hearing in Lansing.
Dutton argued the court needed to step in to prevent the money from going out the door before the matter could be resolved.
“If certain things are just spent, there are going to be significant legal and practical limitations in our ability to recover these funds. So, absent a stop now, a lot of this is going to go away and we’re going to lose what we think is properly ours,” Dutton said.
Michigan Court of Claims Judge Michael Gadola agreed, issuing his injunction hours later.
“Plaintiff has demonstrated a likelihood of success on its claim that defendants’ actions are in violation of MCL 18.1451a(3), and its claim that MCL 1845a(3) is constitutional as applied,” Gadola wrote in his order.
During the hearing, the state seemed unsure of the status of the money in question.
Assistant attorney general Adam de Bear said, even after the disapproval vote, the money wasn’t all immediately returned to the state’s general fund. That’s because, despite the request to recategorize the spending as a work project, de Bear said most of the money had been properly committed to something.
“It’s quite difficult for the state budget office to get feedback from all the departments … as to current encumbrances. It has to start working on these work project designations earlier. So, as a matter of avoid[ing] any negative consequences, it asks for the entirety of the balance, as opposed to actual encumbrances,” de Bear said.
Later in the hearing, he estimated around 70% of roughly $645 million in question had properly been set aside. If that number holds, most of the money in question might not be eligible for the House’s rejection.
De Bear argued, by blocking all of the spending, the court may be stopping some unchallenged dollars from going out.
During the hearing, Gadola appeared to pick at several of the state’s arguments.
De Bear said one chamber of the legislature can’t, by itself, stop the executive branch from spending the money it was given.
“They can’t maintain, after the point of appropriation, the ability to reject the executive’s decision-making process, so long as that decision making process is within the duration of the expenditures,” de Bear said.
De Bear maintained several reporting requirements and other conditions associated with the state budget director’s work project requests held the executive branch accountable. He said the Legislature could also sue if it felt like the rules weren’t being followed.
Gadola, however, seemed skeptical that lawmakers wouldn’t be able to take more direct action in response to a request.
“Whether or not to spend $644 million seems like a pretty weighty policy consideration to me, and it appears to be your position that this one unelected person ought to be able to make that decision without anyone second guessing,” he said.
Beyond that, Gadola questioned the state’s position of trying to have it both ways, where the parts of the law that allow the request for the money to continue forward are constitutional while the parts that stop the legislature from saying no to that request are not.
Gadola ordered another hearing on the case for February 27.
