Earmarks in next Michigan budget will be a fraction of prior years’ spending

The 2027 Michigan budget approved July 3 dramatically cuts spending on legislative grant requests, in keeping with a vow made by House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township.

Lawmakers in both chambers of the Michigan Legislature proposed $4.3 billion in earmarks for the 2027 budget, set to take effect Oct. 1 of this year. Legislative leaders trimmed those requests to about $180 million, which is down from $275 million in pork projects in the final 2025-26 budget.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy counted $180 million in earmarks, while lawmakers counted $125 million.

The list of approved grants includes money for brownfields, police laptops, a Holocaust center and an auto show. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has not signed the budget into law yet, and Michigan’s constitution authorizes the governor to veto line items before signing the budget.

DistrictGrantsList--2026-27 budget (2)(1) by mcclallen

Pork projects have come under heavier criticism in recent years. A Democratic Party trifecta allocated $1.6 billion in district projects in the 2023 budget.

James Hohman, fiscal policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, applauded the drastic reduction.

“There is one-tenth of the level of district grants that were in the budget a few years ago,” Hohman said. “It’s good that it’s less of a priority.”

But he cautioned against overestimating how much reduction has occurred. “There are more grants to individual projects than in just the line item for legislatively directed spending items,” Hohman said.

Hall has frequently condemned the earmark process.

“Far too many of these earmarks have been abused by bad actors in the past, and far too many politicians have abused this process to stuff the budget full of pork projects they can’t defend,” the House speaker said in a Sept. 29, 2025, press release. “That ends now,” he added.

Requests for special appropriations have, over the last few years, included funding for arts, museums, and zoos. Some organizations have received grants from several annual budgets.

Two earmarks included in the 2023 budget were the subject of a lawsuit the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation brought to Michigan’s Court of Claims.

The court on May 12 granted a preliminary injunction against the two appropriations. The Mackinac Center lawsuit argues that the earmarks violate a provision of the Michigan Constitution that requires a two-thirds supermajority vote to approve public funds for local and private purposes.