By vetoing an extra $375 million approved by the legislature in the 2019-20 state transportation budget, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer converted what would have been a $338 million net funding increase into a $36.9 million cut. 

It’s quite a contrast from the direction signalled in a June 2018 tweet in which candidate Whitmer said, “Michigan's roads are more than an embarrassment, they're downright dangerous. I have a real plan to get Michigan’s roads back into shape.”

The cut also contrasts with the $338 million increase approved last week by the Legislature. This would have raised state transportation spending to $3.978 billion, a 9.2% increase with no tax hike. Instead of raising taxes, lawmakers targeted $400 million from the state General Fund to road repairs.

But on Monday, Whitmer used her line-item veto authority to eliminate that funding. As a result, the state will spend $3.603 billion on transportation in the fiscal year that began Tuesday, a $36.9 million decline from the $3.640 billion appropriated for the just-ended 2018-19 fiscal year.

In March, Whitmer proposed a fiscal year 2019-20 executive transportation budget that would have spent $4.381 billion state tax dollars, a $797 million increase. It was contingent, however, on the Legislature passing a $1.264 billion tax hike, which would have gone not just to road repairs but also to pay for increases in other state spending.

For only the second time since 2011, state transportation spending will actually decline year-over-year, by 1.0%. The other down-year was 2015.

Tiffany Brown, spokeswoman for the governor, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

A proposed state constitutional amendment that would protect Michigan residents from unreasonable searches and seizes involving electronic records and communications was advanced to the full Senate by a Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on Thursday.

Sen. Jim Runestad, R-White Lake, is the lead sponsor of Senate Joint Resolution G, which could change the Michigan Constitution. In a statement, he said: “Court decisions across the nation have upheld the protection of electronic property rights. We should extend that protection here in Michigan. ...”

Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Daniel Wioslaw called the resolution a “step forward for property rights, privacy, and the rule of law,” in a letter submitted in support of it.

The Michigan Constitution specifies that the “person, houses, papers and possessions of every person shall be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures.” According to a Senate Fiscal Agency summary, the resolution would expand that protection to also make it unlawful “to access electronic data or electronic communications” without a warrant.

The resolution would also require probable cause and a warrant to gain access to electronic data or electronic communications.

The Pacific Legal Foundation said that the test most courts have relied upon to determine whether a warrant should be required is what most Americans think should reasonably be considered private.

“Thus, in the wake of leaks about intrusive government surveillance techniques, these societal expectations of privacy can deteriorate, resulting in a lower standard of protection under the prevailing judicial standard,” the Pacific Legal Foundation stated in a letter. “Reform language like that in SJR G would sidestep the need to rely on this self-defeating standard by clearly establishing that a warrant must be acquired to access electronic data and communications. Thus, a Michigan court need not guess about whether a majority of Americans consider emails, social media messages, or browser search histories to be private.”

The Pacific Legal Foundation wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court clarified in a 2014 case that a warrant must be acquired to search through a person’s cellphone, in the absence of consent. That was more than three decades after the widespread use of cellphones began and six years after Apple released its first iPhone, the Pacific Legal Foundation stated.

If approved by a two-thirds vote of each house of the Legislature, the joint resolution would be placed on the next statewide general election ballot for a vote of people.