On Dec. 17, 2017, the Detroit Public Schools Community District sent the staff of its Office of Strategy to a six-day conference in Los Angeles at a cost of $286,596.

Under a spending transparency requirement lawmakers added to the school aid act in 2009, school districts must publish such expenses on their websites.

Other travel expense reports from the Detroit school district mention $250,000 in spending for staffers to attend a May 2019 conference in Italy and $240,000 for a six-day conference in Los Angeles in December 2018.

Michigan’s second largest school district is Utica Community Schools, and it has reported nothing comparable to the Detroit school for travel expenses. That district’s highest expense for out-of-state conferences in 2018-19 was $2,609. Those expenses included just transportation, hotel and registration costs.

The highest travel cost recorded by Ann Arbor Public Schools in 2018-19 was $19,746 for a conference in Nashville, where the district sent 12 people. There was no explanation for what those costs included.

Because districts can be vague on what expenses are included in the expenses they post, Michigan Capitol Confidential submitted a Freedom of Information Act to the Detroit school district. It sought details of the $286,596 cost incurred for staffers attending the 2017 conference in Los Angeles.

According to email correspondence between the school district and the Mackinac Center, the district first acknowledged the open records law request on Oct. 21, 2019. Government entities have up to 15 business days to respond to a document request, which would have meant the district had until Nov. 12 to reply.

The school district acknowledged in an email that it received a check for the information on Dec. 2. But in the 15 business days since the district received payment for the information, it has yet to provide any support for the $286,596 cost of this conference.

Two emails sent Dec. 16 and Dec. 20 to the district from Michigan Capitol Confidential received responses to the effect that the district was looking into the matter.

After reaching record levels in the previous year’s budget, the amount of revenue allocated to the state fund that covers road repairs and other transportation spending will go down in the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. This will be the first decline in the Michigan Transportation Fund since 2015, after it reached record levels in the 2018-19 fiscal year.

State revenue allocated to the fund goes mostly to road repairs, with 10% to municipal transit agencies. The fund received $3.64 billion in state revenue in 2018, plus additional federal dollars. This year, $3.61 billion in state money have been allocated to the fund.

The decrease is due to a dispute that led to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoing $375 million the Republican-controlled Legislature had allocated to the transportation fund for the 2019-20 fiscal year.

In 1974, the fund collected the equivalent of $3.37 billion in 2019 dollars, a inflation-adjusted level it did not reach until 2018.

The only other time the transportation fund has exceeded $3 billion (in 2019 dollars) was in 1978, when was at $3.18 billion.

The Michigan Transportation Fund’s record-setting revenue in the recently ended fiscal year was due in part to a 2015 legislative compromise that authorized a 7-to-11 cent per gallon motor fuel tax increase and a 20% vehicle registration tax increase. Those increases were matched by steps to gradually earmark $600 million in annual state income tax revenue to road repairs.

In her first budget, Whitmer called for a 45-cent per gallon tax increase, expected to raise another $2.5 billion. The governor also called for $600 million of that amount to go to replace income tax dollars she would remove from the road repair budget and transfer to other spending categories.

Whitmer’s office didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.