Michigan bet $3 million of taxpayer money on Bollinger Motors, an electric truck maker that, two years later, appears to be going broke.

The company headquartered in Oak Park has paused production of commercial cab trucks and is being sued, The Detroit News reported in March.

The company received over $949,000 of Michigan Business Development Program grants and created 75 jobs out of the 165 it promised, according to a fiscal 2024 state report.

The project is still in good standing for the grant, said Otie McKinley, a spokesperson for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

“Clawback provisions are in place should the qualified new jobs for which funding has been disbursed be eliminated prior to the end of the grant term,” Otie told Michigan Capitol Confidential in an email.

Michigan taxpayers promised the company part of another $100,000 in 2021 to work with Michigan State University on mobility projects.

In 2020, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer promised an all-electric future for Michigan. She gave billions of dollars in subsidies to electric vehicle makers and backed Bollinger’s vision as recently as last year. 

“Bollinger Motors has once again decided to bet on Michigan as they lead the future of class-4 electric commercial trucks,” Whitmer said. “From their headquarters in Oak Park, the company designs, builds, and tests their cutting-edge tech in America, and I am proud that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation has worked with them to create even more good-paying jobs right here in our state.”

The company can’t comment directly on the ongoing lawsuit but is working toward a resolution, Bollinger CEO Bryan Chambers told CapCon in an email. 

“We are working towards an outcome to this dispute that will enable us to continue to grow a strong, innovative workforce that develops industry-leading commercial EV trucks,” Chambers wrote.

Many Michigan government agencies and politicians, including Chief Mobility Officer Justine Johnson, supported the company.

“Bollinger Motors’ decision to build its new line of electric commercial trucks right here in Michigan is a testament to our thriving mobility and electrification supply chain,” Johnson said in a 2024 statement. “Electric commercial fleets will play a key role in reducing carbon emissions from the transportation of goods. Bollinger is a company that shares our state's vision for a sustainable future and we are proud that the company chose to Make It In Michigan."

Only one of every 11 jobs promised by Michigan politicians and public officials in business subsidy announcements gets created, according to a study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which analyzed 20 years of state-sponsored deals.

Business subsidies rarely deliver on their promises and waste taxpayer money, James Hohman, the center’s director of fiscal policy, told CapCon in an email. “Some lawmakers love them anyway because they give them a chance to say they’re doing something about jobs. This applies even if the project turns into nothing.”

Whitmer has ordered the state to have an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2040. Currently, the state has 30 electric vehicles, Michigan Capitol Confidential has reported.

In her second term, the governor appears to have turned from that goal. Now, she doesn’t care what kind of vehicle you drive as long as it’s made in Michigan.

Michigan’s climate plan expects 2 million electric vehicles to registered statewide, but the state is 1.95 million shy of that goal.

Last month, another EV maker, which received $900,000 of taxpayer money, said it would shutter two Michigan locations and take 188 jobs out of state, CapCon reported.

Two Michigan men have asked a federal judge to strike down as unconstitutional a state law that restricts the way property owners may manage 6.5 million acres of land.

The men, Joshua Wenzlick of Freeland and Paul Satkowiak of Bay County, are represented by attorney Philip Ellison from the law firm Outside Legal Counsel in Hemlock.

The lawsuit names Phillip Roos, the director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, Attorney General Dana Nessel and state inspector Brian Marshall as defendants.

Paul Satkowiak’s 15-acre property in Bay County is 10 miles away from any large body of water. State officials, though, say he violated wetland protection laws when he placed dirt on his Mount Forest Township property and built a barn there to store his excavation equipment.

State employees abuse the vague wetland statute that requires a permit if a property has a “bog, swamp, or marsh, inundated or saturated by water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances does support, hydric soils and a predominance of wetland vegetation or aquatic life,” Ellison told Michigan Capitol Confidential in a phone conversation.

Ellison first filed the lawsuit Feb. 10 and on March 23 he added Wenzlick, a man whom the environmental agency could fine up to $1.7 million for expanding a separate pond, CapCon reported in January.

The lawsuit, filed with the U.S District Court in Lansing, asks federal Chief Judge Hala Y. Jarbou to strike down certain provisions of Part 303 of Michigan’s Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act for violating the U.S. Constitution.

Satkowiak’s “property is not on any body of water, or adjacent to, or nearby any body of water,” Ellison told CapCon. Yet, he said, state regulators claim it’s a wetland.

The suit alleges that Michigan's wetlands laws triggering fines of up to $25,000 daily violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment.

“If you’re going to assess someone a fine of $25,000 a day, it’s really a criminal statute,” Ellison said. “It’s not like a parking ticket.”

Michigan has used the law to fine businesses $300,000 for allegedly violating wetland rules. The environmental agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit asks for Satkowiak’s case to be heard by a jury instead of a judge, a right the Sixth Amendment guarantees to individuals alleged to have committed a crime.

“Juries allow the average, everyday person to be a check on not just the government bringing the case, but the judge on the case too,” Ellison said. “Because the judge isn’t the one who makes the ultimate decision. It’s the citizenry.”

Part 303 of the Michigan law allows the environmental agency to hear complaints in an administrative court in Lansing or the local jurisdiction. The agency usually chooses Lansing.

The attorney said that he’s challenging the authority of state employees to enter private property without a warrant.

In March, a federal judge ruled that a separate lawsuit against environmental quality analyst Justin Smith and inspector Brian Marshall could proceed. The lawsuit accused Smith and Marshall of violating Satkowiak’s Fourth Amendment rights in March 2024 by trespassing on a separate piece of property he owns along M-13 just south of Pinconning.

“My office has sued six different EGLE officials for violating the Fourth Amendment over the last two years,” Ellison said.

The state must respond within 20 days of March 23, the date the lawsuit was amended.