Minority-owned businesses get $10 million in 2025 budget

The state has dedicated $10 million of the 2025 state budget to minority organizations and businesses. The budget includes grant line items for what it calls “Michigan minority-owned business,” community centers, advocates, and social services.

Two of the grants listed as going to “minority owned business” do not specify which businesses are receiving $500,000 from taxpayers. The line item is in the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity’s Community Enhancement grants.

The line items state “Michigan minority business’ located in Lansing and Detroit will be offered ‘minority-owned business support.”

A third $2 million grant for a minority-owned business will go to Dunamis Charge in Detroit, an electric vehicle charger company. “Many are referring to the EV transition in the U.S. as the fourth industrial revolution,” the company’s website says. “As a manufacturer of EV charging solutions, Dunamis Charge and our investors could not have asked for a more robust business environment to launch our innovative and revolutionary EV chargers.”

Dunamis is currently raising funds for a pending patent that is fast-tracked for approval, according to a press release on Newsfile.

Other minority-specific grants include:

• $2 million to MI Minority Supplier Developer in Detroit
• $2 million to a LatinX Technology and Community Center in Flint
• $1 million to Chinatown in Detroit
• $750,000 to a Hispanic community center in Kalamazoo
• $750,000 to Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Sault Ste. Marie
• $500,000 to The Chaldean American Social Services Advocates in Beverly Hills.

The LatinX technology center is a nonprofit that also received $600,000 from a separate grant in the state budget. Sen. John Cherry, D-Flint, supported the funding, which will go to an early education center, according to News Channel 3.

Neither Cherry nor the community center responded to a request for comment.

The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe will use the money, including another grant from the Department of Health and Human Services for $500,000, to build an emergency center, according to the state budget.

Sen. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs, secured the money for the tribe. He did not respond to an email inquiring whether he had ever donated his own money to the tribe.

The Chaldean American Social Services Advocates has no website. A Facebook page for the organization states it operates in Beverly Hills, Mich. Its Facebook page has 11 followers and says on its ”About” section that the organization is “Helping seniors & special need individuals obtain social service benefits that they are qualified for.” The first post on its page was in December 2022. It is unknown which legislator secured the money.

Michigan Capitol Confidential contacted El Concilio and confirmed that it is the community center receiving $750,000 from the budget. The center is running a capital campaign to open a multicultural services and program center, according to Adrian Vasquez-Alatorre, its executive director.

“The state budget funds will support our capital campaign efforts, finish the renovation of the new space for our preschool, after-school programs, direct services offices and collaboration spaces,” Vasquez-Alatorre told CapCon.

Unless legislators come forward after the budget is completed, it can take up to a year to learn which individuals were responsible for securing the state grants. Michigan law requires legislators to divulge within a year who is responsible for requesting earmarks. If no legislator comes forth, the receiving organization is in jeopardy of losing the funds.

The 2025 budget awards $1 billion in pork through earmarks that were added late in the budget process. These grants do not go through full vetting by the Legislature. James Hohman, fiscal policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, raises a range of concerns with earmarks: they allow individual legislators to handpick awardees; they undermine transparency in the budgeting process; and they are unfair to other organizations that would like to compete for public grants. Earmarks are usually written in a manner that conceals the recipients and skirts constitutional restrictions on pork projects.