Whitmer seeks $7.8M for road funding solution, six years after pledging to fix the roads

In 2019, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer campaigned on fixing the damn roads. She pitched a 45-cent-per-gallon gas tax hike that lawmakers rejected.

Six years later and as a second-term governor, Whitmer called again for new taxes to fix the roads. She wants to raise the corporate income tax from 6% to 8.5% to raise $1.6 billion, tax marijuana 32% at the wholesale level to raise $470 million, and to make $500 million in unspecified spending cuts.

“To my friends in the GOP: Fixing the roads in a sustainable way means looking for new, fair sources of revenue,” Whitmer said in a Jan. 16 press release.

The governor claims that fixing roads and lowering costs for Michiganders have been a top priority. But her 2026 budget proposal called for more taxes: a 1,200% increase on fees for dumping trash and higher fees for hunting and fishing licenses. There are also higher taxes on vaping projects, but the proposal contains no funding mechanism for fixing roads. The budget would increase spending by $1 billion and add 800 state employees to the payroll.

“Fixing the damn roads has been a top priority of mine since day one, but the work is far from over,” Whitmer said in a February social media post. “We’ve got a plan to continue fixing the roads — lowering costs, improving safety, and ensuring that next time, EVERY month can be just as great as August.”

Whitmer suggested spending $7.8 million in 2026 — her last year in office, due to term limits — to study a road funding solution. In her first year as governor, 2018, Michigan’s budget was $56.8 billion. The proposed 2026 state budget is $83.5 billion, or a 47% higher, despite a meager population increase of 120,000 new residents.

Michigan should have spent part of its $9 billion surplus on fixing the roads, Sen. Aric Nesbitt, who’s running for governor in 2026, said on social media Feb. 26.

Instead, Nesbitt continued, the state spent $4.5 billion on corporate welfare, $125 million on a battery plant involving a company tied to the Chinese Communist Party, $15 million for aerial drone projects, and $10 million on a zoo.

“Like every Democrat governor before her, she’s pushing for higher taxes in the name of fixing the roads and once the money is in her hand she’s going to spend it on everything but,” Nesbitt wrote.

In 2025, Michigan’s budget contained $1 billion in pork spending, Michigan Capitol Confidential reported last year.

In the 2024 budget, taxpayers funded a $5 million study to analyze a possible vehicle mileage tax.