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Michigan House GOP sues to try to block $645M restored after Nessel opinion

Michigan House Republicans, led by Speaker Matt Hall, are suing to try to block $645 million in spending they cut in a move Attorney General Dana Nessel deemed unconstitutional. Photo credit: Jordyn Hermani / Bridge Michigan.

Editor note: This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan��(bridgemi.com), a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from Bridge Michigan, sign up for a free Bridge Michigan newsletter ��().” 

by Simon D. Schuster, Bridge Michigan 

The Republican-led Michigan House on Friday sued 16 state departments along with a slew of senior officials to try to block roughly $645 million in state funding restored after an opinion by Attorney General Dana Nessel.

A House budget committee in December unilaterally , but in a formal opinion issued this week, Nessel determined a decades-old law used by Republicans was unconstitutional. The state quickly resumed the planned spending.

The House is now asking a Michigan Court of Claims judge to again block the funding ahead of an anticipated legal battle over the law validity.

Attorneys for the House argue in the suit that Nessel opinion caused “a fundamental constitutional crisis” because it enabled a “unilateral seizure of the legislative power of the purse” by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer administration.

In a statement, House Speaker Matt Hall, a Richland Township Republican, called Nessel opinion “purely political and extremely flawed” and said their lawsuit aims to “uphold the law that allows the Legislature to put an end to this nonsense.”

Nessel spokesperson Kim Bush said in a statement the department of attorney general maintains the disapproval mechanism used by the House GOP “is unconstitutional and will defend that position before the courts.”

The suit is the latest development in a battle over $645 million not spent by the end of last fiscal year and then cut by House Republicans. That includes $159 million for the Whitmer-backed Make It In Michigan Competitiveness Fund, along with grants for various groups, like a and an organization that provides .

The State Budget Office, currently controlled by Whitmer appointees, can extend time limits on previously approving funding via requests to the House and Senate budget committees to make them “work projects.”

Instead of requiring both chambers to approve the requests, under the law the funding is automatically carried over to future years as work projects if lawmakers take no action. But either chamber budget committee can explicitly disapprove a request and send unspent funding back to the state general fund.

In her opinion, Nessel said that mechanism unconstitutionally allows the Legislature to take control from the executive branch and argued any action to block department spending, once the appropriation becomes law, should require formal action from both chambers.

“When an appropriation is enacted, the Legislature role ends, and the executive branch duty to faithfully execute the law begins,” Nessel opinion said, calling the committee disapproval ability “a truncated process that bypasses … constitutional safeguards” of the full legislative process.

The House disagreed, noting that appropriations can be designated a “work project” by the Legislature in spending bills from the beginning, making the money available for up to four years, but otherwise under state law, it only available for one year.

The Legislature control over state spending, attorneys said in the filing, “includes the power to determine not only the purpose for which the funds are spent, but the period in which they are spent … the determination of whether an appropriation lasts for one year or more is a legislative function.”

They argued that rather than discontinuing the funding, the committee instead allowed prior appropriations to expire at the end of the fiscal year, as the budget had originally specified, and “the executive branch cannot extend the time to spend lapsed funds unilaterally.”

They countered Nessel argument that the disapprovals required full legislative action because no laws or policy were being crafted, comparing it to any other failed budget proposal from the executive branch.

Even if the disapproval mechanism is unconstitutional, “the (state budget) director has no authority to extend these appropriations at all, and the funds must undeniably lapse by operation of law,” House attorneys wrote.

Nessel opinion has no real weight in court — though judges can look to it for guidance — but is binding on state agencies and officers, meaning the state budget office was effectively instructed to not follow the House instruction to lapse the funding back to the Michigan Treasury.

Lawyers for the House wrote that within 45 minutes of the publication of Nessel opinion, the state had made the canceled funds available to be spent once again.

Attorneys for the House, including former state Solicitor General John Bursch, are asking Judge Michael Gadola to quickly block both state departments and the recipients of previously canceled state grants from spending any additional money until the issue can be argued in court.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and a founder of the Manchester Mirror.