A council put together by Governor Gretchen Whitmer to develop a strategy for growing Michigan’s population is out with its recommendations.
The Growing Michigan Together Council recommends building a lifelong education system focused on future-ready skills, establishing Michigan as the Innovation Hub of the Midwest to attract high-wage jobs, and improving infrastructure and mass transit.
State Representative Pauline Wendzel was the only Republican lawmaker on the council and the only member to vote against the recommendations. She tells us she was excited to be on the council but is disappointed with its results.
“This group was supposed to come up with something new and innovative,” Wendzel said. “It said it repeatedly in the title, that that’s what we were supposed to do, and we didn’t. I thought it was a stale recommendation. Nothing that I read in this recommendation was new, except maybe to build a statewide transit system, which is failing in other states because people are working from home.”
Wendzel says many of the strategies recommended are already being followed. State Senator Aric Nesbitt tells us much the same.
“Some of the stuff they’ve recommended has either already been passed or already has been in the works, and on infrastructure, let’s work on ways to lower the costs of roads and bridges instead of increasing the costs as we’ve seen from the governor be reinstituting prevailing wage,” Nesbitt said.
Nesbitt says there were no Senate Republicans on the council, despite the fact he recommended one. He’s hoping a more bipartisan approach to growing the state can be followed in the coming year.
