Good news to report: the House voted to restore some of the funding for school safety that Democrat lawmakers cut from the budget at the end of June. Gutting funding for school safety and mental health programs was an unpopular move (they cut it by 92 percent!), and Democrats have been feeling the heat ever […]

I normally try to keep my comments in this column limited to local issues and things happening at the Capitol in Lansing, but Democrats who control the House have not held a vote or a real session day since the budget was finished at the end of June. That being the case, I want to […]

No attendance/ no voting. That’s legislative code for “don’t bother showing up at the Capitol for session because we’re not going to do anything, and no one will know you weren’t here.” Lawmakers have not met since the end of June when we voted on the 2025 state budget. There were a handful of session […]

Well, I came up short on Tuesday. Losing hurts, but that comes with the territory when you serve as an elected official. The main thing I feel is lucky that I got to represent our community in Lansing for four years. I also feel tremendously grateful for the support this community has shown me and […]

The tallest waterfall in Michigan should be a state park. Houghton-Douglass Falls, on the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula, is 110 feet tall. It cuts into a steep gorge flanked by stands of cedar, spruce, and pine trees. The waterfall was a popular hiking destination until the landowner closed the property because of the […]

Last week, Gov. Whitmer signed the 2025 state budget into law. You might remember that I voted against the budget, in part because it doesn’t include additional funding for local roads, and because it cuts funding for school safety by more than 90 percent. What that means for our area is that Fowlerville Community Schools […]

I normally try to keep my comments in this column limited to local issues and things happening at the Capitol in Lansing, but this week I want to talk about the attempted assassination of President Trump and the need to tone down the political rhetoric. But first, a few quick thoughts related to security. This […]

Let’s talk about a few topics related to Michigan election law. The last one is going to make you mad. But first some good news: the Michigan Court of Claims ruled against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who had ordered clerks to simply presume that signatures on absentee ballots are valid without verifying them. Democrats […]

The Michigan House of Representatives approved the Fiscal Year 2025 budget last week after a 19-hour marathon session that went from 10 a.m. Wednesday all the way until 5:30 Thursday morning. Democrat lawmakers control the House, and they didn’t let Republican lawmakers see the final version of the budget until well after midnight. The budget […]

Let’s talk about Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act. FOIA is a transparency tool citizens and reporters use to hold the government accountable. It gives the public the right to inspect government documents, but for some reason it doesn’t currently apply to the Legislature or the governor. (Even though it applies to almost all other levels […]

I’ve got good news to report: the bipartisan veterans mental health bills I’ve been working on got voted out of committee, meaning they are one step closer to getting approved. The next step is a vote on the House floor, which I anticipate will happen in the near future. These bills are personally important to […]