Governor Gretchen Whitmer has suspended state hiring and promotions and vetoed $80 million in new spending in order to steer money to fighting the coronavirus.
“We’ve got a lot of essential services that we’ve got to to continue to meet the needs of our people,” said Whitmer Monday morning. “But where there are unplanned expenditures or potential addition to operations, we’re going to stop all of that. We know we need to be really conservative right now.”
At the same time, Whitmer says she signed laws with $150 million for the state’s response. The line item vetoes were from supplemental budget bills that had been approved before the scope of the coronavirus pandemic started to take shape, and Whitmer says they were done with consultation with the Republican leaders of the House and Senate.
The governor says it’s too early to know how the economic slowdown related to the virus will affect state revenue. But Whitmer says the impact is “is going to be real.” Michigan had nearly 5,500 cases of the coronavirus by Sunday and 132 deaths.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
