Michigan's state budget faces a more than six billion dollar shortfall this fiscal year and next. Budget officials say it's twice as much as the decline in state revenues at the beginning of the Great Recession.
The impact to the state budget from the pandemic is more than sobering, according to State Budget Director Chris Kolb.
"There's no playbook that's on the shelf to really address a loss of revenue of this size, this quickly."
And the shortfall could get worse. The state House and Senate fiscal agencies will have to meet again later in the year to see if the estimate should be revised. Kolb says Michigan and other states in the U.S. need federal aid to protect vital services like public safety, education, and health care.