The Michigan Court of Appeals has cleared up some uncertainty about the state’s spending requirements for local governments.
A group of almost two dozen local governments sued the state over how it was funding their communities. It all boils down to an amendment to the state constitution. It says the state has to give a certain amount of money to local governments every spending year.
The plaintiffs accused the state of counting… or not counting… the wrong things toward a required minimum amount of spending.
For example, the local governments said the state can’t count money paid to local school districts and charter schools. But the court disagreed and said that money – quote “reflects a constitutionally sanctioned rebalancing of the distribution of that revenue sharing.”
But the court did say that the state cannot count money it has to give local governments for things the state requires them to do.