After over 12 hours of behind the scenes negotiations, the Michigan House ended up voting down a third alternative for an income tax cut in the early hours of Thursday morning.  The amendments that were proposed to HB 4001 H-3 would have lowered the state’s income tax rate from 4.25% down by .1% per year for the next two years and then any further reduction down to 3.9% would have been conditioned on the state’s Rainy Day Fund having a balance of at least $1 billion.  If fully phased down as proposed, the legislation would have sliced more than $1.1 billion from the state’s General Fund revenues.  Once the final vote was tallied, the amended version only had 52 supporters, with 55 members voting against the measure (see page 4 of the linked pdf to see how each legislator voted).

The Municipal League was joined in opposition to this legislation by a broad coalition of organizations and individuals, including Governor Snyder.  As an organization we are extremely thankful for everyone who engaged with their State Representative this week, urging them to protect revenue sharing and local government services and opposing this bill.  We encourage you to reach back out to those legislators who voted No and thank them for their vote.

While the bill was defeated this morning, it is possible that the vote could be reconsidered in the coming weeks, so please be prepared to re-engage with legislators should this bill come back up.

Chris Hackbarth is the League’s director of state & federal affairs. He can be reached at 517-908-0304 and [email protected].