Less than two months before Michigan lawmakers finalized a historic deal to pump as much as $2 billion a year into road repairs, a slew of road construction executives whose companies will benefit from the spending opened their checkbooks at an upscale steakhouse in metro Detroit.
In a single day, officials in pavement, excavating, road construction, contracting, heavy equipment and industry interest groups donated a combined $211,293 to the Matt Hall Majority Fund, the Republican House speaker’s namesake political action committee that supports GOP lawmakers and causes across the state.
A big part of the current road funding package will come from the new 24 percent wholesale tax on cannabis.
The Aug. 21 fundraiser at Fleming’s Steakhouse in Birmingham, where the cheapest cut on offer is $59, was part of a surge of campaign contributions to Michigan lawmakers by road building officials in 2025.
Those donations more than doubled compared to prior years as Hall and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer pushed for a bipartisan road funding deal, according to an analysis by Bridge Michigan.
Road building company officials and employees who had donated about $204,000 in 2024 had donated more than $400,000 through October of last year. The volume of donations is notable in part because they fell on an odd year, when contributions typically decline absent a looming election.
Because much of the Michigan Legislature’s budget negotiations happened behind closed doors, it’s difficult to know how, if at all, industry groups and road builders could have influenced the structure of the road funding plan that Whitmer and lawmakers finalized in October.
But such fundraising can influence lawmakers and undermine confidence in the process, said Neil Thanedar, the executive director of the nonpartisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network.
Read the rest of this story at Bridge Magazine
