House subcommittee reviews $7.3 billion human services budget, flags TANF shifts and foster-care changes

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Human Services reviewed the fiscal year 2024-25 human services portion of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) budget during a meeting on Oct. 12, 2025. House Fiscal Agency analysts Sydney Brown and Cassidy Ackman presented an overview showing a $7.3 billion gross appropriation and a $1.3 billion general fund allocation for human services, and answered members’ questions about program rules, funding sources and recent statutory changes.

The presentation outlined why the budget matters: about 80% of the $7.3 billion is federal funding, TANF and SNAP are large federal sources that flow through multiple program lines, and about 63% of the $1.3 billion in general fund support is concentrated in child-welfare programs. The analysts also described program-specific caseloads, eligibility rules and recent statutory or administrative changes that affect how funds are spent.

Brown and Ackman said the human services appropriation includes public assistance, child welfare (including foster care, adoption subsidies and family preservation), juvenile justice, disability determination and local office operations. They summarized that roughly 62% of the human services gross appropriation supports public-assistance programs and that about $45.6 million of the $7.3 billion is one-time funding for the current fiscal year.

On TANF and MOE: Cassidy Ackman explained that Michigan’s annual federal TANF grant is about $773 million and that TANF combined with state maintenance-of-effort (MOE) appropriations totals “over $1.3 billion” in fiscal year 2024-25. She said states have flexibility in how they use TANF and what state spending they claim as MOE; historically Michigan routed substantial TANF or MOE dollars to K‑12 at‑risk and school‑readiness programs but noted that in fiscal 2024-25 much of that spending was redirected to other areas, including public assistance and earned-income tax–credit increases that were claimed as MOE. Representative Kelly asked whether the choice to treat different state spending as MOE was a legislative decision;…