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House Appropriations Subcommittee reviews proposed boilerplate cuts, probes missing reports
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Summary
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on General Government reviewed proposed boilerplate changes for fiscal 2027 across multiple departments, questioned missing reports and heard criticism that accountability language had been removed; the committee approved minutes and adjourned.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on General Government met to review proposed boilerplate language for the fiscal 2027 budget, focusing on deletions and changes the governor recommended and the house has proposed. Michael Knessen of the House Fiscal Agency reviewed the packet and walked members through sections affecting the attorney general, Department of State, DTMB and Treasury.
Knessen, who identified himself as "Michael Knessen with House Fiscal Agency," told the subcommittee the packet shows three columns comparing the current year, the executive recommendation and the subcommittee proposal. He said the presentation would focus on boilerplate sections that have recommended changes in the executive recommendation and items proposed by the chair. "There is a fairly thick packet in front of you of the boilerplate," he said.
Among the changes Knessen described, the executive recommends deleting multiple reporting requirements that previously appeared in boilerplate. He said the executive recommends deleting an attorney general report on legal costs tied to the Flint water emergency and removing a report that required notification to the legislature for lawsuits with a fiscal impact of $200,000 or more, noting the statute MCL 18.1396 already covers related reporting but not identically. Knessen also said he could not find an online posting of a payroll-fraud enforcement-unit report and acknowledged the report was due the prior September. "This report is required to be made available on the website, and after looking for it, I was not able to find it," he said, and the chair asked staff to request that the attorney general post the report.
The packet also describes house-proposed sections that would prohibit the attorney general from joining certain multistate lawsuits without a specific appropriation and would limit contingency-fee legal contracts that pay outside counsel based on proceeds. Knessen said the house had included similar sections in the prior year’s budget.
Knessen gave a detailed review of Department of State language the executive recommends deleting, including reports on record-lookup-fee revenues, an organ-donor program revenue report, and branch-closure notification requirements. He described a house proposal that created a Michigan Technology Transparency Fund for Department of State IT appropriations and noted a separate house proposal to prohibit Department of State contracts for third-party multistate voter-registration-sharing services.
On technology and procurement, Knessen outlined DTMB-related changes: proposed reductions in contingency-authority limits compared with recent higher authorizations made to implement federal grant-related programs; deletion of a $250,000 IT-contract reporting requirement the executive recommends removing; and house proposals to centralize IT procurement, require a product owner for larger projects and cap certain contracts at $10,000,000 and no longer than three years. He flagged a $1,000,000 conditional appropriation to the city of Lansing for local infrastructure and reminded members of the $42,000,000 recommended for voter-equipment replacement held in an election equipment reserve fund.
Representative Maddock (recorded in the transcript as "Rep Madic") gave a closing public-comment style remark explaining boilerplate as accountability measures and criticized the removal of many such provisions. "And we just witnessed 71 of them being removed by the Democrats, especially Jocelyn Benson," Maddock said, arguing the deletions reduce oversight. That claim went unanswered in the meeting record.
Procedurally, Representative Snyder moved to approve the minutes of the March 5, 2026 meeting; the chair said there were no objections and the minutes were approved. With no further business, the subcommittee adjourned.
The packet Knessen reviewed includes many detailed line items and cross-references (for example, legacy-cost reporting, IT procurement language and work-project authorizations). Staff said they will follow up on whether several required reports have been posted and will request posting where members could not locate copies online. No formal votes on boilerplate deletions were recorded during this meeting; the session was a review and discussion of proposed language.
