Citizens Research Council of Michigan

08/28/2026

🍷🍽️Individual tickets are now available, along with an array of sponsorships!

https://crcmich.org/event/2026dinner-2

Confirm your sponsorship by September 4 to be recognized at the event and afterward.

A good time, with good people, honoring great public servants.

September 30, The Lansing Center. Reception begins at 5 pm.

We hope you can make it!

08/21/2026

🍎🍞🥙🥛Over 100,000 fewer people in Michigan are receiving SNAP benefits since the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) reforms took effect, meaning the state will receive $300 million less in federal SNAP funding this year than last year. A reduction in SNAP benefits will increase hunger; worsen health outcomes and raise health care costs; harm educational outcomes; and lead to downstream economic consequences.

SNAP is entirely federally funded, so cutting benefits doesn’t free up any state dollars. That means states absorb the negative consequences of reduced benefits while gaining no budget savings, giving them a strong incentive to soften the impact of the cuts.

Michigan policymakers have policy options to blunt the negative impact.

Find the Council Brief here: https://crcmich.org/michigans-options-to-respond-to-shrinking-snap-benefits-would-minimize-economic-disruption

08/18/2026

📉K–12 school enrollment has dropped nearly 25% since 2003. How MI is handling the financial fallout.

Michigan’s new school budget quietly introduced one of the most consequential changes in years: a built-in mechanism to soften the financial blow to schools from a 25% decline in K–12 enrollment since 2003, with an additional 8% decline projected over the next five years.

In this episode, Guy Gordon and senior Research Director Craig Thiel unpack the drivers of Michigan’s 25% enrollment drop, explain why districts can’t simply “right-size” overnight, and explain how the new three-year averaging formula works.

Because Michigan funds schools on a per‑pupil basis, declining enrollment means declining revenue. But districts can’t immediately cut costs—students who leave are spread across grades and buildings, and fixed costs like transportation and facilities don’t shrink proportionally. As Thiel explains, “It’s not that those 50 kids are all in the fifth grade and you can lose two fifth‑grade teachers.”

Thiel explains that while the change will cost the state roughly $186 million next year, it represents less than 1% of total K–12 funding — yet it dramatically affects district stability. The catch? These dollars are one-time funds, creating a looming funding cliff unless lawmakers make the policy permanent. With Michigan projected to lose another 8% of students by 2031, this is not a temporary challenge but a structural one.

Thiel argues that if declining-enrollment stabilization is to be part of the core funding formula, it needs a dedicated, ongoing funding source—not temporary dollars that disappear and destabilize district budgets.

https://crcmich.substack.com/p/k12-school-enrollment-has-dropped?r=75jv99&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

08/14/2026

☣️ Michigan’s economic warning lights are flashing, and on this episode of the podcast, Guy Gordon and Research Council researcher Madhu Anderson dig into why — and what might finally move the needle.

🏙️ 🏘️Anderson’s new paper argues that statewide “grand plans” haven’t delivered. Instead, the real action is local.

Using Harvard’s Opportunity Atlas and Social Capital Atlas, communities can now see — down to the neighborhood — how kids grow up, what their long-term earnings look like, and where social networks help or hold people back.

The surprise? Grand Rapids quietly became one of the fastest-rising cities in the country for personal income, thanks in part to community-driven strategies like its Neighborhoods of Focus initiative.

The takeaway: Michigan doesn’t need another blue ribbon commission. It needs to empower local leaders with better data, proven models, and the ability to tailor solutions to their own residents.

The tools are free. The urgency is real. And the path forward is local.

is on all major platforms + Substack and crcmich.org/podcast.

08/12/2026

Please support our work today!

🍽️ 🍷Dinner sponsorships are available at many levels. Find them here: https://crcmich.org/event/2026dinner-2

Your sponsorship allows you and your friends a fantastic evening out in Lansing on September 30, while also supporting much-needed unbiased, independent public policy research being made available to Michigan's policymakers, businesses, voters and families.

08/11/2026

"Few states mandate as much responsibility to townships as Michigan, from assessing and collecting property taxes to running elections. Today, more than 75% of townships and villages report having more difficulty filling mandatory elected positions, according to a recent University of Michigan survey."
.."While the Michigan Legislature has the power to transfer services from townships and make it easier to merge, there is little appetite for tweaking the system, Eric Lupher, president of Citizens Research Council of Michigan, told Bridge Michigan. “The harm being done is so incremental that people don’t realize that things aren’t working right,” Lupher said. “You can’t whistle past the graveyard too much longer and assume local government can continue to do what they’ve done in the past.”

Michigan has more local governments and puts more tasks on them than most other states. Other states have shrunk government, but Michigan law makes mergers or dissolving extremely difficult.

08/07/2026

🏫 🎒 💰 We found that Michigan’s new declining student enrollment funding policy, in the FY2027 budget, is good news ... at least for now.

As we noted in our recent state budget analysis, the FY2027 School Aid budget includes over $1.4 billion in “one-time” appropriations. Several of these appropriations have appeared for at least four consecutive budgets and many districts have come to rely on these “one-time” dollars every year to finance their general operations.

This creates significant risks for districts that build ongoing expenditures around temporary state dollars.

When policymakers start work on the FY2028 School Aid Budget, they should consider whether declining enrollment assistance should become a permanent and sustainable component.
https://crcmich.org/michigans-new-declining-student-enrollment-funding-policy-is-good-news-at-least-for-now

In a Nutshell Declining student enrollment has been a financial challenge for Michigan K-12 school districts for over two decades and is projected to continue. Under the state-controlled per-student funding model in place since the mid-1990s, when districts enroll fewer students than the previous ye...