2003 Senate Bill 540 ↩

Senate Roll Call 355: Passed

A supplemental multi-department budget for FY 2002-2003. The bill appropriates $497.6 million in gross funding, mostly federal Medicaid money, and reduces current year general fund appropriations by $15.4 million. The bill adds $268.1 million for Medicaid, and $41.5 million to upgrade technology in the state’s centralized child support collection and payment system. It contains $10 million for a grant to create a life sciences research and commercialization center in the Kalamazoo area, intended to keep in the area 75 to 100 scientists and support staff formerly employed by the Pfizer/Pharmacia Corporation. The $10 million will come from money that would have been used for a targeted tax credit that Pfizer will not receive, because current law makes the credit contingent on creating a certain number of new jobs. This appropriation had previously been contained in various versions of the Higher Education and Michigan Strategic Fund budgets. The bill provides $1.5 million in general fund money for payments in lieu of property taxes (PILT) to local governments on some one-million acres of state land under the jurisdiction of the Department of Natural Resources. It contains a number of other appropriations for various government projects, including authorization for Natural Resources Trust Fund money to a number of conservation and recreation projects around the state. Finally, the bill appropriates money that will be used to pay the debt on state buildings in the next fiscal year.