2003 Senate Bill 283 ↩

Senate Roll Call 84: Passed

The Senate version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2003-2004 Family Independence Agency budget (welfare). (The executive recommendation for this budget is contained in Senate Bill 308.) This would appropriate $3.944 billion in adjusted gross spending (funded from all sources, including special state restricted fund and federal pass-through dollars, minus interdepartmental transfers), compared to $4.070 billion, which was the FY 2002-2003 amount enrolled in 2002, excluding any supplemental appropriations, line-item vetoes, or later cuts. Of this, $1.102 billion would come from the General Fund (funded by actual state tax revenues), compared to the current year's $1.173 billion. The Senate restored language contained in previous years, but removed from the executive proposal, prohibiting the department from disqualifying faith-based organizations otherwise able to apply and compete for services, programs, or contracts solely on the basis of their ecclesiastical nature, guiding principles or statements of faith. It also stripped out an administration proposal to allow the department to keep half of any appropriations not been spent at the end of the year as an incentive to cut costs, rather than having the funds lapse into the general fund, and also an unallocated "contingency fund" appropriation contained in the executive proposal for this and other departmental budgets. Much more information on Michigan’s budget is available at <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/4964">Hot Topics: Michigan’s Budget Challenge</a> at www.mackinac.org/4964.