LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Michigan’s new $81 billion budget deal between the Democrats and Republicans left one program stranded on the runway: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s prized SOAR (Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve) fund.

After years of being billed as the golden ticket to lure major employers, SOAR has been quietly written out of Lansing’s spending plan – no new money, no revival, no lifeline.

From flash to fizzle.

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SOAR once dominated headlines with billion-dollar incentives backed by both parties and championed by the Whitmer administration as Michigan’s ticket to landing major battery plants and high-tech jobs. The fund was born in 2021 from a rare moment of bipartisan unity but that early goodwill didn’t last long – many of the hyped projects fell flat, jobs failed to materialize, and taxpayers were left footing the bill for glossy press releases and ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

What was pitched as a “strategic reserve” morphed into a corporate welfare slush fund with a shiny acronym – made worse by the fact that many deals, like the controversial Gotion EV battery plant in Green Charter Township, were hidden from the public and met with fierce local backlash once exposed.

Without the annual $500 million deposit into SOAR, it has been grounded, wings clipped by lawmakers weary of explaining why the public keeps footing the bill for private deals that rarely soar.