LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Michigan Republicans plan to sue Attorney General Dana Nessel after she ruled on Wednesday that lawmakers cannot cut $640 million in wasteful spending from the budget.

Nessel’s legal reasoning.

Any unspent funds at the end of the calendar year require the State Budget Office (SBO) to submit requests to convert unspent money into work project accounts. Those requests, if approved, allow billions of dollars to be carried over year-to-year. Instead of business as usual, House Republicans rejected those requests last month.

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Nessel explained her legal reasoning. “By empowering a single legislative committee to negate the State Budget Director’s work-project designations, the statute reserves the very administrative control that the separation of powers forbids,” Nessel said in a statement.

Next on the docket: a lawsuit brought by Michigan Republicans.

Michigan Republicans didn’t take long to respond to Nessel’s decision. House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) said they can easily win the lawsuit.

“This is clearly a political decision from Dana Nessel, and the Democrats rigged this from the beginning,” Hall said. “Without this law, Democrats will build their slush funds without any oversight. Incoherent legal theories like this are the reason we have the $5 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse in state government.” Hall went on to say that Nessel “has no problem ignoring the law to push welfare for illegal aliens and radical DEI programs, and Michigan taxpayers are going to pay the price.”

House Appropriations Chair Rep. Ann Bollin (R-Brighton) called Nessel’s opinion wrong. “It feels far more like a political defense of Democrats’ pet projects than an objective legal analysis,” Bollin said. “The House Appropriations Committee acted fully within its legal authority under a law that has been on the books for decades — a statute enacted in the 1980s that clearly allows the Legislature to disapprove work projects that do not meet the standards required by law. Nothing about that authority is new, and nothing about our action was unconstitutional.

Bollin also added, “What is new is Democrats’ frustration that the days of unchecked slush funds and blank checks are coming to an end.”