- Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will deliver her final State of the State address on Wednesday, Feb. 25 in Lansing
- In her 2025 speech, Whitmer made 14 policy promises — most of which she followed through on despite a divided legislature
- Over her tenure, Whitmer has either delivered or partially delivered on 42 of the 62 promises or calls to action in her annual addresses
LANSING — As she prepares to deliver her final State of the State address next week, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer can finally say she’s secured long-term funding to “fix the damn roads.”
By signing a bipartisan funding deal last fall, the second-term Democrat followed through on road fix pledges that have been a staple of her annual speeches to the Legislature.
Road funding was among 14 promises or calls to action Whitmer made in her 2025 address, according to a new Bridge Michigan analysis.
She fully or partially followed through on ten of those pledges, including a new law she signed this month banning smartphone use during instructional time in Michigan’s K-12 schools.
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But Whitmer also had some notable failures: Lawmakers rejected her State of the State call for a new tax on vapes and did not come close to negotiating a balanced budget deal by the end of June, among other things.
Whitmer’s Feb. 25 address gives her the opportunity to set the tone for her final year in office and outline what she hopes to accomplish with a divided Legislature in an election year where politics could derail policy.
Her speeches have typically blended policy proposals and victory laps on accomplishments from the prior year, which appears likely once again. Whitmer has said she will “lay out my plan to build on our years of strong, bipartisan progress and strategic, fiscally responsible leadership.”
Past Bridge Michigan reporting on Whitmer’s State of the State addresses showed that the governor has a solid track record of following through on promises to Michiganders and calls for the Legislature to act.
But that’s because Whitmer’s been strategic about what she calls for, said Adrian Hemond, a Democratic strategist with the Grassroots Midwest firm in Lansing.
In her final State of the State address, Hemond expects her to call for a “shorter list of smaller items,” given the limited time she has left in office.
“The last Democratic governor (Gov. Jennifer Granholm) … did maybe promise a little bit more than was realistic to be able to deliver with the Legislature that she had to work with,” Hemond said. “This governor hasn’t done as much of that.”
To date, Whitmer has either delivered or partially delivered on 42 of 62 promises or calls to action in her seven prior State of the State addresses, according to Bridge’s latest analysis.
Here’s how that breaks down.
Whitmer’s promise record
Through Whitmer’s first seven years in office, there was a marked shift in her annual State of the State addresses, which were initially full of promises to Michiganders but have shifted to calls on the Legislature to act.
In 2019 and 2020, Whitmer made a combined 11 promises to Michiganders. But in the five years that followed, she made just eight more commitments to viewers, while calling on the Legislature to act 36 times.
“All of her promises, whether it’s last year’s promises or the promises when she first took office, have to be viewed in the context of who she’s working with in the Legislature,” said Craig Thiel, research director at the nonpartisan Citizens Research Council.
Whitmer began her first term with a Republican-led Legislature. She enjoyed a Democratic “trifecta” in 2023 and 2024 before Republicans retook control of the state House to start 2025.
Bipartisan road funding deal: Succeeded
In her 2025 address, Whitmer once again called for “a long-term, bipartisan solution” to fix Michigan roads. She had repeatedly called to realize her 2018 campaign slogan, only to be stymied time and again.
But last year, it actually happened — for the most part.
By moving around some money and placing a new 24% wholesale tax on marijuana, lawmakers found an extra $2 billion per year for roads. It was a deal of apparently historic proportions, yet still well under the $3 billion-plus Whitmer and other lawmakers had said is needed each year to bring the state’s roadways back into proper shape.
The full impact of the bipartisan compromise won’t be fully seen for a number of years, though, and some experts have some misgivings about how the money will be shared between local, county and state agencies.
Road agencies will actually receive less funding this fiscal year than last because of a mismatch between state accounting and distribution timing, according to an analysis by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan.
Taxing vapes: Failed
One of the few items Whitmer called for last year but was unable to make progress on: Taxing vaping products at the same rate as tobacco, in an effort to raise revenue for public health initiatives, like anti-smoking campaigns and cancer awareness.
During her 2025 address, Whitmer argued that 32 other states “red and blue … already do the same, including all of our neighbors” and that it was long past time to close what she referred to as “a longstanding loophole.”
Cigarettes have long faced taxes in Michigan, but products that contain nicotine but not tobacco, like vaporizers and snus, aren’t covered by Michigan’s tobacco tax law.
While she hasn’t succeeded, Whitmer has been “a champion on this issue” and kept the conversation alive in the Legislature, said Amanda Klein, state government relations director for the American Heart Association.
And Whitmer is trying again: A budget she proposed earlier this month calls for new taxes on vapes, as well as sports betting and digital advertisements, to raise more money for Medicaid.
School cellphone restrictions: Succeeded
In last year’s State of the State address, Whitmer called on lawmakers to “pass bipartisan legislation to limit the use of phones in class.”
It was a policy proposal with bipartisan appeal, as both the Republican-led House and Democratic-led Senate introduced legislation, though neither proposal made it to Whitmer’s desk by the end of 2025.
But after quick action by lawmakers early this year, Whitmer signed a new school cellphone policy bill into law. It will take effect at the start of the 2026-27 school year.
Under the new law, all Michigan public schools will have to have a plan in place to ban smartphones from being used during instructional time, unless they function as a medical device or are used for instructional purposes.
More basic phones can be kept on a student’s person, and a smartphone can be stored in a student’s locker to be used at lunch or during passing periods.
Earmarks transparency: Partially succeeded
Early in 2025, Republican House Speaker Matt Hall signaled one of his main priorities for the year was implementing greater transparency on budget earmarks, otherwise known as “pork barrel spending.”
The earmark process has been rife with controversy in recent years, in part because lawmakers added last-minute grants to massive spending bills that were unveiled and quickly passed in late-night sessions. They included some eyebrow-raising grants, including millions for rockets, private firms and projects benefiting the politically connected.
In her 2025 address, Whitmer joined Hall in calling for “total transparency on all earmarks” in the 2025-26 fiscal year budget, saying that if a lawmaker wants “to invest taxpayer money, put your name on it.”
The House changed chamber rules to require all lawmakers to disclose any earmarks they were sponsoring in budget bills, along with the intended recipient and purpose, before a vote by the full House.
Senate Democrats, however, were much slower to change, waiting until just two days before the Oct. 1 constitutional budget deadline to agree to disclosing earmark requests.
Because of the late adoption, some earmarks were still added to the state budget without much time for scrutiny or oversight, undercutting the promise in practice and rendering it only partially fulfilled.
In future years, however, new laws Whitmer signed will require lawmakers to publicly disclose their proposed earmarks for budget bills on the House or Senate’s website for at least 45 days before the bill passes. All earmark requests will also need to be discussed in a public hearing.
As part of the new law, for-profit organizations are barred from receiving earmarked funds, with nonprofits only eligible if they have operated in Michigan for at least three years, among other things.
Erasing medical debt: Failed
Whitmer and fellow Democrats who fully controlled state government in 2024 set aside $4.5 million in the state budget to help Michiganders pay off medical debt. Last July, Whitmer announced that funding — alongside a few counties’ own commitments — had resulted in $144 million in medical debt forgiven.
But Whitmer sought to build on that funding last year, using her annual address to call for “a more significant, bipartisan way to help the nearly 700,000 Michiganders with medical debt.”
But that didn’t happen.
No further medical debt relief funding was included in the current-year budget Whitmer signed in October, and the bipartisan bills aimed at tackling the issue have not advanced since introduction last year.
More child care help: Succeeded
Whitmer also called for expanding affordable child care in her 2025 State of the State address, calling it a “pro-family, pro-child, and pro-growth policy” that would help “grow our population.”
The budget Whitmer signed in October included a $17 million funding boost to cover subsidized care for an additional 4,289 kids, according to figures provided by the administration.
All told, the budget includes $543 million for 48,799 kids, up from $526 million for 44,510 kids from the prior year.
That does not include spending on Michigan’s Great Start Readiness program or Tri-Share, a program that splits child care costs in three so that the state, an employee and their employer all play a role in child care access for a family – meaning the actual cost of child care the state has paid is likely greater.
Investments in housing: Succeeded
Citing the state’s housing shortage, Whitmer last year called on the state to “invest $2 billion to build, buy, or fix nearly 11,000 homes.”
“This year,” she added, “let’s make the largest housing investment in Michigan history.”
It appears Whitmer has made good on both those promises, although much of the funding had already been approved before her speech.
Officials recently announced that the Michigan State Housing Development Authority had “produced, preserved, or financed 12,414 housing units” in the 2025 fiscal year by investing “a record $2.61 billion in housing statewide.”
Those investments included $2.19 billion for multi- and single-family housing, $287 million in rental assistance and more than $129 million in community, neighborhood and homelessness-prevention grants.
Passing a timely budget: Failed
Whitmer and state legislators typically attempt to negotiate a balanced budget by July 1. While that deadline is written into state law and designed to give schools funding certainty as they build their own budgets, there’s no punishment for failing to meet it.
With the return of divided government in Lansing, Whitmer used last year’s State of the State address to push lawmakers to come together and pass “a balanced, bipartisan budget by the end of June.”
They missed that mark – and then some.
House Republicans took their time building a budget proposal, arguing it was their fiscal responsibility to evaluate “every program” to eliminate any potential “waste, fraud and abuse.” Senate Democrats, meanwhile, passed a budget proposal before officials lowered revenue projections, rendering it unrealistic.
In the end, Whitmer and the Legislature didn’t just miss the July 1 deadline. For the first time in 16 years, they also failed to pass a budget by the Oct. 1 deadline mandated by the state Constitution. Instead, they passed a stopgap spending bill to prevent a state government shutdown. Whitmer signed a final budget on Oct. 7.
Record spending on students: Succeeded
Whitmer made good on her 2025 State of the State call for “a $10,000 investment in every child, in every school.” The K-12 budget she signed in October included $10,050 per pupil foundation allowance.
But that almost didn’t come to pass.
In her own budget proposal, Whitmer recommended less funding for cyber schools. Senate Democrats concurred, while House Republicans wanted to hold both groups of students to the same funding level.
In the end, all students saw the same level of per pupil funding when Whitmer signed a finalized state budget into law on Oct. 7.
The $10,050 in per-pupil funding is a record, but when adjusted for inflation, Michigan is giving schools less money per student than it was 20 years ago. In the 2002 fiscal year, Michigan was spending the equivalent of $13,700 per pupil, according to a report from Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative.
“That $10,000 gets eaten up not just by general inflation, but the inflation that is impacting wages, that’s impacting health care,” Thiel noted. “Schools still have to stare down double-digit percent increases in their healthcare expenses year-over-year, and that comes out of the foundation allowance.”
Selfridge supports: Succeeded
Another success for the administration: Support for Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Macomb County, which Whitmer said in her speech meant working “with our federal partners to save Michigan jobs and protect our national security.”
The budget Whitmer signed in October includes $26 million to help bring a new fighter mission to Selfridge, but perhaps more importantly, the governor helped secure support from President Donald Trump.
Whitmer and Hall, the Republican House speaker, visited Trump at the White House in April 2025 to push the president on a handful of Michigan-related topics like invasive Asian carp and new fighter jets for the base.
By the end of the month, Trump was personally in Michigan “to lay to rest any doubts about Selfridge.” Standing beside Whitmer, he announced new jets for the air base.
Permitting and Licensing: Mixed
Whitmer brought up two wonky but longstanding issues during last year’s speech, proposing permitting and professional licensing reform.
On the latter, Michigan hasn’t seen the new state law she called for to “really speed up permitting and save people a lot of time and money.”
As for professional licensing, Whitmer called for a series of systemic reforms, saying she would craft an executive directive, but the Legislature would need to act, too.
While Whitmer issued the directive, there haven’t been substantial reforms made to how the state licenses professionals, aside from a few small tweaks, despite efforts by some lawmakers.
Skilled trades boost: Succeeded
Boosting participation and opportunities in the skilled trades has been a longstanding refrain for Michigan politicians, with Whitmer last year calling on lawmakers to “make the largest investment in career and technical education.”
Whitmer had proposed $125 million in related funding, but the budget she ended up signing included a lesser amount: $70 million in funding for “CTE desert” districts.
Still, that was a negotiating win for the governor. The Democrat-led Senate had proposed $50 million, while the Republican-led House had not included any additional funding for CTE.
The Michigan Association for Career and Technical Education has argued that still more funding is required to meet needs.