Before road funding deal, road builder money flowed to Michigan lawmakers

Road builders ramped up donations to Michigan politicians in 2025 as lawmakers negotiated a $2 billion road funding deal
House Speaker Matt Hall’s leadership PAC raised more than $200,000 at a fall fundraiser attended by scores of road building executives
Lawmakers across the political spectrum hailed road funding deal, but watchdog says contributions undermine public confidence

LANSING — Less than two months before Michigan lawmakers finalized a historic deal to pump as much as $2 billion a year into road repairs, a slew of road construction executives whose companies will benefit from the spending opened their checkbooks at an upscale steakhouse in metro Detroit.

In a single day, officials in pavement, excavating, road construction, contracting, heavy equipment and industry interest groups donated a combined $211,293 to the Matt Hall Majority Fund, the Republican House speaker’s namesake political action committee that supports GOP lawmakers and causes across the state.

The Aug. 21 fundraiser at Fleming’s Steakhouse in Birmingham, where the cheapest cut on offer is $59, was part of a surge of campaign contributions to Michigan lawmakers by road building officials in 2025.

Those donations more than doubled compared to prior years as Hall and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer pushed for a bipartisan road funding deal, according to an analysis by Bridge Michigan.

Road building company officials and employees who had donated about $204,000 in 2024 had donated more than $400,000 through October of last year. The volume of donations is notable in part because they fell on an odd year, when contributions typically decline absent a looming election.

Because much of the Michigan Legislature’s budget negotiations happened behind closed doors, it’s difficult to know how, if at all, industry groups and road builders could have influenced the structure of the road funding plan that Whitmer and lawmakers finalized in October.

But such fundraising can influence lawmakers and undermine confidence in the process, said Neil Thanedar, the executive director of the nonpartisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network.

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“When political leaders raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for their leadership committees from industry executives a month before making a deal for billions in new funding for that industry, this leads the public to lose trust in politicians and assume billions in our tax money is being lost to corruption,” Thanedar told Bridge.

Asked about the fundraising from road building officials, Hall touted the ultimate deal and told Bridge that his “unwavering commitment to getting this done — over nearly seven years — and ability to negotiate a great deal with Gov. Whitmer is what pushed this over the finish line.”

The centerpiece of the road funding plan, a contested 24% wholesale tax on marijuana, was not something the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association, which represents road builders, had pushed, the group’s chief lobbyist told Bridge Michigan.

“I do know that a lot of our members have become more politically active over the last few years,” said Lance Binoniemi, the vice president of government affairs for the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association, or MITA, which represents road builders and other government contractors.

“I’m not that surprised that there’s a larger enthusiasm from the industry to get politically active,” Binoniemi said.

The fundraiser

The single Aug. 21 event in Birmingham raised more money than any other legislator’s leadership PAC had raised in total through mid-October of last year, according to campaign finance records analyzed by Bridge. Nearly all of the donations were for $4,000 or more.

All told, 2025 donations from employees for road building firms or companies adjacent to the industry more than doubled from prior years, thanks in part to the fundraiser. Road building company employees had previously given about $204,000 in total throughout 2024, an election year, and by the end of October last year, 2025’s total had passed $400,000.

Hall was not the only Michigan politician to receive significant cash in the run-up to the roads deal, either, though he was the only lawmaker so centrally positioned in negotiations. The second largest recipient was Senate Democrats’ caucus PAC, which supports Democratic candidates across the state and received a $48,875 contribution from James Jacob, the CEO of asphalt company AJAX Paving.

Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall’s leadership committee reported raising $211,293 at a fall fundraiser attended by a slew of road funding executives. (Annie Barker for Bridge Michigan)

Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who is running for governor as an independent, received more than $80,000 from donors affiliated with the road building industry.

In a disclosure report filed with the state, Hall’s PAC listed the location of the fundraiser as a rural home owned by Brittany Love, the PAC’s treasurer who’s long been active in state GOP politics. But multiple attendees told Bridge the event was actually held at Fleming’s Steakhouse.

The disclosure report described the fundraiser as a “Becker Event.” In attendance was Anthony Becker, an equipment manager at Royal Truck and Trailer and the son of Rick Becker, the president of Michigan Paving and Materials Co. Becker was not available for comment as of publication time.

Mark Parran, the operations manager for the firm, donated at the fundraiser and a few days later, the PAC for CRH Americas — Michigan Paving’s parent company — contributed $8,000.

Doug Needham, the executive director of the Michigan Aggregates Association, confirmed he was at the steakhouse fundraiser and told Bridge it had been put on by a group of roads industry leaders.

Attendees also included the president, director of operations and a project manager for CA Hull, a firm that touts itself as “the largest Michigan-based bridge-builder.” Five members of the Shea family, who founded leading lane painting firm PK Contracting, attended and donated a combined $20,000 to Hall’s PAC.

Who benefits

The road funding plan that ultimately emerged from months of negotiations amounts to the largest funding increase for roads in state history — as much as $2 billion in future years — though some of the funds are not guaranteed, tied to a marijuana tax that may be held up in court and dependent on the state’s economic performance through corporate income tax revenue.

The deal ensures record funding for state and local roads into the future, Whitmer said in October, calling the spending plan a fulfillment of her 2018 campaign pledge to “fix the damn roads.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, House Speaker Matt Hall and other officials wear green vests and hard hats. — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, House Speaker Matt Hall and other officials at a ceremonial bill celebrated the state’s new road funding deal in October of 2025. (Courtesy of Executive Office of the Governor)

Doing so “will make everyone’s drive safer and faster,” she said at the time. “I’m so grateful to legislators on both sides of the aisle for coming together to get this done so we can build reliable roads that last for decades while supporting tens of thousands of good-paying local jobs.”

But the deal has also drawn some criticism because the law failed to make any structural changes in how roads are funded.

The nonpartisan, nonprofit Citizens Research Council has called for a revamp of the funding model, and in a report released last month wrote much of the funding changes appeared “haphazard and not well thought-out,” in part because the legislation “did not address any issues beyond funding.”

“Shoring up an inefficient, ineffective system with more funding is not good policy,” Eric Paul Dennis, a researcher with the council who focuses on roads, told reporters last month. “It’s likely to make the system even less effective.”

Dennis said he was “quite disappointed” by the plan lawmakers produced, saying lawmakers “showed almost no interest in understanding how the current road program is working and which aspects of it are not working.”

The most significant change in the plan — funneling about 60% of new funds to county and municipal road agencies into a new “neighborhood roads fund” and away from the state — was celebrated by Hall and Democrats alike as a welcome infusion of cash for long-overlooked infrastructure.

But the change could also prove lucrative for road builders. At the state level, contracts are almost always awarded in a competitive, open bid process, but the practice is far less common at the local level, where work can be handed out based on existing relationships and without an open call for quotes. Just 23 of Michigan’s 83 counties are listed as participants in the Michigan Inter-governmental Trade Network, a bidding system, though most of the state’s largest counties have joined.

Dennis also noted that, in his experience, contractors also face less stringent oversight of their work from smaller local agencies than from the state, which closely tracks how roads perform once constructed.

“If you want to find waste, fraud, and abuse, you should not ignore road construction,” he added.

A ‘coordinated push’?

The road deal was only the most recent of a series of efforts to infuse Michigan’s long-beleaguered infrastructure with the funding needed to reverse deterioration.

Lawmakers last approved a major funding boost in 2015 under then-Gov. Rick Snyder. Whitmer proposed a $2.5-billion plan in 2019 that would have given Michigan the highest gas taxes in the nation, but lawmakers did not take it up.

The deal finalized last fall combines a marijuana tax increase with larger shifts in existing state revenue.

State Rep. Samantha Steckloff said on a recent podcast lawmakers were effectively given a menu of “about 13 different tax increases” during final negotiations and were asked which they could stomach.

Hall, the state House Speaker, argued Democrats “refused to fund the roads without raising taxes.”

“I negotiated a deal that included a dollar-for-dollar match between new revenue and cutting of waste, fraud and abuse,” Hall told Bridge.

Lobbyists for the roads industry had long urged lawmakers to approve additional long-term funding, including last year as Hall and Whitmer both set their sights on a new plan.

While donations flowed during negotiations, “I don’t know that there was a coordinated push” by road builders, said Binoniemi, with the statewide construction association.

MITA, a prolific donor to state elected officials, reported giving roughly $644,000 to legislators and PACs in 2024, and about $268,000 through October 2025. Last year marked the first time donations from industry members themselves eclipsed the association paid to represent their interests.

Binoniemi attributed the increased political activity, in part, to the “impending funding cliff” road builders faced, both as Whitmer’s road bonds were set to run out and money from the 2021 federal bipartisan infrastructure law expiring, which he said would’ve resulted in thousands of jobs lost.

“I think that job aspect was probably the key role of putting things over the edge,” he said.

The push to get a road funding deal done publicly culminated in a rally where both labor unions and road building companies joined outside the state Capitol in early September. Thousands of workers called on lawmakers to act to prevent job losses.

“We have to invest in our future, in our workers, and in our roads with a sustainable funding plan today, or we will lose all three,” Operating Engineers 324 business manager Doug Stockwell said at the time.