Fact check: Gretchen Whitmer has made big promises. Here’s how she’s done

• Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is again seeking road funding and economic development tools as she prepares annual State of State Address
• Analysis shows Whitmer has completed or made progress on 79% of past promises and proposals, including gun reform and tax measures
• Whitmer broke a promise to veto referendum-proof bills and has not worked with lawmakers to expand government transparency

LANSING — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is entering the final two years of her tenure with a familiar refrain: Fix the roads and expand the state's economic development toolkit to attract new businesses. 

The second-term Democrat raised both issues in a recent "road ahead" speech, returning to calls for a long-term road funding solution she first made to lawmakers six years ago in her inaugural State of State address.

Whitmer's ability to follow through this year is complicated by the return of Republican control in the state House, where new GOP Speaker Matt Hall and some members of her own party are growing increasingly skeptical of her flagship corporate subsidy program, which she wants to revamp. 

A Bridge Michigan review of the governor's annual speeches to the Legislature shows she has had several successes since taking office: She's implemented or made progress on 38 of her 48 past promises or proposals, including targeted tax relief, gun reforms and tuition-free education programs. 

But Whitmer has also failed to deliver on several fronts, including government transparency reforms, a long-term fix for crumbling roads and repeated calls for electric vehicle tax credits. 

In at least one instance, the governor has broken a pledge by doing what she had vowed not to do: Signing a law the Legislature made referendum-proof by adding a spending provision. In this case, it was a bill she had advocated for: Union-backed repeal of the state's Right-to-Work law. 

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Whitmer’s success rate is due to her pragmatism — she’s generally leaned into politically realistic proposals — and bolstered by two years of nearly complete Democratic control in Lansing, Bridge’s analysis found. 

In some years during which Republicans controlled the Legislature, she was unable to deliver on any promises, and even some allies say they are disappointed by her compromises in areas like environmental protection and corporate incentives.

Other findings from the Bridge analysis of the governor's prior State of the State addresses:

• Whitmer has failed to make any progress, or persuade the Legislature to act on, on 10 of her 48 promises or proposals — roughly 19%.
• She's had most success following through on health care and economic development proposals.
• Perhaps unsurprisingly, Whitmer accomplished more State of the State proposals than any other year in 2023, the first of two years when Democrats controlled both the Senate and House.
• She delivered on 12 promises or proposals that year, including anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ residents, which she called for earlier but was unable to accomplish with a GOP-led Legislature 
• Other major successes include: free community college, red-flag gun restrictions and hands-free driving law.
• Whitmer hasn’t delivered on pledges to expand public records requests to her office and the Legislature, a long-term plan to fix roads or creating a state cap on insulin prices.
• Whitmer's pace slowed in 2024, when legislative Democrats passed fewer bills amid inter-party disputes and a contentious election cycle. Republicans ultimately won back control of the chamber, and House
• Democrats ended the year without voting on hundreds of bills.

Whitmer will propose a new state budget on Wednesday before delivering her second-to-last State of the State address on Feb. 26 — a month later than usual, which she said was meant to accommodate legislative Republicans attending President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. 

Her spokesperson, Stacey LaRouche, told Bridge Michigan the governor "has been proud” to cut taxes for working families and seniors, boost Michigan’s economy and lower costs of housing and post-secondary education. The next goal: finding long-term road funding solutions and continuing investing in job creation. 

“We know there's more work to do,” LaRouche said. “We are going to need serious ideas, including new revenue streams and responsible cuts, to make sure we can make progress on roads and job creation for years to come.” 

Whitmer told reporters at a recent event in Detroit that despite a “challenging” lame-duck session last term, she’s proud of what she and fellow Democrats got done while they held full control.

“We did an incredible amount of work,” she said. As for the next two years, Whitmer said she’s “determined to continue to live my values, but always seek common ground with the new leadership.”

Whitmer successes

Of the 48 promises or proposals Whitmer made in her first six State of the State Addresses, she fulfilled 26. 

But the governor has also made progress on several others.  

Among the major proposals Whitmer has called for in past speeches and subsequently signed into law: 

• An expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, a refundable tax credit for low-income workers
• Restoring tax exemptions on pension income
• Michigan Reconnect, a program covering community college costs for adults
• Expansion of the state’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ residents

Her success rate is due in part to her ability to understand “the political parts” of the Legislature — delivering a speech that’s less an unfiltered wishlist but instead limited to what she sees as possible to accomplish, said former state Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, a Republican who worked with Whitmer in her prior role as Senate minority leader. 

That’s a notable contrast from her predecessor, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who “went out and he just told it the way he saw it,” Richardville said. 

“She's going to talk to the average Joe or Jane off the street about why her agenda is a good one. And then she's going to let the Legislature know that there are things she wants, and she's going to want to work with them.”

Whitmer failures

But some Republicans say Whitmer has so far failed to acknowledge shortcomings of her tenure, including her inability to follow through on some policy proposals and in at least one instance reverse herself. 

In her 2019 speech, Whitmer made a direct promise she would later break: "I will veto bills designed to cut out the public’s right of referendum,” she said, reiterating a vow she had already made by executive directive.

Whitmer was referencing a tactic Republicans had used when she served in the Legislature: Attaching an appropriation to a policy law, which under the state Constitution, cannot be challenged by ballot referendum in a vote of the people.

It happened in 2012, for instance, when Snyder signed a major Right-to-Work law that prohibited labor contracts that made dues or fees a condition of employment. As Senate minority leader at the time, Whitmer called him a “coward” for signing bills that included a spending provision prohibiting a public referendum. 

Fast forward to 2023, and Whitmer signed legislation repealing that right-to-work law. It included $2 million in funding to inform businesses and employees about the change — making it referendum proof as well, and breaking her promise.

At the time, a Democratic lawmaker said her party added money to the bill because they did not want "a lot of outside interests to come in and try to push something through" on a ballot measure.

In 2019, Whitmer called on the Legislature to expand the state’s Freedom of Information Act by making herself and lawmakers subject to public records requests. Legislation has repeatedly stalled, and Whitmer backed off a separate campaign promise to voluntarily open her own office if lawmakers didn’t act.

Highways bolstered, ‘dire straits’ for local roads

In her recent “road ahead” address at the Detroit Auto Show, Whitmer stopped short of proposing her own road funding solution but suggested Democrats and Republicans alike will have to “recognize some hard truths” to get it done.

A bipartisan solution will likely need to include new revenue, Whitmer added, referencing possible tax or fee increases, along with “fiscally responsible cuts” to other areas of the state budget.

Road funding was a key plank of Whitmer’s winning 2018 gubernatorial campaign, but her 2019 proposal to enact a 45-cent gas tax increase — which would have given Michigan the highest gas taxes in the nation — was never taken up by the GOP-led Legislature. Fellow Democrats distanced themselves from the proposal too.

Whitmer then opted to go it alone, authorizing $3.5 billion in state bonds to borrow money and fund upkeep and reconstruction of some of Michigan’s busiest roadways. 

Money from those bond sales is running out fast, however, and industry experts say it’s long past time to find a more permanent source to fill the estimated $3.9 billion annual infrastructure funding shortfall. 

Given the political circumstances of her first term, Whitmer did “the only thing she could do” to help improve state roads, said Lance Binoniemi of the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association, a construction industry trade group. 

The bonding program has “definitely helped improve our roads and put us on a right path, but we need to keep these levels…if we want to continue with that success,” Binoniemi added.

A major limitation of the bonding program was its exclusive focus on state-owned roads, leaving local road agencies in “dire straits,” said Ed Noyola, deputy director of the Michigan County Road Association. 

“Our conditions are continuing to go down…We will see a decline next year in the amount of roads that are being worked on,” Noyola said. “Obviously, this is not going in the direction that we’d like.” 

Republican lawmakers recently laid out their own plan for funding roads that would come at the cost of another Whitmer priority: diverting existing corporate income tax revenue and an expected revenue surplus to roads, including $500 million a year that’s been set aside for economic development deals.

Doing so would make it easier to get a road funding deal done without raising taxes, Hall recently told reporters, calling business incentives “terrible” and “not worth the investment.” 

Business incentives

Whitmer is pushing this year to replace her flagship business incentive program – the Strategic Outreach Attraction Reserve (SOAR) fund – with “new, better tools” to help the state attract large factories and technology hubs, including a “more streamlined” program for scoping out and readying potential sites and additional investments in housing and public transit. 

She has also reiterated support for the proposed HIRE Michigan program, a retooling of Snyder-era payroll tax cuts she first proposed in her 2024 State of the State speech.

Last year, Whitmer called on the Democratic-majority Legislature to pass four new economic incentive policies, which included two new development funds and a tax credit. Three of those proposals became law, while one died – the HIRE payroll tax proposal – died in the Legislature.

Whitmer’s emphasis on economic development has grown throughout her tenure, but Republicans and some Democrats have grown increasingly wary of what they see as corporate subsidies that have not paid off. 

Bridge Michigan has reported extensively on the major state incentives. Among the prior findings:

• As of last year, Michigan had spent $1 billion on corporate incentives and pledged hundreds of millions more for major EV and battery projects that had so far created about 200 jobs.
• Michigan spent $335 million on job-growth subsidies in 2023, with 40% of the promised jobs paying less than $22 per hour. About 60% of the jobs didn't pay middle class wages.

Glenn Stevens Jr., executive director of the auto industry advocacy group MichAuto, said amid uncertainty over federal economic issues, it’s smart for the governor and state lawmakers to focus on issues within their purview. 

“Investing in our roads, investing in a balanced economic development package, investing in jobs and new hires and careers — those are things we can control,” he said. “We're going to have to figure out and strike a balanced approach to what we incentivize and what we support.”

Political headwinds

New House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland, voted to create the SOAR fund in 2019 but recently said he felt "tricked" by some of the subsequent awards. He’s created an oversight committee to investigate the return on investment. 

Some Democrats, too, have opposed the governor’s economic development agenda. 

Rep. Dylan Wegela, a progressive Democrat from Inkster, said he knew from the first State of the State Address he attended in 2023 that he and the governor were not going to agree on corporate incentives – “and obviously I didn't like hearing that.”

Some environmental advocates say Whitmer’s recent focus on corporate incentives eroded some of the progress Democrats made on renewable energy standards. Most notably, they point to a $90 million tax break for data centers that Whitmer signed into law last month. 

“Gov.Whitmer signed those bills and undermined her own renewable energy package,” said Christy McGillivray, the political and legislative director of the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter.

Whitmer’s own political profile could also hamper her ability to govern the next two years: Research has shown that governors are 2.5 times less likely to get their policy proposals through the Legislature amid presidential speculation.

“Lawmakers are adept at recognizing proposals aimed at bolstering a potential presidential bid and are often unwilling to play along,” Thad Kousser and Justin Phillips wrote in  “The Power of American Governors,” a national analysis of more than 1,000 gubernatorial state of the state proposals.

In general, governors are typically more successful in persuading lawmakers to adopt budget proposals than policy proposals, the researchers found. 

School — some progress, a big goal

It’s not yet clear whether Whitmer will revisit past policy proposals in her next address – some of which are in progress, and others of which set deadlines beyond Whitmer’s term, such as getting 60% of Michiganders some postsecondary educational attainment by 2030.

Whitmer has prioritized access to preschool and post-secondary education during several State of the State speeches, pushing for universal pre-K and free community college for all Michigan residents and vowing to get the number of Michiganders with at least some post-secondary education to 60% by 2030.

She’s made substantial progress on both goals, with caveats.

The state’s education budget includes funding to enroll nearly 59,000 students in the state’s Great Start Readiness Program and expanded access to all families regardless of income level. 

As of December, 45,000 four-year-olds are enrolled in pre-K programs, a 4,000-child increase over last year. Michigan is still short of reaching 70% of the 118,000 4-year-olds actually living in the state, the threshold for what the National Institute for Early Education Research considers a truly "universal" free preschool program. 

Progress on college enrollment has been incremental, with investments and updates to Whitmer-backed programs like Michigan Reconnect and the Michigan Achievement Scholarship making their way into bipartisan budgets.

“Little by little by little, big chunks of it have been enacted in really interesting ways,” said Michelle Miller–Adams, a senior researcher at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. 

“This situation is complex, which is not ideal because it dilutes the messaging a little bit, but the landscape of financial aid in Michigan looks extremely different than it did six years ago, absolutely.”

As of 2024, 51.8% of Michigan residents had at least some post-secondary education, according to data compiled by the Lumina Foundation, behind the national average but slightly above the 45% when Whitmer entered office.

Despite setbacks from COVID-19 and other factors that typically work against college enrollment, like a strong labor market and political polarization around college education, college enrollment has been “moving in the right direction,” Miller–Adams said, though reaching the 60% by 2030 goal is a tall order.