• Four gubernatorial candidates made their economic development pitches Thursday in southwest Michigan
  • Independent Mike Duggan said he’d like to expand brownfield redevelopment incentives and small business grants
  • Republican state Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt said he’d take a ‘take a blowtorch to bureaucracy.’

KALAMAZOO — Top gubernatorial hopefuls talked economic development with business executives Thursday in southwest Michigan, where several of their “elevator pitch” speeches were big on goals but light on details. 

Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who previously identified as a Democrat but is running for the state’s top job as an independent, said he’d unveil his economic development plan later in the campaign. 

But in an interview with Bridge Michigan after the Kalamazoo event, Duggan outlined two ideas: Taking Detroit’s Motor City Match program statewide, and “uncapping” Michigan’s “transformational brownfields” program, which allows developers to recoup tax revenue their projects generate.

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Motor City Match is a competitive grant program that connects small businesses that are awarded grants with financing, consulting, education and other services. It’s given more than $20 million out to businesses since it began in 2015 under Duggan, funded in part through philanthropic support. 

Michigan lawmakers created the transformational brownfield program in 2017 after a push from Detroit businessman Dan Gilbert, who soon utilized the tax capture program for developments in downtown Detroit. 

Duggan said he would be “a partner who doesn’t promise you what they’re going to do,” but someone who knows how to bring business, attract jobs and reduce healthcare costs, leaning on his experience as mayor of Michigan’s largest city and as a former hospital executive.

Joining Duggan at the event were fellow candidates Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state, and Republicans US Rep. John James and state Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt. 

Michigan is at an economic development crossroads after lawmakers last year canceled funding for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s signature economic incentive program. 

At an annual meeting held by Southwest Michigan First, an economic development organization representing seven counties in the state’s southwest corner, its director Jonas Peterson offered a word of warning.

“The Michigan Legislature is pulling back in a big way on support and tools for economic development,” he said.

Peterson highlighted Ford’s BlueOval electric vehicle battery production project in Marshall as the top economic project for the region. The $3.5 billion development benefited from more than $300 million in incentives through the state’s Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve fund, known as SOAR, which lawmakers denied additional funding for in last year’s budget. 

As part of a fall budget compromise, lawmakers had pledged to forge a new approach to economic development by the end of 2025, but they did not agree on a plan despite proposals from House Republicans and Senate Democrats.

State government was in the crosshairs from all sides in Thursday’s forum, and the candidates shared some common targets: a slow permitting process in state government, languishing schools and a lack of affordable housing.

Nesbitt, a Porter Township Republican who represents parts of southwest Michigan, has opposed business incentives in the Legislature and said he is focused on lowering costs — largely by cutting government requirements around carbon-free energy and business regulations.

“With the bureaucracy coming out of Lansing, the cost of doing business is becoming tougher and tougher,” Nesbitt said, promising to “take a blowtorch to bureaucracy” in state government. 

James, the second-term GOP member of Congress, similarly argued the future for development efforts in the state should be local, not determined by state government, praising Southwest Michigan First’s efforts.

“This region is the model and local control is the answer,” James said. “The question is now, how do we take this model and scale it statewide?”

He also took aim at state subsidies for projects like Ford’s BlueOval. “We need to stop spraying incentives at the biggest balance sheets,” he said, referring to SOAR’s ambition to land megaprojects from major companies.

That’s in contrast to Duggan’s push to expand the transformational brownfields program. It has been hailed as a key incentive to redevelop long-abandoned land into ambitious projects, such as Detroit’s new Hudson building and a planned soccer stadium for Grand Rapids. But the program has also faced criticism as offering more than $2 billion in handouts to billionaires using money that could be spent on projects to directly benefit residents.

Efforts to expand the program — pushed in part by Gilbert’s recent pitch to redevelop the Renaissance Center — stalled in the Legislature last year.

Benson, who appeared at the event remotely via video feed, said her goal is to make Michigan “the scale-up state” by making it easier for businesses to grow. 

She said she wanted to prioritize permitting reform in state government, bring increased transparency to Michigan’s business incentive process and improve education.  

The permitting process needs to happen at “the speed of business” and offer refunds to companies when delays occur, Benson said. She also pitched creating sector-specific innovation hubs in fields like mobility, biotechnology, manufacturing and artificial intelligence — though she didn’t suggest where those might be located.

Duggan criticized both major political parties for fostering what he called an inconsistent approach to economic development that leads to uncertainty for businesses.

“Every two years, these guys change strategy,” he said, arguing what he called a “toxic Lansing environment” is a “huge competitive disadvantage in the state of Michigan.”

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