LANSING — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer delivered her annual state of the state speech Wednesday night, highlighting years of policy impacts and her plan for her remaining months in office.
Whitmer’s second term is set to expire at the end of this year, and she’s encouraging lawmakers to take action while she’s still around.
“We’ve all been tested over the past seven years — but we’ve always come out stronger, and we always will,” Whitmer said.
Whitmer’s speech also served as a sort of farewell address to the people of Michigan. This was her eighth and final State of the State speech to lawmakers.
Whitmer mainly focused her speech on affordable housing, healthcare and boosting literacy rates statewide.
Michigan is 44th in the nation for 4th grade reading skills, a figure that leaders from both parties say is far below the state’s standard.
Whitmer promoted expanded funding for literacy tutoring, dyslexia screening and more development toward effective teaching methods.
“Strong readers and writers grow up to be more confident speakers, better problem solvers and great entrepreneurs,” she said. “Illiteracy is a challenge that compounds over time.”
But some lawmakers, like Rep. John Roth, pushed back against Whitmer’s overall approach to literacy.
“I was a little disappointed to see that we’re going to make a big investment now, when we could have been doing this a long time ago,” said Roth, (R) District 104, Interlochen. “We’ve been putting in massive dollars into the education fund every single year. I’ve been here for six years now. That’s good, but we’re not seeing the results.”
Whitmer also says that she is encouraging new statewide policies that would make it easier to develop new and existing communities.
“Our laws have made it easy to expand suburbs, but hard to build walkable downtowns and main streets, or to do more with your own property. It shouldn’t be so hard to build the homes people need in the places where they want to live,” she said.
State Rep. Parker Fairbairn says that he sees restrictive building policies as a contributor to Michigan’s lack of affordable housing.
“We’ve gone away from the real point of the residential building code, which was safety and focused on things like efficiency now, things that shouldn’t be prioritized,” said Fairbairn, (R) District 107, Harbor Springs. “So we want to reduce regulations allow our builders, electricians, plumbers, to really build because they know what’s best.”
Whitmer also ended her speech with a callback to one of several notable nicknames she picked up over the years.
“Big Gretch — out.”