State Rep. Peter MacGregor, R-Rockford, recently made the following statement after voting in favor of House Bill 4325, the budget proposal for school aid, community colleges and higher education: “I ran for office to do the job of getting our state back on track—rightsizing our state government. We have significant spending issues and there were many difficult decisions that had to be made in these first few months to balance the budget, but the governor’s proposed cuts to schools were too steep. After much negotiation, we were able to restore $50 million back to the K-12 portion of the School Aid Fund, and I know there will be additional money available after the May 16 revenue estimating conference. It’s only halftime in the budget process.”
MacGregor added, “Though I don’t agree with the decision to fund universities and community colleges out of the school aid fund, I understand the bigger picture and knew that if we didn’t, other areas would be cut further, like community and mental health, state police or senior programs. I fought to get additional per pupil funding for K-12 because the districts in West Michigan are doing a lot of things right and I feel we can address systemic and structural problems through good public policy—some of which I have already introduced.”
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