HB5362 — Appropriations: supplemental; certain funding designated to the University of Michigan; modify. Creates…

What it does: repeals the legislative transfer that moved $100 million into the Strategic Site Readiness Program for this project, and orders the money returned to the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve fund.

One negative appropriation of exactly $100,000,000, against a single line in the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity budget. Nothing else in the bill.

We have reached out to Rep. Jimmie Wilson’s office to ask about the current status of this bill and will update this page when we hear back.

What it actually repeals

This is the part worth understanding, because it is not what most people assume a rescission bill does.

HB 5362 does not go after the grant agreement between the Michigan Strategic Fund and the University. It goes after Legislative Transfer Request 2025-3 — the document the State Budget Director sent to the Senate and House Appropriations committees on the morning of December 10, 2024, moving $100 million into the Strategic Site Readiness Program so the grant could be funded.

That transfer letter is in the MEDC records release we published. The board approved the grant at 9:00 that morning; the transfer letter went to the Appropriations chairs at 11:17; MEDC staff were circulating it internally by 11:37.

Section 301 of this bill says that transfer is repealed, and that the Michigan Strategic Fund shall return the $100 million to the SOAR fund.

That is a smarter line of attack than it first appears. Trying to break an executed grant agreement would mean a fight over contract rights. Unwinding a legislative transfer means the Legislature revisiting its own act — something it plainly has authority to do. It is the difference between telling the University to give money back and telling the Strategic Fund it never properly had it.

It names the project in statute

Section 301(2) recites what the money was for: a grant to the University of Michigan for site development and construction of at least two state-of-the-art advanced computing facilities in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with one intended primarily for the University and the other to be used by the Los Alamos National Laboratory for advanced research.

Whatever happens to this bill, that paragraph exists as a legislative document describing the project in those terms — two facilities, one of them for a federal weapons laboratory. That is closer to what the state filing says than to how the project has been described publicly here.

Where the money goes

Back to SOAR, not to the general fund.

Worth noting, because it makes the bill politically easier. This is not an attack on the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve or on economic development spending generally. The money stays available for other projects. The argument is about this one.

The question we cannot answer

This is a supplemental appropriation bill for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025. That fiscal year has closed.

Whether a supplemental written against a closed fiscal year still operates, and what happens to any funds already disbursed under the grant’s milestone schedule, are questions for appropriations counsel. We are residents reading public documents, not lawyers, and we are not going to pretend to know.

It is a fair question to put to the bill’s sponsor, and we have.

Our position

Support. Of everything before the Legislature on this project, this is the only bill that touches the money.

The regulatory bills matter and we support them, but most would apply to a facility like this one only after it exists, and several do not reach it at all as drafted. This one goes to whether $100 million of public money supports it.

We would add one thing. If the Legislature is revisiting this transfer, the better outcome is not simply taking the money back — it is conditioning it. A grant contingent on a binding community benefits agreement with Ypsilanti Township, on published operating figures, and on enforceable commitments on water and noise would do more for this community than a rescission, and it would leave the research capacity intact.

Rescission is the stick. We would rather have the terms.

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Analysis based on the text of HB 5362 as introduced. Bill numbers and status change — verify at legislature.mi.gov before citing. Legislative Transfer Request 2025-3 is in the MEDC FOIA release; the grant itself is in the December 2024 board packet. We are residents reading public documents, not lawyers. If we have read this bill wrong, tell us and we will correct it and say that we did.