LANSING – Michigan Senate Majority Floor Leader Mike Kowall on Wednesday

said the Senate is in the process of developing a road funding solution and he

is hopeful it can be introduced in the next couple of weeks.

“It won’t be anything rash,

believe me. It’s going to be well thought-out,” Kowall (R-White Lake

Township) said.

House Speaker Kevin Cotter (R-Mount Pleasant) unveiled

his proposal for a road funding solution later in the day on Wednesday, so

senators like Kowall had not yet seen the proposal.

On Tuesday, Kowall announced

additional session days throughout the summer and into the first week of

September to take care of a road funding solution after voters soundly rejected

Proposal 15-1 earlier this month that sought to raise revenue for roads. Kowall

said he was unsure how many of the additional days he scheduled will actually

happen.

“If we come to a conclusion

early enough, we’ll get out of here at a reasonable time. But if we have to

work right straight through to September, so be it,” he told the press

after session. “I’m not going to put an artificial deadline on anything

because that’s what really got us into trouble with lame duck last year, and I

don’t want to do that again.”

The House has not yet scheduled

additional session days for the summer, but Kowall said that would eventually

be worked out together.

What is less clear for now is the

impact the ballot rejection will have on the budget, which Kowall said Sen. Dave Hildenbrand (R-Lowell) is working out

with his Senate Appropriations Committee members right now.

“There’s going to be some

aspects of the budget we’ll be able to move forward, but there’s some we’re

not,” Kowall said. “I don’t think it’s going to go as late September

but it’s probably going to late June, early July. I can see that

happening.”

Kowall said the caucus is also

working on legislation that would make sure funding goes into road repair

funds, not the traditional formula that exists today.

“That’s the way I know I’d like

to see it done, because once it goes into that formula, it falls into the

transportation aspect and gets sent out all over, and that’s what people were

objecting to,” he said. “That’s part of the problem with PA 51 – It

needs to be rewritten. If I had my way, I’d start over again, because with all

the autonomous vehicles, the connected vehicles, all this new technology going

on needs to be taken into consideration.

“Townships were left completely

out of PA 51 – Now townships are probably some of the best-run, most efficient

forms of government,” Kowall said.

As to an alternative to the funding

formula, Kowall said he would like to look at miles traveled versus the current

divvying up.

“You get Kent County, Wayne,

Oakland, Macomb get the majority of the traffic, and you look where roads are

the worst, it’s in those areas. You get out-state, then the roads are in fairly

decent shape and all their equipment at their facilities are fairly new,”

he said. “Go down to Oakland County and look – they’re tied together with

bailing wire and scotch tape, and it’s tough to maintain all those miles of

roadway with older equipment.”

And he said he has not had

significant pushback from the caucus on working through the summer.

“They understand this has to be done. Yeah,

there’s some vacations or trips that have had to be re-arranged, for the most

part, most of us work all summer long, whether we’re here or in the district,” Kowall

said. “So it’s just a matter of changing the venue.”