House Speaker Matt Hall and House Appropriations Chair Ann Bollin used their positions to blow up a big chunk of Michigan’s budget in a way most people have never heard of. Using an obscure power in state law, they moved to strip multi-year protection from $644.9 million in already-approved projects, turning what were supposed to be 2–4 year investments into one-year money that can be rushed out or quietly disappear.

Hall is a Republican from southwest Michigan who became Speaker of the House. Bollin is a Republican from Livingston County who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, which controls a huge amount of what actually happens with the state budget. Together, they control which projects move forward and which ones get stalled or killed.

The money they targeted was not “new spending” in the usual sense. These were work projects—multi-year funds that let departments plan ahead for things like health programs, local infrastructure, school safety, brownfield cleanup, and statewide IT and elections systems. Work project status means the dollars can legally carry over for a few years so agencies have time to plan, hire, and build instead of blowing the money in a rush.

Under Michigan law, however, the House or Senate appropriations committee can disapprove work projects after the budget is signed. Hall and Bollin used that power to block about $644.9 million of remaining work project authority across multiple departments. On paper, they didn’t “cut” the money out of the budget line; instead, they yanked away its multi-year status. In practice, that can have almost the same effect.

When you take away work-project status, agencies face a bad choice. Either they try to spend multi-year money in a single year, which usually means shallow, rushed projects with less accountability, or they let it lapse. When money lapses, it falls back into the state’s general pool and can be claimed later for other purposes. That makes it harder for local governments, nonprofits, schools, and health providers to trust the state’s commitments. A project they thought was funded for several years can suddenly vanish after one.

The impact of the Hall–Bolin move is spread across programs that touch real people: health and human services, mental health and outreach, teacher pipelines, election security and accessibility, brownfield and environmental cleanup, and community development. Many of these dollars were meant to flow into places that don’t have extra resources lying around—low-income neighborhoods, smaller cities, and communities already dealing with lead, pollution, unstable housing, or short-staffed schools.

Hall and Bollin have framed this as “oversight” and “fiscal responsibility.” They argue that work projects can hide waste and that they are simply reining in spending. But from the point of view of people on the receiving end, the effect is clear: less stability, more uncertainty, and more power concentrated in the hands of a few legislators who can decide, year by year, which long-term commitments live or die. That’s the core of the Hall–Bolin story: not just what they cut, but how they used a little-known tool to quietly rewrite the deal after everyone thought the budget was settled.