LANSING – With a House vote Thursday, the state’s second round of spending federal stimulus dollars – $1.9 billion in all – is heading to the desk of Gov, Jennifer Granholm.

Acting just before it broke for a two-week recess, the chamber signed off on Senate alterations, which included stripping $108 million in energy programs and outlawing distribution of the funds to organizations for political organizing activities, to HB 4258 on a 99-10 vote. That followed a similarly overwhelming 36-1 vote in the Senate, which was accompanied by GOP complaints about the process.

The Legislature altered the governor’s recommendation by adding $200,000 for senior nutrition services and cutting $24.5 million for education technology grants and $108.8 million for Energy Office in the Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth. Funding for school improvement grants was also scaled back to $75 million based on information from the federal government.

Officials hoped the programs in the bill would help create as many as 109,000 jobs in the state for such programs as weatherization projects, pollution control and public safety issues.

But Sen. Tom George (R-Kalamazoo) said that under the federal stimulus package Michigan will once again become a donor state. As the federal bill is structured, every resident of the state will contribute some $2,500 to pay off the measure in the future, and yet the total amount of stimulus funding (when tax cuts are included) is $18 billion, which would amount to $1.800 in spending for each resident.

Michigan has lost 20 percent of the jobs the nation has lost as part of this recession, he said, so the focus of the stimulus bill should have been on those states that have suffered the most. When the federal government spent money to help the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina it fixed levees in the Gulf Coast and not on the Great Lakes, he said.

Senate Majority Floor Leader Alan Cropsey (R-DeWitt) said he too was reluctantly supporting the bill. “It’s tragic what Washington, D.C., has done, trying to spend money out of a recession,” he said, adding that no other recession was ended just by spending.

Also on Thursday, the House gave the bill immediate effect after House Republicans had held off on doing that a week prior.

Granholm signed the first federal stimulus spending earlier this week, which dealt with transportation infrastructure projects.

NATURAL RESOURCES: The House also approved Natural Resources Trust Fund projects, 44 in all, along with 37 property acquisitions. SB 322 was passed on a unanimous vote.

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