It’s “Big Government 101.” If you want your tax hike to succeed, get it on the ballot when turnout will be low – or when the participating voters are a little more “tax friendly.”

This column originally appeared in the Detroit News.

“For those of you who want to keep playing games, I’m going to press on without you,” said the governor who held funding for kids with autism hostage in a crass (and failed) political game designed to ram a gas tax hike plan through the Legislature. 

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer garnered big headlines following her TV address for a proclamation that she didn’t need a Legislature, and she was going to simply forgo things like leadership and building consensus.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer has some explaining to do. And a decision to make.

Last December, we told you about Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s attempt to institute a brazen new shakedown scheme, essentially threatening to close small business across the state unless they write checks to Whitmer’s campaign donors.

Under the scheme, known as a “Labor Peace Agreement,” the Governor’s Marijuana Regulatory Agency, located within the Michigan Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) department would refuse to license a business or allow it to hire workers unless those workers join a union or pay off the local union to keep the “peace.”

With great fanfare and media adulation, Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s budget director (she was too busy trying to raise her national profile by making the rounds on cable news to be bothered with actually governing Michigan) yesterday unveiled her budget for the upcoming fiscal year, boasting it was the largest budget in the history of the state, with the biggest departmental budgets housed within it.

Last Thursday, my oldest daughter, Aláthea, celebrated her tenth birthday. It’s a milestone, in more ways than one. You see, before Aláthea had even blown out the candles on her cake, Michigan’s governor had committed her and all her peers to 25 years of debt.

Because Gretchen Whitmer failed to get her way, she impulsively borrowed $3.5 billion in bonds to “fix the damn roads.” And it’s going to have damaging consequences for my daughter’s future.

It may be a new year, but the Left are resorting to the same old tricks. After failing to get a single legislator – Republican OR Democrat – to support her “Plan A” to “fix the damn roads” – a 45-cents-per-gallon gas tax hike – Gretchen Whitmer says she’s going to do it herself.

Sort of.

Earlier this week, Governor Gretchen Whitmer delivered her second State of the State address and it was a doozy.

$3.5 billion in debt – plus interest – to fix some roads (but not the local ones taxpayers drive on the most).