Michigan lawmakers earmarked $225 million for the state’s 21st Century Jobs Fund over the next three years. This is the same fund that Gov. Granholm said would blow us away. This law has been added to the Mackinac Center’s business subsidy scorecard.

The 21st Century Jobs Fund has been used for over a dozen different programs since it began. Most of the money is gone and few jobs flowed from the state’s efforts. One assessment found that the programs the fund supported cost taxpayers between $274,800 and $330,600 per job, hardly a good deal for taxpayers. Plus, the state has continued to obfuscate what was spent and what the state got in return for its spending.

Money that goes into the fund gets spent on the state’s business subsidy programs these days, including the Michigan Business Development Program, the Michigan Community Revitalization Program and various efforts to support incubators and entrepreneurs.

Legislators should be more skeptical about these programs. Instead, they pledged to put $75 million into the fund for each of the next three years.

Unlike many business subsidy bills, it was enacted on strict partisan grounds, with Democrats voting for the bills and Republicans voting against.

A previous extension of the 21st Century Jobs Fund made in 2018 has been a part of the scorecard.

Legislators voted to approve $4.4 billion in business subsidies in 2023. Only the 2003-04 Legislature and the 2007-08 Legislature voted for more.

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