Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made a notorious 2018 campaign promise to “fix the damn roads.” After the Legislature decisively rejected her initial attempt to raise gasoline taxes by $0.45 per gallon in order to finance road maintenance, the governor took another seven years to unveil her second plan.

Whitmer’s 2025 road funding plan initially seems straightforward. All fuel sales taxes will go toward road infrastructure maintenance and repairs. However, Whitmer’s administration is pursuing a series of radical climate policies that complicate her road-fixing plan and once again place the financial burdens squarely on Michigan residents who own gasoline-powered cars.

First, Whitmer has focused on the requirement that Michigan increase the number of electric vehicles on its roads from the 50,000 currently registered to more than two million in the next five years. “To achieve that goal, Michiganders must register 32,500 EVs each month for five years,” Michigan Capitol Confidential reported in January. However, that won’t be enough to complete the task – the state must also boost its supply of around 4,100 public charging points to more than 100,000 over the same period. That means installing about 1.9 new chargers every hour, 24 hours a day.

In 2023, special interests rallied to support the Governor’s questionable math with the “MI Clean Cars 2030” campaign. However, in the following two years, we’ve learned that electric vehicles are not what consumers want. Confronting what amounts to an EV mandate from the Biden administration and lured by tens of billions in subsidies to promote manufacturing and purchases of electric vehicles, auto makers squandered billions in private capital and federal subsidies attempting to transition their fleets.

Those businesses are now reconsidering their plans. President Trump has threatened the steady flow of green corporate welfare, while customers have shown little interest in purchasing electric vehicles even with heavy subsidies. Sixty-three percent of U.S. adults, as noted by the American Automobile Association, “were ‘unlikely or very unlikely’ to select an EV for their next car purchase.” Furthermore, AAA reported that approximately 40% of EV owners nationwide indicated their next car purchase would be an internal combustion vehicle.

While the future desirability of electric vehicles remains uncertain, they are still expected to constitute a significant share — between 15% and 25% — of new vehicle sales by 2030. But the special fee EV owners pay in lieu of the gas taxes they forgo only covers about 70-80% of what a typical Michigan driver pays in road taxes. Since higher-income households are more likely to own electric vehicles than lower-income households, permitting electric vehicle drivers to evade 20% to 30% of the fees paid by other drivers amounts to a regressive tax on working individuals.

Second, in addition to her EV scheme, Witmer has allowed Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to enlist activist law firms to sue oil and natural gas producers. Progressive state attorneys general and municipal officials nationwide have filed similar litigation, though with little success. The lawsuits generally argue that emissions associated with the products produced and sold by oil and gas companies constitute a public nuisance and that these companies deceived consumers about the climate impacts of their products. Each lawsuit seeks to extract millions from energy companies, with the implied goal of making fossil fuel-based products more expensive and less accessible.

Nessel’s planned lawsuit faces obstacles as global warming panic recedes and courts consistently rule against these cases. It would be wise for the attorney general to abandon the suit before it’s too late. A 2022 study from the Pacific Research Institute concluded that costly judgments from climate lawsuits can increase gas prices by 31 cents per gallon.

In her recent State of the State address, the governor repeatedly claimed to understand the pressures people face from broken permitting, high prices, and redundant regulation. However, she omitted discussing how her climate agenda ladles excessive costs on the average Michigan resident. Whitmer has habitually prioritized special favors for select industries, like billions in corporate subsidies for EV battery plants. She also has given Nessel free rein to attack essential energy infrastructure and energy producers via special deals with activist law firms. Both situations will continue to increase Michigan drivers' fuel and road maintenance costs.

Michigan residents are justified in demanding better state infrastructure and transparent use of their tax dollars. They should also insist that elected leaders cease prioritizing mandates over consumer choice and engaging in legal maneuvers to penalize lawful business activity.

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