Bills aimed at reducing violent crime could be the next priority of the Michigan House when it comes back from spring break in a couple of weeks.
The bipartisan legislation would take a 1.5% cut of sales tax revenue and create a new “public safety and violence prevention fund” to help local governments and sheriff’s departments meet that goal.
Package co-sponsor Rep. Alabas Farhat (D-Dearborn) said that could look like more violence interrupters, mental health professionals, or more training, for example.
“We're looking for results,” Farhat said. “We're not looking to lock more people up. We're looking to just to break that process entirely. Let's break the cycle of violence that these neighborhoods are seeing,” Farhat said.
The legislation would base funding on how much violent crime an area is dealing with. Places could lose funding if crime levels don’t go down.
“We don’t want to just hand over blank checks to these cities and these counties without real results being appreciated, right? We want violent crime to be brought down and, you know, it's a real model where it rewards good behavior,” Farhat said.
Last year, Farhat co-sponsored a similar package that nearly made it to the governor but died in the final days of the legislative term. Lawmakers had put $75 million for the program in the state’s current budget.
But the state House of Representatives never agreed to changes the Senate made to the fund creation bills, meaning the spending remains frozen.
Current package co-sponsor Mike Harris (R-Waterford) said there are some differences between the new legislation and where the bills left off last year.
For one, these bills would put more money toward law enforcement and less directly toward health-focused grants. Localities would still have the flexibility to choose to dedicate more of that money toward those grants on their own.
Harris said Republicans wanted to ensure law enforcement was the main recipient of the funding.
“We felt that it was better suited to really direct these funds towards the boots-on-the-ground people, the ones that deal with the violent crime every day,” Harris said.
He said he expects to see movement on the legislation next month, echoing priorities set by House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Twp) earlier this week.
