Crain's Detroit Business, May 29, 2023

POWER STRUGGLE

GOVERNMENT

HENDERSON

Some summer jobs last longer than others. You could argue that Veronica Dobrowolski’s on the Mackinaw City docks has lasted for 35 years.

Dobrowolski now leads Arnold Freight, whose ship haul supplies, mail and FedEx deliveries, lumber — and sometimes horses — to and

from Mackinac Island.

Her and her company’s story ties deeply into the island’s history and some of its most famous names, including the family that long owned the Grand Hotel and the former senator who helped get the Mackinac Bridge built.

e Arnold name was long associated with a passenger ferry line, but its roots were in freight going back to the 19th century, and its story is Mackinac to the core.

After graduating from Cheboygan High School in 1988, Do-

browolski went to work on the dock of Shepler’s Mackinac Island Ferry in Mackinaw City, assisting passengers with their bags and doing an assortment of odd jobs. A lifelong fan of boats and water, she fell in love with the job.

“Soon, I was working 80-90 hours a week,” said Dobrowolski. Working on the dock had got into her blood. Even after leaving for Lake Superior State University, she would drive down from Sault

Corby Energy Services employees Yoseph Williams, left, and Giovany Rodriguez work on repairing

 PROPOSAL: STRIP LICENSES FROM DERELICT POT COMPANIES

THE NEWS: In proposed rules released this month, the Cannabis Regulatory Agency is seeking authority to deny licenses to businesses found in court to have not paid vendors. It’s a move that would set the industry apart from nearly every other industry in the state. Experts in the industry, however, believe the rule could create havoc in an industry already under nancial pressure due to low prices.

WHY IT MATTERS: e proposed changes to the rule would “allow the CRA to deny a license or license renewal based on civil judgments (and) court orders resulting from unpaid debt for work, services, products, or equipment provided solely in the cannabis industry.”

 MASSARON NAMED NEW RTA BOARD CHAIR

THE NEWS: e Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan has added a new board chair and three new members to its growing leadership team. Leading the board is Dave Massaron, chief nancial o cer and senior vice president for nance and business affairs for Wayne State University.

WHY IT MATTERS: Massaron replaces Paul Hillegonds, who has been with the RTA since its inception in 2012

and was one of the founding members who established its operations.

 CONSORTIUM FORMED TO DRIVE SEMICONDUCTOR GROWTH

THE NEWS: An “all-hands-on-deck” consortium of universities, community colleges, employers and industry groups will partner in an e ort to make Michigan a U.S. leader in the microchip sector. e focus is on expanding the pool of workers for the industry, including engineers, technicians and maintenance/repair employees amid a historic federal investment in building chipmaking capacity in the U.S.

WHY IT MATTERS: Initially, higher-education institutions — including those in the group and those wanting to join — will be able to apply for a piece of $3 million in grants from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. e money could be used to develop curricula and training models, host skills boot camps, raise awareness in K-12 schools and provide student scholarships.

 DDP GETS ANOTHER $2M FOR PEDESTRIAN BRIDGES

THE NEWS: e state will double the amount of money it is giving to the Downtown Detroit Partnership to help cover the cost of setting up pedestrian bridges and other infrastructure for the Detroit Grand Prix. e Michigan Strategic Fund approved an additional $2 million grant Tuesday at its monthly meeting for the “purpose of purchasing pedestrian infrastructure equipment, such as fence posts, safety barricades, and pedestrian bridges.”

WHY IT MATTERS: e Downtown Detroit Partnership has had signi cant cost overruns over the last six months, primarily due to in ation and installation costs to accommodate the set-up of the equipment, according to a Michigan Economic Development Corp. brie ng memo to the MSF board.



BERNSTEIN BACK ON SUPREME COURT

THE NEWS: Michigan Supreme Court Justice Richard Bernstein said he’s returning to in-person work after a month away to seek treatment for depression.

WHY IT MATTERS: He did not participate when the Supreme Court heard cases on April 26 and May 10.

ESTATE

Oakland County plans downtown Pontiac campus

 A plan for an Oakland County outpost would bring hundreds of employees to downtown Pontiac.

e county is attempting to buy the two-building Ottawa Towers to turn at least one of the properties into a central business district hub as part of a $19.2 million purchase agreement, County Executive David Coulter said.

In the end, the county would also buy the Phoenix Center parking garage and rooftop amphitheater from the city and tear it down as part of a satellite campus that would ultimately cost about $114 million, Coulter said. at includes an $85 million buy-in from the state or 74.6% of the cost.

It’s not known in what ways the state would participate in nancing the project.”

Coulter said “without a commitment from our friends in Lansing,” a nancing gap would prevent the project from moving forward. He anticipates an answer on whether the state will contribute funding by early next month.

Coulter said moving what could be 400 to 600 county employees into the long-struggling central business district of the county seat could have a catalytic e ect. e county has approximately 5,000 full and part-time employees.

Dug and Linh Song aim to cut red tape

SHERRI WELCH

In less time than it takes to gas up a car, nonpro ts can apply for a grant from the Song Foundation.

e streamlined process, which reduces administrative burdens on nonpro ts, is just one of the ways the Ann Arbor foundation started by Dug and Linh Song is sharing power with the nonpro ts it funds.

e approach is centered on “trustbased philanthropy,” a set of grantmaking practices that collectively can help create more equity and speed in giving, Executive Director Khalilah Burt Gaston said.

e practices include streamlined paperwork, providing unrestricted operating grants, expedited grant payouts, asking grantees for feedback on how the foundation can improve its practices and where there are needs not being addressed and supporting organizations beyond a check.

Detroit is about to push for a big change in how it taxes real estate Foundation lls funding gaps with quick process

Detroit is on the verge of recommending a wholesale change to how it taxes real estate, an e ort that’s intended to reduce the notoriously high tax burden on residents while spurring development on long-vacant land.

e proposal, called a land value tax, has the potential to lower residential property taxes by 25 percent, said Detroit CFO Jay Rising. At the same time, it would raise the taxes on vacant land in desirable areas, which

proponents say would act as an incentive against speculative holding.

As it’s imagined, the city would replace its current operating tax — now a tax based on the value of the property on the land— with a tax on the value of the land itself. at would mean a 20-mill reduction on the current tax rate for homeowners, Rising said. For example, it would lower taxes on a $200,000 house from about $8,700 a year to between $6,000 and $6,500.

e city would still have a traditional tax on its debt service, which is

8 mills this year. e proposal also wouldn’t a ect county or school taxes, which would continue to be assessed as normal. But it’s far from a done deal: e proposal would need to be blessed by the legislature and city council and be approved by voters before it went into e ect. Rising said he’s aiming for tax bills in 2025 to re ect the new system, if o cials green-light it this year and voters approve it in November.

See TAXES on Page 44

“...YOU’RE INCENTIVIZING DEVELOPMENT OF VACANT AND UNDERUTILIZED PROPERTIES. AND YOU WANT TO PROVIDE AS MUCH INCENTIVE AS YOU CAN.”

— Jay Rising, CFO, city of Detroit

As part of that approach, the foundation is sending unsolicited grants to nonpro ts in its Southeast Michigan focus area, especially in Detroit, Flint Dearborn, Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor — an uncommon practice for foundations here.

“Philanthropy as a sector, sometimes it might be seen as, I don’t know, a little bit removed from community but more so even removed... from nonpro t leaders themselves,” Gaston said.

e Song Foundation is looking to decrease the perceived gap between its leadership and nonpro ts, she said.

Northern Michigan housing shortage nears crisis for seasonal workers

Hospitality and service workers

power Northern Michigan’s vacation destinations. But as a ordable housing grows increasingly scarce, leaders across the region are searching for solutions.

For years, employers Up North have provided housing for their workers, especially those in temporary agricultural and tourism jobs. Examples are the Grand Hotel, Mission Point Resort and Chippewa Hotel on Mackinac Island, all of which are expanding their housing. Short’s Brewing Co. in Bellaire last year bought the 26-room Bellaire Inn and converted it to transitional housing for workers. Glen Arbor-based Cherry Republic o ers temporary housing for seasonal employees, mostly in Maple City on the Leelanau Peninsula. Others, such as tribal entities,

are building or adding to employee housing.

But as tourism counties see yearround population growth due to remote work opportunities and other societal shifts, it’s getting more di cult for builders to meet the growing housing demand across the spectrum. Contributing factors include COVID-19 pandemic-driven supply chain woes, skyrocketing materials costs, in ation and higher interest rates.

“I was just talking to a building contractor last night, and he said, ‘ ere’s no such thing as a ordable housing right now,’” Dave Lorenz, vice president of Travel Michigan within the Michigan Economic Development Corp., said recently.

“We’re looking at all these issues that are crashing down at once. I’m just hoping that we can get to that sweet spot where in ation comes down.”

Taking action

Justin Winslow is president and CEO of the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association, which has about 500 member companies Up North. He said the rst step to addressing the issue is admitting there’s a problem.

An empty lot sits next to a derelict home in Detroit. The city is considering changing the way it taxes properties, basing it o the land instead of the structures on it,

ARIELLE KASS

Gaston

RACHEL WATSON

An early concept rendering shows the future Victories Square workforce housing project that will be built this year in Petoskey. RAYMOND J. WHITE

Lorenz Winslow

Charles is the highest ranked Fee-Only Advisor on Forbes’ list of America’s Top Wealth Advisors**

e owner of a shopping center anchored by a Whole Foods store has put it up for auction.

Elmwood Park apartments for sale

e Village of Hyde Park townhomes property in the Elmwood Park neighborhood is up for sale.

e rankings, developed by Shook Research, are based on in-person and telephone due diligence meetings and a ranking algorithm for advisors who have a minimum of seven years of experience. Other factors include client retention, industry experience, compliance records, rm nominations, assets under management, revenue generated for their rms, and other factors. See zhang nancial.com/disclosure for full ranking criteria.

With a minimum bid of $9.5 million, the West Bloomfield Township property has close to 157,000 square feet on Orchard Lake Road near 14 Mile Road.

It sits on over 31 acres and is 83 percent leased, according to the Ten-X listing. ere are 706 parking spots for the Whole Foods, Dunham’s Sports, Walgreens and other tenants.

e auction runs June 6-8.

e Whole Foods lease runs until November 2033, while the Walgreens lease expires at the end of 2059 and Dunham’s ends in January 2025.

Since the beginning of 2020, Ten-X has auctioned o 180 Michigan properties totaling some $342 million, the company says. Of those, 79 (44 percent) were retail properties.

e Detroit development has 43, two-story townhome-style apartments with two bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms and averaging 1,500 square feet.

ere is no listing price by Hull Investment Advisors, which is marketing the property for sale on CoStar Group Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based real estate information service.

e listing says more than $1 million has been spent upgrading the property since 2019, including 26 of the 43 units.

“ is asset could become a lucrative condo conversion opportunity, in which a new owner could sell each unit individually for a signi cant premium on a per-unit basis,” the listing says.

Book Tower hotel opens June 1

e 117-room Roost Detroit hotel concept is opening June 1 in the Dan Gilbert-owned Book Tower.

Gilbert’s Bedrock LLC real estate company says Roost is part of what it now says is a nearly $400 million redevelopment.

e Method Co. hotel concept was announced back in 2021 but is just now opening.

“Roost Detroit will entice guests, visitors and Detroiters with best-inclass service, experiences and dining, all within the backdrop of a beautifully restored, nearly century old architectural gem,” Andrew Leber, vice president of hospitality for Bedrock, said in a press release ursday. Bedrock took reporters and others through the building last month. In addition to the 229 residential units and the Roost apartment/hotel concept, there is about 52,000 square feet of retail and o ce space. ere is also an indoor-outdoor lounge, 3,000 square feet of co-working space and a large atrium with a 1920s skylight with 7,000 glass jewels and 6,000 glass panels.

My colleague Jay Davis reported on the food and beverage components earlier this month.

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB

Detroit to tear down Stone Soap building after redevelopment project zzles

BY KIRK PINHO

A proposed redevelopment of the Stone Soap building o the east Detroit riverfront appears to be dead.

e city said May 23 that it plans to demolish the Franklin Street property at Riopelle starting last week, more than ve years after a redevelopment plan including for-sale and for-rent multifamily and commercial space was announced but no construction was started.

Banyan Investments LLC, a Detroit-based development rm run by Aamir Farooqi and Scott Ord, had been selected as the developer in a proposed $27 million project in October 2017. At the time, it had been slated to include 63 condominiums and apartments, plus space for a “European-style” market with food retailers and seating, and a new home for the

Shakespeare in Detroit nonpro t. Plans shifted over the years to reduce the number of residential units, according to a brown eld tax incentive plan. Costs as of two years later were $38.4 million.

Farooqi did not comment.

e city, in a May 23 press release, says a mid-April report by building inspectors shows that the property is

“structurally unsound” and poses “a safety risk.”

Among the issues: Failing beams, a collapsing room and falling masonry, a press release says.

e Detroit Economic Growth Corp. issued a request for proposals for developers in March 2017 for the 88,000-square-foot property, which includes three structures ranging from two to four stories built between 1907 and 1929.

Demolition by Detroit-based contractor e Adamo Group is expected to take about a week.

e property has been vacant for decades.

Axios Detroit reported earlier this month that redevelopment plans were on hold.

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB

Detroit said it plans to demolish the Franklin Street Stone Soap building at Riopelle. | COSTAR GROUP INC.

Surprise grants

It takes just ve to seven minutes, on average, to ll out the grant application on the foundation’s website. e foundation is able to pull nancial information from other sources and invite potential grantees to make changes to information that’s uploaded and noted. “It’s just much more nimble and straightforward,” Gaston said.

e streamlined grant application is just part of the approach the edgling foundation is taking as it carves out an identify for itself and the most impactful way it can work with nonpro ts, something its founders are intent on incorporating.

e foundation is also expediting grant payouts. For grants under $150,000, funding decisions can be made in as little as two-to-three weeks, from application to payout, Gaston said.

Something like 40 percent of grant applications are duplicative, research has shown, she said. And about half of grants cost more than they’re actually worth when you tally up time spent right by sta or by board members, writing grants and meeting.

“For us, it’s about decreasing... the time that leaders spend writing applications thing with us, so that they’re actually getting more nancial resources to use,” Gaston said.

e foundation has also made surprise grants to organizations including the Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center, Women of Banglatown and

Black Leaders Detroit, Gaston said.

When Black Leaders Detroit, a nonpro t providing grants and zero percent interest loans to Black entrepreneurs in the city, got an anonymous grant, CEO Dwan Dandridge said he was racking his brain trying to gure out where it had come from.

“I sent Khalilah a text asking if she had any idea where it came from. She didn’t deny or con rm if it was from the Song Foundation,” he said.

e nonpro t has received other grants that it didn’t request, “however once we were contacted by the foundation we had to go through a process.”

But the Song Foundation grant had no strings and no requirements to report on how it was used.

“Obviously, I felt good knowing that

someone believed in Black Leaders Detroit’s work enough to send $25,000 anonymously,” Dandridge said.

e small, unrestricted operating grants are meant as “get acquainted” grants, Gaston said. “It’s a practice we learned from another local family foundation as an opportunity to build a relationship with nonpro ts that we hope may lead to a deeper conversation in the future.”

“I don’t know if there is a better way for a foundation to say ‘Hello, let’s get to know one another,’ to a nonpro t,” Dandridge said.

Finding a focus

e Song Foundation has spent the past year honing its approach and fo-

cus areas while working with Baltimore-based Colmena Consulting and focus groups, asking nonpro ts in its core areas for feedback.

e approach is one that re ects the uniqueness of its founders, Duo Security co-founder Dug Song and Ann Arbor City Council member and social worker Linh Song. ey’re not the typical philanthropist family: ey are rst-generation Americans in their 40s who came from modest means rather than generational wealth.

She grew up in Dearborn as the daughter of Vietnam refugees and a “WIC baby.” He is the son of Korean immigrants who owned a liquor store in west Baltimore and later moved the business near the state penitentiary.

Both watched their parents hold down multiple jobs to support their families. And both worked several jobs themselves while attending the University of Michigan.

After Dug Song sold his business in 2009 to tech giant Cisco for $2.35 billion, the couple have been working to give back in their community and create a more just and equitable world.

After quietly granting more than $2 million since 2020, half of it to provide COVID relief for hundreds of small health care, small business and community service organizations in Washtenaw County, the Songs in 2022 hired nonpro t veteran Gaston, former head of Vanguard Community Development and a past program o cer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, to help corral their passions and formalize the foundation.

e Song Foundation is seeking to be innovative in what it funds with a

focus on their founders’ core interest areas, including youth leadership, technology and social justice.

Core focus areas

In support of diverse youth and emergent leadership, the foundation is funding e orts that prepare, support and build pipelines for school-age children, youth and emergent leaders to shape local politics and communities. As part of that, it’s looking at di erent types of leadership development programs and fellowship opportunities that it can either bring to Detroit or co-create with other organizations, Gaston said.

e second core focus for the foundation is supporting inclusive technology and high-tech, high-growth entrepreneurship. at includes prioritizing what tech entrepreneurs need and making sure that the ecosystem is equitable and accessible to people with or without technical backgrounds, Gaston said.

e foundation will also make grants to ensure nonpro ts are not vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks, a growing issue highlighted by Crain’s last year. e goal is to make sure nonpro ts can make investments in their computers and software, Gaston said. Its third funding bucket, transformative social justice and activism, will direct support to e orts around civic engagement, grassroots organizing and culture and movement-building efforts that shift narratives and disrupt the status quo.

Contact: swelch@crain.com; (313) 446-1694; @SherriWelch

SPONSORED CONTENT

Prioritize Purpose. It’s the Right Thing to Do

By David Parent Michigan Managing Principal - Deloitte LLP

Though it became more of a focus for many during the pandemic, purpose has always been central to a business. Generally, every business lls some need we have as a society. Traditionally, businesses explained this purpose in their mission statements, advertisements, or branding.

But, today, the concept of purpose extends well beyond traditional de nitions and clever wording – purpose is increasingly an expectation. According to recent Deloitte research, purpose in both their careers and lives is more important than ever to workers. And purpose, when it infuses broad aspects of a business, can create better outcomes. Overall, prioritizing purpose is the right thing to do.

This year’s Mackinac Policy Conference theme is “The Power of &.” Organizations can show workers their commitment to purpose with the broad use of “and.” You can meet your work obligations and have time off to volunteer at organizations you care about; we can prioritize pro ts and honor our commitment to the environment. In short, businesses are now expected to do more. In return, research shows businesses that embrace Purpose do better nancially.

Let’s take one of today’s top business challenges: attracting top talent. According to Deloitte’s

latest external Global Human Capital Trends report, many employees want more in uence over their work, including when and where they do it. They want their employers’ values — ranging from social, racial and gender equity to care for the environment — to align with their own, so much so that 78% of surveyed employees say they prefer to work for a purpose-driven company. Indeed, organizations committed to purpose may reap talent bene ts, with half of the respondents to the Global Human Capital Trends report noting higher retention and well-being among employees.

Let’s consider another perennial business challenge: creating and maintaining pro table outcomes. Deloitte’s “The Purpose Premium” explains how integrating purpose — not only

regarding talent, but brand and reputation, sales and innovation, capital access, operational ef ciency and risk management — can boost corporate value. For instance, 64% of companies that integrate the purpose of sustainability into operations see lower logistics and supply-chain costs. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of consumers are likely to be loyal to a company with an expressed purpose, and 88% say they’d buy products from a purpose-driven company. Those statistics and more are making a strong argument that purpose does indeed drive better outcomes.

At Deloitte, purpose is infused throughout the organization, guided by our Purpose Of ce. We have committed $1.5 billion over the next ten years toward health equity, education and

workforce development, and nancial inclusion initiatives to help increase social and economic mobility, especially for those facing the greatest barriers to equity and prosperity. We collaborate with organizations such as OneTen, a coalition of 70+ employers committed to helping hire, promote and advance one million Black Americans without a four-year college degree into family-sustaining careers by 2030.

Our people use their skills and experience to support local communities throughout the year with nonpro t board leadership, pro bono projects, and skills-based volunteering. As an organization, we celebrate our purpose annually on Impact Day, when Deloitte personnel around the country get into their communities to volunteer through a myriad of projects. This year, on June 9, professionals in our Michigan of ce will volunteer by facilitating workshops, sorting donations and assisting with gardening and outdoor cleanups.

I encourage business leaders to make 2023 the year you boost efforts to prioritize purpose as a vital business initiative. It’s not enough to focus on business performance and nancial success. We should do that and focus on creating a more equitable Michigan and a more equitable world.

The Song Foundation’s three-member board plans to add members. From left to right: Peter Katz, vice president and general counsel, cybersecurity startup Expel, and former head of Duo Security’s legal department; Executive Director Khalilah Burt Gaston; Linh Song and Duo Security Co-Founder Dug Song. | SONG FOUNDATION

Get busy on the hard work of fostering trust

Michigan residents aren’t feeling great about a lot of things.

ey think the economy is slipping into recession, and they’re worried about in ation and crime. A majority think they are worse o now than they were in the past.

at’s all according to a poll commissioned by the Detroit Regional Chamber in conjunction with this week’s Mackinac Policy Conference.

But, counterintuitively, a large majority of Michigan residents who responded to the poll said they were optimistic for Michigan’s future — and about their own future in the state.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents, 72 percent, said they are optimistic about their own future in Michigan, compared with just 17 percent who said they were pessimistic.

How to explain that discrepancy?

A clue might be in some other gures from that poll — those that have to do with trust.

Who do people trust? According to this survey, those closest to them. eir own neighbors, their local librarians, local clergy and law enforcement.

ey also trust businesses — at least those in their own backyard: local small businesses, their local bank.

Much further down the list on the trust scale are politicians and local media — and at the bottom of the list are CEOs of Michigan companies.

e most obvious interpretation is that people trust those closest to them. Even with rancorous political division, we generally trust our neighbors even if we don’t agree with them.

e lesson? Building bridges and simple, frequent exposure lead to trust. It’s not an earth-shaking conclusion, but it’s true.

For those who people say they don’t trust, getting out of bubbles and silos and into the community — building personal relationships with transparency and honesty — are the clear solution.

Part of the Mackinac Policy Conference is to put business and civic leaders in a place where they can meet face to face, as people. ey get to know each other outside their daily bubbles and build trust.

at kind of personal touch is also the key to fostering the trust of the millions of Michiganders who won’t be in the rare ed atmosphere of the Grand Hotel.

It’s fashionable, at least in certain circles, to bemoan the world going to pieces, amid political division, economic uncertainty, and our always-online culture of cynicism. But the answer isn’t to walk away or simply lob criticisms from the sidelines. It’s vital that we participate in good-faith conversations that strengthen bonds for our communities and businesses.

Just as a company tries to create a corporate culture, Michigan needs to build a culture that does more rowing toward a common goal, even if we disagree on how to get there. It’s up to leaders to build the trust necessary for that to happen.

To be sure, Michigan faces serious challenges. But we’ve got the ingenuity and the grit to succeed in the future.

Let’s harness that energy and help it build on itself. And get to work.

COMMENTARY

Bridging divides critical for building Michigan’s future

Colleagues on Zoom calls can tell when I’m in my Detroit o ce by the Mackinac Bridge print on the wall in the background.

It was here when I arrived in January and I nd it very tting. For those of us who grew up in Michigan, and certainly for many others, the bridge symbolizes so much.

For me, it represents many great memories, from visiting Kitch-iti-kipi as a kid to taking my own children to Pictured Rocks, to riding across the mighty span with my dad to cap o a DALMAC bicycle tour.

is week, the bridge will also serve as a backdrop — or front-porch view — of the Mackinac Policy Conference.

is is the annual gathering put on by the Detroit Regional Chamber to bring together business executives, elected o cials and other thought leaders to discuss major issues of the day.

Investing in cities, competing for talent and positioning Michigan to thrive in an economy increasingly driven by knowledge and technology are all key topics on the agenda this year.

Guest speakers include former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban, and Ford Motor Co. Executive Chairman William Clay Ford Jr.

Crain’s Detroit Business will provide ongoing coverage, spearheaded by Managing Editor Michael Lee and reporters David Eggert and Rachel Watson. Crain Communications is a sponsor of the conference but, regardless, we would cover it, given the con uence of business interests and public policy.

I look forward to joining my colleagues on the island and helping to host our Crain’s podcasts. One of my guests will be Matt Elliott, president of Bank of America Michigan and the chairman of this year’s conference, which is themed “ e Power of &.”

“If you’re going to tackle the big challenges, you really do have to have an ‘and’ approach. You can’t do it one way or the other,” Elliott said in an interview promoting the conference on WJR-AM. “We have such tremendous opportunities in front of us as a state, as well as lots of challenges, that we want to get at that.

“We want to talk about the opportunity but also we need to bring together di erent points of view, di erent conversations and … really start conversations that we hope will last until next year’s policy conference.”

In my own way, I can identify with the

“And” theme. In April, we launched Crain’s Grand Rapids Business, bringing our brand of journalism to the west side of Michigan. In a state that is sometimes seen as culturally divided between east and west, this is an opportunity to bridge the gap with business news and information from across Michigan. Certainly, the economics of one region of the state has an impact on another, while the overall positioning of the state, and how we project ourselves to the rest of the business world, matters to us all.

We have Grand Rapids-based reporters and editors who provide coverage of the West Michigan business community. At the same time, by spanning the Crain’s operation across the state, centered in Michigan’s two largest cities, we also look for trends and themes that have wider impact.

One recent issue that has surfaced, and will continue to be a challenge, is Michigan’s future population growth. We have an imperative to train young people for highwage, knowledge-based jobs and keep them here with vibrant, attractive urban centers.

IT’S NOT A MATTER OF EAST “OR” WEST — OUR STATE’S ECONOMIC GROWTH WILL DEPEND ON EAST AND WEST SUCCEEDING.

While Grand Rapids has had more success than Detroit in recent decades with growing its population, building for a vibrant economic future is a challenge shared by both sides of the state.

It’s not a matter of east “or” west — our state’s economic growth will depend on east AND west succeeding. And that print of the Mackinac Bridge on the wall? It not only conjures fond memories, it’s a constant reminder that we’re one Michigan — with a shared future.

Mickey Ciokajlo is executive editor of Crain’s Detroit Business and Crain’s Grand Rapids Business.

Mickey CIOKAJLO executive editor

DANIEL SAAD/CRAIN’S

e clock is ticking for Michigan to make its mark

BY QUENTIN MESSER JR.

Messer Jr. is the CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and President and chair of the Michigan Strategic Fund.

Winning in economic development, just as in sports, is not easy and does not happen overnight. As an avid sports fan, I understand that great teams exploit their championship windows. We remember the 1990s and early 2000s Red Wings for winning Stanley Cups during their championship window unlike the Bu alo Bills that went to and lost four straight Super Bowls.

It’s the same concept for creating a business climate that makes Michigan the most attractive four-season state or province in North America for nancial capital investment. As demonstrated by the levels of private investment recently announced, we are winning as more companies have decided to make more things in Michigan, from electric vehicle batteries, to the polysilicon used in semiconductors, to robots that are enhancing manufacturing and warehousing productivity and boosting employee safety. While we are grateful to earn these votes of con dence in Michigan’s bi-partisan, people- rst and pragmatic approach to economic development, there are more projects to win and remaining work to translate these wins into accelerated economic and community vitality on both peninsulas.

Today’s championship window is heavily in uenced by the aggressive, and welcome, federal investment in repositioning America as a maker of things. e CHIPS Act, the In ation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, along with programmatic initiatives from the Departments of Commerce, Energy and Transportation most notably, have created a singular moment where companies across the globe are adjusting private capital investment decisions to align with and leverage the U.S. federal dollars that are available.

In short, more supply chains in industries from semiconductors to clean energy are returning home to the U.S. and if these supply chains are coming back to the U.S., then let’s have the associated jobs, small business growth and expanded tax base right here in Michigan. is accelerated deployment of capital is unlikely to be repeated in a generation. We are duty-bound to win for Michigan those projects that are looking to locate in the U.S. to take advantage of federal policies funded by Michigan taxpayer dollars. e winning formula is clear: companies of all sizes demand large, at green eld sites; increasingly cleaner energy sources; clear pathways for identifying and developing local talent while welcoming international personnel during the increasingly compressed production ramp-up periods; and dollars to de-risk these “bet-the-company” private investments during the ramp-up periods prior to revenue generation.

Tennessee was highlighted in the recent Business Leaders for Michigan’s benchmarking report. Let’s review the actions this competitor has taken over the past decade. Tennessee created a large industrial site authority to “promote economic development (and) generate high-quality jobs at the Megasite and in surrounding areas...” e federally subsidized Tennessee Valley Authority has provided low-cost power and there have been praiseworthy enhancements to that state’s community college system. Like Texas and Florida, Tennessee has realized that having no personal income tax alone is not enough and

has aggressively used cash economic development incentives to de-risk private investments.

Never content, Team Michigan is strengthening wraparound community services that go beyond nancial incentives, including supporting more than 430 a ordable and workforce housing units in communities across the state this year, to ensure that when companies choose Michigan, they are also choosing communities that are ready to welcome their workforce with housing and other needed supports.

Michigan has undeniable strengths: a workforce that personies grit and is not intimidated by the

pressures of operating within a zero-defect environment, stable weather that is not subject to extreme volatility, creative bi-partisan problem-solvers and continued willingness to extend open arms and a welcome mat to people from across the world.

I look forward to working with Business Leaders for Michigan and anyone else invested in fully leveraging this championship window that is now open for Team Michigan. As the Bills Ma a knows too well, a generation can pass before the championship opportunity returns and that is not a wait that Team Michigan can a ord to mimic.

Young campers will learn without realizing it. They will explore STEM projects and have fun staying active and exploring nature.

Youth of all ages learn drowning prevention through our Safety Around Water programs; a skill that is necessary for a state with so many pools and natural bodies of water.

Career exploration, mentoring opportunities, and first jobs will happen for older youth under the guidance of caring Y professionals. Adolescents and young adults learn core values of caring, honesty, respect, responsibility, and inclusion that will last a lifetime as they grow into the leaders of tomorrow.

Your support will make better days for the children we have the privilege of serving.

Quentin

Genelle Allen

GOVERNMENT

Chief operating o cer, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans

Allen is a veteran of the public sector, having spent more than 15 years in legal counsel and executive roles with the Wayne County Airport Authority, which oversees operations of Detroit Metropolitan Airport and the Willow Run Airport. As chief operating o cer in Wayne County Executive Warren Evans' administration, Allen oversees several operating and administrative departments, including the personnel/human resources, information technology and health departments. Allen is the county's conduit with philanthropic foundations and nonpro t organizations focused on addressing social determinants of health that cause signi cant disparities in health outcomes for children and families. Allen joined the Evans administration in 2015 as an assistant county executive and served two stints as interim CEO of the airport authority in 2010 and 2018. Before working for the airport authority, Allen was a supervisory attorney in the city of Detroit's law department.

Email: gallen@waynecounty.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/genelle-m-allen93a20614/

Stephanie Beckhorn

Deputy director, employment and training, Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity

Beckhorn runs the department’s programs focused on workforce development, as well as vocational rehabilitation to support individuals with disabilities. e Going PRO Talent Fund, for instance, funds grants to businesses to train, develop and retain employees. She is a veteran of the labor department, with more than 20 years of experience. e Michigan State University graduate became the director of workforce policy and strategic planning for the Michigan Workforce Development Agency under the Snyder administration and served as acting LEO director at the start of the Whitmer administration. Much of the O ce of Employment and Training’s work is facilitated with partners including adult education providers, community rehabilitation organizations and the Michigan Works! network.

Email: beckhorns@michigan.gov

Twitter: @SLBeckhorn

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stephanie-beckhorn5201b22a/

Phone: (517) 335-5858

Politicians get the attention, but the real work of government and many of the business world's contacts in it often takes place elsewhere. The real levers of power are often held by the department directors, chiefs of sta , city managers and other appointed and hired o cials who manage the day-to-day planning and operations of Michigan's state and local government.

This edition of Crain's 50 Names to Know in Government shines a spotlight on these o cials, giving you an inside look at the people who often really drive the train. At this week's Mackinac Policy Conference, which is so often about building relationships, these are some of the movers and shakers in government to look for.

Pro les by David Eggert, Arielle Kass, Rachel Watson and Michael Lee

Todd Bettison

Deputy mayor, Detroit

Todd Bettison left a long career with the Detroit Police Department to become deputy mayor of the city of Detroit last May. In his new role, Bettison oversees enforcement-related activities in the city, from police to blight enforcement. He also lls in for Mayor Mike Duggan if he's unable to ful ll his duties.

Bettison's responsibilities also include work to connect the administration to community leaders. He aims to solve some of the city's most pressing issues, and is working on a violence-prevention program, ShotStopper, and a program called JumpStart that seeks to nd work for the long-term unemployed in the city. Both programs pay community organizations for successful work. When he left the police department after 27 years, Bettison was second in command to Chief James White. He started as a patrol o cer, rising in the ranks. He also has a bachelor of science degree from Wayne State University in criminal justice and a graduate business certi cate from Wayne State's Mike Ilitch School of Business.

Email: bettisont239@detroitmi.gov

Antoine Bryant

Director of Planning and Development, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan

Why he should be on your speed dial: In recent years, there has been perhaps no more in uential government agency shaping Detroit's revitalization than the city's Planning and Development Department. is city agency is the gatekeeper for redevelopment in Detroit. Bryant took over as the Duggan administration's planning and development director in July 2021 following a search to replace Maurice Cox, who left Detroit in the fall of 2019 to become Chicago's top planner. Since then, he has led a department that helped lead a community bene ts process that ultimately led to city approval of a $616 million transformational brown eld for the 10-project District Detroit expansion being undertaken by the Ilitch organization and developer Stephen Ross. Bryant has spent 25 years in city planning and architecture, mostly in Texas. He came to Detroit from the Houston o ce of Moody Nolan, where he was a business development director. In Houston, Bryant also was a member of the planning commission for Texas' largest city.

Email: antoine.bryant@detroitmi.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/antoine-bryant-nomaassoc-aia-a4973712

Phone: (313) 224-1339

Hilarie Chambers

Chief deputy county executive, Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter In Oakland County government, Chambers is the person to see as Coulter’s top deputy and strategist. She is charged with managing the daily operations of county government, playing a key role in policy development and decision-making across multiple departments. Her responsibilities include emergency management and homeland security, health and human services, and public services. Chambers is a veteran of state Democratic politics, having previously served as chief of sta to Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the longtime top aide to now-retired U.S. Rep. Sander Levin. Coulter tapped Chambers to be his No. 2 in August 2019 after he became county executive. Chambers was the rst woman to serve as chief deputy executive of Oakland County. In her 26 years on Levin’s sta , she was the congressman’s chief of sta for the last 21 years of his 36 years in o ce, including Levin’s stint as chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

Email: Chambershi@oakgov.com

Twitter: @HilarieChambers

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hilariechambers

Mary Ann Cleary

Director, House Fiscal Agency

Term limits mean the Michigan Legislature keeps much of its institutional knowledge in its nonpartisan scal agencies, which crunch numbers to tell lawmakers what their plans will actually cost. And there isn’t much better institutional knowledge than Mary Ann Cleary, a 31-year veteran of the House Fiscal Agency who has been the agency’s director since 2011. e nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency provides analysis of all legislation. e agency’s analysts gure up nancial impact of bills for the House Appropriations Committee and its 12 subcommittees. Because of the near-constant turnover of legislators due to constitutional term limits, Cleary has served countless appropriations committee chairs from both political parties and is regarded in the Capitol as a consummate professional who sticks to the facts and doesn’t play favorites. Email: mcleary@house.mi.gov

Eli Cooper

Susan Corbin

Manager, Transit Division, Oakland County Cooper was recently named the rst manager for Oakland County’s transit division by County Executive David Coulter, and he’ll have a big job. e county is in the process of extending public transit service after voters passed the rst countywide transit millage last fall after years in which many municipalities opted out. e millage is expected to raise $68 million in its rst year, and Cooper will oversee implementation of the transit expansion, starting with a planning process aimed at engaging residents, businesses and local o cials. Previously, Cooper was the transportation program manager in Ann Arbor for more than 17 years and has also worked in Seattle; St. Paul, Minn.; Delaware and New Jersey. Cooper has a master of urban planning degree from Hunter College at the City University of New York and a bachelor of science in environmental science from Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/eli-cooper-3752b54/

Emily Doerr

Executive director, State Land Bank Authority

Doerr’s team is administering $150 million in state and federal funding for blight elimination across Michigan. at includes more than $50 million for county land banks, the biggest allotment in state history. e land bank, which works to facilitate the productive reuse of land and provides assistance to county land banks, has about 2,500 properties available for purchase. Before becoming director in 2020, she was vice president of housing development for Metro Community Development in Flint and held jobs with the city of Flint, Consumers Energy Co., the Michigan Economic Development Corp., the city of Oak Park and the Detroit Regional Chamber. e Central Michigan University and University of Detroit Mercy graduate founded Hostel Detroit and Flint City Bike Tours, and is opening a wine, beer and charcuterie shop in Flint.

Email: doerre1@michigan.gov

Twitter: @EmilyDoerr

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/emilymdoerr

Phone: (517) 335-8212

Kerry Ebersole Singh

Chief talent solutions and engagement o cer, Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Ebersole Singh is focused on developing high-wage skills growth by working with businesses and colleges to better attract, retain and cultivate talent. She came to the MEDC from the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, where she established the O ce of Sixty by 30 — an initiative to increase the number of working-age adults with a skill certi cate or college degree to 60 percent by 2030. She launched two programs, Futures for Frontliners and Michigan Reconnect, that provide tuition-free paths to earn training certi cates or associate’s degrees. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer tasked her with heading a commission to educate people about the e ectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. Ebersole Singh earlier led the state’s e orts to boost public participation in the U.S. Census. Before joining state government, the Michigan State University graduate had her own public a airs rm, worked on Democratic campaigns and was chief of sta to former state Rep. Barbara Farrah.

Email: ebersolek1@michigan.gov

Twitter: @kerryebersole

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kerry-ebersole-singh44353a6

Director, Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity

Corbin is a veteran of state government whose department runs the Unemployment Insurance Agency, the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Wage & Hour Division and other functions of state government that intersect with employment and workforce development. She has been with LEO since its creation in 2019. Susan’s career has included stints in the Michigan Department of Education and the former commerce department, where she worked on cultural, educational and trade relations with China. During Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s administration, Susan served as Granholm’s appointments director during the rst term and deputy director and chief of sta of the state labor department during Granholm’s second term. As director of LEO, Susan also is a member of the Michigan Strategic Fund board. She is a graduate of Michigan State University.

Email: corbins@michigan.gov

Twitter: @SusanCorbin LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/susan-corbin-95948a6/

Sean Egan

Deputy director, labor, Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity

Egan is the state’s leading voice for workplace safety initiatives and go-to for labor issues. He oversees the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Workers’ Disability Compensation Agency, the Bureau of Employment Relations and the Wage and Hour Division. Egan also spearheads the state’s recently launched workplace mental health initiative. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made him workplace safety director during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally a journeyman electrician by training, he became a labor attorney for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 876. He is a graduate of Davenport University and the Western Michigan University Cooley Law School.

Email: egans@michigan.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sean-egan-a1092b11/ Phone: (517) 388-4264

Mark Deldin

Chief deputy county executive, Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel

Deldin has been Hackel’s right-hand man for more than a decade, responsible for the daily management of county departments, facilities, services in a county whose budget topped $1 billion in 2022. Deldin joined the Hackel administration in 2011 after a long career in public education. He was previously superintendent of Chippewa Valley Schools following a decade in other administration leadership positions with the school district in Clinton Township. Before that, he was the physical plant supervisor in Oak Park School District. He got his start in K-12 schools as a building custodian in Lake Shore Public Schools, one of three school districts in St. Clair Shores. Deldin also is chairman of the Macomb County Employee Retirement System, overseeing the management and investment strategy of a $1 billion pension fund for county employees.

Email: deldin@macombgov.org

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mark-deldin-5350545

Brad Dick

Chief operating o cer, city of Detroit Dick oversees city departments that include the department of public works, the general services department, the water & sewerage department, the demolition department, municipal parking, the Detroit building authority and the city airport. Dick, the former group executive for services and infrastructure, took on the role in March. After joining the city in 2006, he rose through the ranks of city government. His accomplishments include leading two parks master plans that led to upgrades in more than 160 parks, planning and construction e orts at the Joe Louis Greenway, the creation of an airport master plan and a number of beauti cation projects, including planting more than 2.5 million da odils across the city. Dick, 57, continues to focus on blight elimination in the city. A graduate of Ball State University, he also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania and worked at Ford Motor Co. and at a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Email: DickB@detroitmi.gov

Phone: (313) 701-9314

Rachael Eubanks

State Treasurer

Dwight Ferrell

Eubanks leads the Michigan Department of Treasury, having been appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2019. e 1,600-employee agency collects taxes, disburses revenue-sharing payments to local governments and handles other state business such as pension investments and bond nancing. Eubanks helps to project revenues used to enact annual budgets and also sits on key boards like the Michigan Strategic Fund Board, the Michigan State Housing Development Authority and the State of Michigan Investment Board. She hosts a podcast aimed at small-business owners and is in the newest cohort of the Hunt-Kean Leadership Fellows program. e University of Michigan graduate is a former state utility regulator who previously worked in the private sector, structuring bond nancings for public entities.

Email: eubanksr@michigan.gov

Twitter: @MITreasEubanks

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rachael-eubanks8716363b/

Phone: (517) 335-7505

General manager, Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation Ferrell manages the suburban transit system known as SMART, which had a nearly $150 million budget in scal 2023. He was hired as general manager in 2021 and since then has seen a successful campaign to expand transit in Oakland County and will be deeply involved in how that expansion plays out. e agency has also purchased its rst electric buses. Ferrell came to SMART in 2021 from a management consulting job at a rm in Dallas but was previously CEO of the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority in Cincinnati from 2015 to 2019. Ferrell has more than three decades of experience in public transit. Before running the Ohio transit agency, between 2002 and 2012, Dwight was chief operating o cer of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, COO of the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority in Austin, Texas, and CEO of the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority.

Email: dferrell@smartbus.org

Twitter: @dwightaferrell

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dwightaferrell

Jen Flood

Deputy chief of sta , Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Flood is a key conduit to the governor’s o ce for legislative leaders, lobbyists and stakeholder organizations with an issue before the legislative and executive branches of state government. She was previously Whitmer’s public a airs director until the governor promoted her into one of three deputy chief of sta roles. Flood came to the Whitmer administration from the Lansing o ce of the Dykema law rm, where she worked as a government policy adviser. Before that, she worked in communications at Byrum Fisk Advocacy Communications, in the Legislature and for former Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

Email: oodj1@michigan.gov

Twitter: @jen_ ood

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jen- ood/

Phone: (517) 897-3466

Tricia Foster

Chief operations o cer, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Foster’s daily mission is implementing a business-like approach to managing state government. As the state’s COO, she manages cabinet a airs and administrative functions within the executive o ce.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she was Whitmer’s point person on the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to local health departments, hospital systems and other medical providers. A longtime friend of Whitmer’s, Foster came to state government from the private sector following a long career in commercial real estate in West Michigan. She spent 23 years at CBRE/Martin and CBRE/Grand Rapids, retiring as the rm’s senior managing director and chief operating o cer. e Michigan State University graduate was director of the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget in 2019 and some of 2020.

Email: fostert13@michigan.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tricia-foster-cpm-acoma802412a/

Phone: (517) 335-7858

Anita Fox

Director, Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services

Fox leads an agency responsible for regulating the state’s insurance and nancial services industries. ey include insurance companies, banks, credit unions, mortgage and auto leaders, and payday lenders. As director, she helped launch the Michigan Open Account Coalition to boost the number of low- and no-cost bank and credit union accounts. It also led outreach resulting in a record number of Michiganders signing up for health insurance during the recent marketplace open enrollment period. Before being appointed in 2019, she practiced law in Michigan and Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of Kalamazoo College and the University of Michigan Law School.

Email: foxa5@michigan.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/anita-fox6b30523b/

Phone: (517) 284-8658

Jeremiah Gracia

Director of Economic Development, Grand Rapids

Jeremiah Gracia joined the Grand Rapids Economic Development O ce in May 2020. He leads implementation of the city’s Equitable Economic Development and Mobility Strategic Plan and serves as executive director for the Grand Rapids SmartZone Local Development Finance Authority that supports entrepreneurs. His 18 years of experience included nine years as senior economic development administrator in Dublin, Ohio. In 2022, his team made over $245 million worth of private project investments. His work with the SmartZone LDFA with Spartan Innovations and Start Garden has resulted in over $54 million in follow-up investments to Grand Rapids startups. Gracia holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and ethnic studies and a master’s in public administration from Bowling Green State University.

Email: jgracia@grcity.us

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jeremiahgracia

Phone: (616) 456-4653

Christina Grossi

Chief legal counsel, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Grossi gives legal advice to the governor and her sta on a range of topics. Her work includes advising on major litigation facing the state, reviewing and analyzing proposed legislation, drafting executive orders and directives, reviewing policy initiatives and participating in the judicial appointment process. She came to the executive o ce from the Department of Attorney General, where she spent 12 years. She was chief deputy attorney general after previously being operations chief, a division chief and a senior sta attorney handling civil litigation. She previously was a lawyer at a small rm in Saginaw, Gilbert, Smith & Borrello. She is a Michigan State University and omas M. Cooley Law School graduate.

Email: grossic1@michigan.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christinagrossi-90312715/ Phone: (517) 335-7858

Yeo & Yeo is a business success partner. Using the power of listening, perspective, and connected purpose, we do whatever it takes to help our clients and communities thrive — right here in Michigan. Find us in Auburn Hills, Ann Arbor, Southgate, Flint, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Alma, Midland, and Saginaw.

Chris Harkins

State budget director, Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget

Harkins is responsible for coordinating all aspects of the state’s $78 billion budget at a time of multibillion-dollar surpluses. at includes development of the governor’s recommendation, presentation to the Legislature, negotiation of the spending plan, implementation and monitoring to ensure it stays balanced. He previously was director of the nonpartisan Senate Fiscal Agency, worked in the budget o ce during the Snyder administration and was a Republican legislative policy aide. He also worked at Jackson National Life as a senior policy adviser. He is a graduate of Michigan State University and Penn State University.

Email: harkinsc2@michigan.gov

Twitter: @CM_Harkins

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/harkinschristopher/ Phone: (517) 241-0183

Orlene Hawks

Director, Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory A airs

LARA is the state’s business regulatory agency. It has regulatory oversight over corporation lings, health care facilities, liquor control, medical and recreational marijuana, commercial and occupational licensing, and the state’s administrative hearing system. Hawks is a veteran of state government. Before joining Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s cabinet in 2019, Hawks spent the previous ve years as director of the O ce of Children’s Ombudsman, the state’s watchdog agency for the foster care, adoption and child protective services. She previously worked as a legislative liaison for the Department of Health and Human Services and worked in child, adolescent and family health in the former state department of community health.

Email: hawkso@michigan.gov

Twitter: @LARADirector

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/orlene-hawks137b09210/

Phone: (517) 241-7124

Curtis Hertel Jr.

Director of legislative a airs, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Hertel is the governor’s chief lobbyist inside the Capitol, overseeing a legislative a airs team that is focused on getting her spending and policy priorities passed in a Democraticcontrolled Legislature. He served in the Michigan Senate from 2015 through 2022, playing a key role in the development of budget bills, and has relationships on both side of the aisle. He previously was Ingham County’s register of deeds, a county commissioner, and a policy analyst and legislative liaison for the state health department. He is a Michigan State University graduate.

Email: HertelC1@michigan.gov

Twitter: @CurtisHertelJr

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/curtishertel-31570050/

Phone: (517) 335-7858

Amy Hovey

Executive director, Michigan State Housing Development Authority

As the agency’s new leader, Hovey has three primary goals: implementing the rst-ever statewide housing plan, leveraging and creating new resources and partnerships to address the shortage of a ordable housing, and helping to streamline the process to access MSDHA funding. Targets in the housing plan include creating 75,000 new or rehabilitated housing units. She previously was a housing consultant with the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity and special projects coordinator for the C.S. Mott Foundation in Flint, where she led the real estate development of two schools and a hotel. She formerly was district chief of sta for Democratic U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee; co-founder of Community Progress, a nonpro t that assists communities dealing with vacant, abandoned and blighted properties; owner of a consulting rm; and worked at the Local Initiatives Support Corp. She is a graduate of Alma College and the University of Michigan-Flint.

Email: HoveyA1@michigan.gov

Twitter: @AmylHovey

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amy-joseph-hovey88ab755/

Phone: (517) 335-9885

Elizabeth Hertel

Director, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services

Hertel leads the largest department in state government, with more than 10,000 employees and a budget totaling 42 percent of state spending. It administers public assistance programs like Medicaid, dental care and welfare and is responsible for a gamut of functions including adult and children’s protective services, mental health services, public health and state psychiatric hospitals. She was appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She previously was the department’s senior chief deputy director for administration. Hertel has a long background in state government, including working on policy development for Republicans in the Legislature and a previous stint at MDHHS during the Snyder administration as senior deputy director of policy, planning and legislative a airs. She has degrees from Grand Valley State University and Michigan State University.

Email: hertele@michigan.gov

Twitter: @MDHHS_Director

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-hertel110111103/ Phone: (517) 241-3626

JoAnne Huls

Chief of sta , Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

As Whitmer’s top adviser and gatekeeper, Huls has a key leadership role leading an executive o ce sta of more than 100 people. She is no stranger to the business world or state government. Before becoming chief of sta in 2019, she spent eight years as businessman Gary Torgow’s chief at Talmer Bank and Trust and eventually Chemical Bank when the two banks merged, as well as Sterling Group, the real estate development company Torgow founded that is now run by his adult children. Prior to that, JoAnne was former Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s deputy chief of sta . She is a graduate of Michigan State University.

Email: hulsj1@michigan.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joanne-huls-785746/ Phone: (517) 335-7858

Josh Hundt

Chief project o cer and executive vice president of strategic accounts, Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Hundt leads the MEDC’s e orts to secure key business expansion and attraction opportunities and to keep companies in the state. He has nearly 20 years of economic development experience. Hundt helped develop and implement various business incentives, including the new critical industry and strategic site readiness programs within Michigan’s Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve Fund, along with COVID-19 pandemic relief programs. Since 2022, the SOAR account has been used to land major projects including four multibilliondollar electric vehicle battery plants that will each employ thousands. He is a graduate of Hope College and Western Michigan University.

Email: hundtj2@michigan.org

Twitter: @jhundt1

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joshuahundt

Phone: (517) 335-7950

Michelle Lange

Director, Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget

Lange heads the agency that provides information technology, business and administrative services to state agencies, state employees and retirees. e services includes centralized contracting and procurement, budget and nancial management, space planning and leasing, construction management and oversight of state retirement systems.

Her recent accomplishments include an upgrade of payment processing platforms at secretary of state o ces, a replacement of the state’s 20-year-old website and transitioning to renewable energy in DTMB-managed facilities. She previously was the department’s chief deputy director, chief of sta and legislative liaison. She also worked in the o ces of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and former Gov. Rick Snyder, was a sta er for three Republican state senators and served as a Michigan Tax Tribunal judge. She was a lobbyist for Oakland University and has bachelor’s and law degrees from MSU.

Email: LangeM3@michigan.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/langemic/ Phone: (517) 241-5547

Shannon Lott

Acting director, Michigan Department of Natural Resources

Lott has more than 20 years of experience with the department, in both the eld and administration. Prior to becoming acting director in January, she was the natural resources deputy and has helped to oversee major investments in public lands and sustainable natural resource management to support the outdoor recreation economy. ey include $450 million in funding to address a backlog of infrastructure needs in state and local parks, $30 million to rebuild state sh hatcheries and a rst-in-the-nation e ort to leverage carbon storage capacity on state forest land. She has worked as a wildlife technician, biologist and in policy and regulations — tackling issues such as chronic wasting disease, hunting licenses and invasive swine. She has degrees from Grand Valley State University and Michigan State University.

Email: lotts1@michigan.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shannon-lott-0696aa10/

Conrad Mallett Jr.

Corporation counsel, city of Detroit ere is perhaps no government leader in Michigan more connected in both the public and private sectors than Mallett. His career has taken him to highest echelons of government and business. In the 1980s, Mallett was legislative a airs director for then-Gov. Jim Blanchard and a top aide to then-Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young. In 1990, Blanchard appointed Mallett to the Michigan Supreme Court. He later became the high court’s rst Black chief justice. After leaving the Supreme Court, Mallett was a partner at the Miller Can eld law rm for a few years and then did a stint as Detroit’s chief operating o cer under then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. In the 2000s, Mallett joined Mike Duggan in the Detroit Medical Center’s C-suite, serving as president of DMC SinaiGrace Hospital from 2003-2011 while Duggan was CEO of the hospital system. Duggan appointed him deputy mayor in 2020, and Mallett became corporation counsel, the city’s top lawyer, last year. He was prominently involved in negotiations over tax incentives for the District Detroit development. Mallett also serves on the Lear Corp. board of directors. Email: conrad.mallett@detroitmi.gov

Quentin Messer Jr.

CEO, Michigan Economic Development Corp.; chair, Michigan Strategic Fund

Messer, the state’s top economic development o cial, executes the MEDC’s core mission of business development and attraction, community development and brand management. During his tenure, the state has created a large new incentives fund to attract large-scale business projects including electric vehicle battery factories. He is a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s U.S. Investment Advisory Council, the University of Michigan’s Innovation Partnerships National Advisory Board and the Michigan Council on Climate Solutions. Messer has a private-sector background in startup ventures and corporate consulting at e Boston Consulting Group, O’Melveny & Myers LLP and Foster Chamberlain LLC. He has degrees from Princeton University and Columbia University.

Email: messerq@michigan.org

Twitter: @QuentinMesserJr

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/quentin-messer-jrcecd-419394/

Phone: (888) 522-0103

APEC BUILDS BRIDGES

Michigan and Taiwan sign historic MOU, promote ties

By Crain’s Content Studio

From the Great Lakes to the skyscrapers of Taipei, a bold new partnership between Mi igan and Taiwan is poised to drive innovation and sustainable development.

On May 18, business and government leaders from Mi igan and Taiwan gathered in Detroit for an Asia-Paci c Economic Cooperation (APEC) side-forum that highlighted successful partnerships, celebrated new commitments and forged a path toward further collaboration.

At the forum, Taiwanese and Mi igan o cials signed a historic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Taipei Economic and Cultural O ce (TECO) in Chicago and the Mi igan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC). e rst-of-its-kind agreement aims to boost economic investment, supply- ain resiliency, te nology and innovation collaborations, and industry-academic connections between Taiwan and Mi igan.

Taiwan Minister of Transportation and Communications Dr. Kwo-Tsai Wang told forum attendees that he was honored to take part in the landmark agreement, whi he said would help “further the cooperation on electric vehicles between the U.S. and Taiwan.”

“ is agreement will also help Taiwanese companies to access the U.S. market, allowing the U.S. and Taiwan to work on more issues, su as green transportation,” Wang said.

Wang also emphasized the close trade relationship between the two countries, pointing to the fact that Taiwan will play an important role in the EV supply ain and contribute to growth in the EV market for General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.

As the world confronts the allenges of climate ange and the need for more sustainable development, Taiwanese companies are wellpositioned to o er solutions — from minor components and systems to entire vehicles, su as fully electronic buses, Wang said. He noted that Taiwan is working to a ieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and that the United States is likewise committed to green te nology. “With regard to electric vehicles and arging stations, Taiwan companies can play vital roles in the supply ain,” he said.

Another new partnership signed at the forum — between Taiwan manufacturing company RAC Electric Vehicles Inc. and greater Detroit-based engineering rm Optimal-EV — demonstrates that the new relationship will not only o er jobs

for both Taiwan and the U.S. but will also encourage the automobile industry to “further its development in energy transformation and green transportation,” Wang said.

According to the MOU signed on May 18, the MEDC and TECO in Chicago agree to prioritize their cooperation in the automotive, semiconductor and microelectronics sectors.

Johnson Chiang, Director General of TECO in Chicago, said the MOU with MEDC is “a living manifestation” of the close relationship Taiwan has with the United States and Mi igan.

“With the framework and blueprint set up by the TECO-MEDC MOU, we shall continue to work with the MEDC, hand in hand, on the road of economic partnership, strengthening bilateral academic-industrial cooperation and accomplishing comprehensive a ievements in EV, AI, semiconductors, and 5G industries,” Chiang said.

Quentin L. Messer, Jr., CEO of MEDC, called the MOU “vital,” saying it “brings together the global strengths of both Mi igan and Taiwan’s unique mobility, ips and clean te industry clusters.”

“Talent remains a critical and necessary component to these leading-edge industries, and this partnership will accelerate collaboration among the world-renowned universities and companies here and in Taiwan,” Messer said.

“Innovative problem-solving and entrepreneurial risk-taking are hallmarks of both cultures.”

Director of the O ce of International Transportation and Trade for the U.S. Department of Transportation Julie Abraham told forum attendees that the U.S. and Taiwan as partners have an obligation to reduce transportation’s impact on climate ange.

“In addition to our shared aspirations on climate ange, [the U.S. and Taiwan] share ambition to strengthen our supply ains and connectivity,” Abraham said. “We hope to use me anisms su

as the APEC Safe Passage Taskforce to make our transportation operations more resilient.”

Representatives of National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) and Mi igan State University (MSU) also signed an academic cooperation general agreement at the Detroit forum to further encourage the sharing of talent, innovation and ideas. e universities’ representatives included Dr. Huey-Jen Jenny Su, Distinguished Professor of the College of Medicine, and Dr. Satish Udpa, MSU Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Su, a former NCKU president, called the partnership with Mi igan State University “a strategic and purposeful oice.”

“Looking to the future, I believe MSU and NCKU both see tremendous potential in furthering the academia-industry partnership, whi is a key to global innovation and development,” Su said.

State legislators at the forum presented resolutions passed in the Mi igan House and Senate last week calling for increased collaboration with Taiwan.

Sen. Jim Runestad, a co- air of the bipartisan Taiwan Friendship Caucus, said that the forum and the MOU are promising signs of collaboration between Mi igan and Taiwan.

“ is could just explode and go so mu further,” Runestad said. “ ere’s an incredible amount of opportunity. Just from today, I see there is momentum. I cannot stress this enough: I think Taiwan is the most important ally the U.S. has.”

Rep. Kevin Coleman, also a co- air of the Taiwan Friendship Caucus, e oed the praise. “ is MOU covers exactly what our automobile industry and the state of Mi igan need the most right now: talent, semiconductors and a sustainable ecosystem for the EV supply ain.”

Taiwan’s crucial role in the global te nology supply ain underscores the many opportunities to further strengthen the partnership, U.S.-Taiwan Business Council Vice President Lotta Danielsson said at the forum. “We also hope to see discussion on future initiatives — su as a potential Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreement or a more comprehensive Bilateral Trade Agreement — that would allow us to further build and strengthen U.S.-Taiwan economic and business ties.”

Leaders from Mi igan and Taiwan emphasized that these new developments would build upon an already strong and ongoing friendship, as seen in Taiwanese te -sector collaborations and robust partnerships with Apple, IBM, and Intel, among others.

“At the end of the day, the U.S. and Taiwan actually have a complementary industry landscape,” Wang said. “We can cooperate with ea other — whether EV, development, resear , or manufacturing — and become mutually bene cial.”

Johnson Chiang, (left) Director General of TECO in Chicago, and Quentin L. Messer, Jr., CEO, Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Business, government and academic leaders with an interest in improving economic collaboration between Michigan and Taiwan gathered in Detroit for an Asia-Paci c Economic Cooperation (APEC) side-forum on May 18.

State Sen. Jim Runestad presents a recently passed resolution calling for Michigan-Taiwan collaboration to Dr. KwoTsai Wang, Taiwan Minister of Transportation and Communications, at the APEC side-forum in Detroit on May 18.

Shaquila Myers

Kathleen O’Reilly Farhat

Zack Pohl

Chief of sta , House Speaker Joe Tate Myers is the chief aide to House Speaker Joe Tate, the rst Democrat to lead the chamber in a dozen years. Her focus is advancing the agenda of House Democrats. She also oversees both partisan and nonpartisan sta . She returned to the Legislature from the executive branch, where she was a senior adviser for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after being Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II’s chief of sta . She previously was a veteran legislative sta er and had various roles in the Senate Democratic caucus. She has worked to establish the state’s new economic development incentives fund and to pass expungement laws. She also has been involved in multiple budget cycles. Myers has degrees from Oakland University.

Email: smyers@house.mi.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shaquila-myers2b46a46/ Phone: (517) 373-0857

Chief of sta , Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks

O’Reilly Farhat is the chief strategist, adviser and liaison for Brinks, the Senate’s rst Democratic majority leader in nearly 40 years. She also is responsible for managing sta in Brinks’ o ce and in the majority communications and policy o ces.

And she helps to oversee the Senate Business O ce and other legislative agencies. e Michigan State University graduate was the chief of sta to former state Sen. Curtis Hertel Jr. and an aide to Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum, including when she was a state representative. She is a budget expert from her time working with Hertel, a high-ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and has been involved in the passage of spending bills amid record-high tax revenues. She has worked on policy measures such as those legalizing sports betting and Internet gambling.

Email: kfarhat@senate.michigan.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kathleen-o-reillyfarhat-429353162/ Phone: (517) 373-5593

Deputy chief of sta , Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Pohl manages strategic planning and communications, constituent services, and scheduling and advance teams in the executive o ce. He is a veteran of three straight gubernatorial elections and was the Whitmer campaign’s communications director when she won in 2018. He was the governor’s communications director for nearly half of her rst term, including during her administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when her pro le grew nationally. Pohl, a Michigan State University graduate, previously was communications director for the Michigan AFL-CIO, executive director of the liberal group Progress Michigan and communications director for former U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer.

Email: pohlz@michigan.gov

Twitter: @ZackPohl

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/zackpohl

Donald Rencher

Group executive, Housing, Planning and Development, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan

Rencher is Mayor Duggan’s point man in the city’s e orts to revitalize neighborhoods after decades of disinvestment and abandonment. He has a wideranging portfolio at City Hall aimed at drawing investment in the city’s neighborhoods and commercial corridors: He oversees the departments of Planning & Development, Housing & Revitalization and Arts & Culture. He took his current role in 2021 and was previously the director of Housing & Revitalization, where he oversaw more than $500 million in investments in mixed-income housing projects in Detroit. Rencher joined the Duggan administration in 2015 after serving as a senior attorney at the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, where he was the top attorney for the state agency’s single-family housing programs. Rencher has a law degree from Western Michigan University Law School and is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

Email: rencherd@detroitmi.gov

Twitter: @DonaldRencher

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/donald-rencher

THE TRANSFORMATION BEGINS HERE

Jay Rising

Chief nancial o cer, Mayor Mike Duggan

Rising oversees all aspects of Detroit’s operating budget, which has ballooned with federal COVID relief dollars, and nancial planning. He came out of retirement in January 2021 to become acting CFO for the city and took the permanent job in May of that year. Duggan and Rising have a long working relationship — Rising was the mayor’s CFO at the Detroit Medical Center when Duggan was CEO. Rising took the DMC job after serving one four-year term as state treasurer under former Gov. Jennifer Granholm. In 2019-2020, Rising served in Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration as a senior adviser and cabinet director. Rising also worked in private practice with the law rm Miller, Can eld, Paddock and Stone from 1991 to 1998. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and a law degree from Wayne State University.

Email: Jay.Rising@detroitmi.gov

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Vicky Rowinski

Director, Macomb County Department of Planning and Economic Development

Rowinski is Macomb County’s on-the-ground economic development planner and thinker. She’s involved in all levels of economic planning, from K-12 education and talent development to business expansions in Macomb County. As the county’s planning and economic development director, Rowinski oversees community planning, economic development, GIS and data services, parks and natural resources and marketing and communications. Before joining Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel’s administration in 2013, she worked in economic development at the Detroit Regional Chamber and counseled businesses at the Macomb Regional Procurement Technical Assistance Center, a not-for-pro t organization based at Macomb Community College. Rowinski sits on the boards of the Greater Detroit Foreign Trade Zone and MichAuto. She also is an adjunct professor at Oakland University and a licensed real estate agent.

Email: Vicky.Rowinski@macombgov.org

Twitter: @radvicky

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vickyrad

Dan Scripps

Chair, Michigan Public Service Commission

Scripps chairs the three-member Public Service Commission, which regulates the electric, natural gas and telecommunications industries. e agency approves the utilities’ rates and long-range energy plans and oversees grid upgrades and utilities’ response to power outages. It is involved in the state’s transition to electric vehicles and to cleaner sources of energy to generate electricity. Scripps was appointed in 2019 and named chair in 2020. He previously was Midwest policy program director for the Energy Foundation, president of the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council/Institute for Energy Innovation, and vice president and senior adviser for Advanced Energy Economy. He also served in the Michigan House and was a lawyer in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of Alma College and the University of Michigan Law School.

Email: scrippsd1@michigan.gov

Twitter: @DanScripps

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/danscripps/ Phone: (517) 284-8100

MACKINAC POLICY CONFERENCE

Statewide Housing Plan addressing persistent past and present housing challenges

The impact of a robust and nondiscriminatory a ordable housing ecosystem spans beyond just comfortability and freedoms for Michigan residents: it plays a direct role in the health of the state’s workforce, eviction and homelessness patterns and overall wellbeing of our communities. Access to safe and a ordable housing is also foundational to success in other areas of life, from health and education to employment.

Housing is a basic human right — not a luxury for a privileged few. In Michigan, housing a ordability historically has been and continues to be a considerable challenge. According to Michigan’s Statewide Housing Plan, before the COVID-19 pandemic, 48% of renters and 18% of homeowners paid over 30% of their income on housing. Forty- ve percent of homeowners didn’t know where to go for housing assistance, adding layers to preexisting issues such as economic growth, housingstock, home prices and more.

Moreover, deep-rooted discrimination and inequities have made it harder for populations of Black, multiracial and disabled Michiganders. In fact, mortgage applicants who are Black have a 38% denial rate compared to 25% of white households and 48% of the Michigan homeless population is Black, according to the Statewide Housing Plan.

e Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) recognizes obstacles Michiganders face pursuing a ordable and equitable housing and how they contribute to the current housing climate. MSHDA

is committed to meaningful change and noticeable results — which prompted the research and framework for Michigan’s rst Statewide Housing Plan. e plan focuses on eight priority areas across Michigan and outlines 37 goals and 134 strategies to ensure residents have an a ordable, attainable place to call home.

As Michigan continues to grow its economy and works to attract and retain talent in the state, housing will prove a crucial element. To start: employers play a pivotal role in helping to solve Michigan’s housing a ordability crisis.

Equitable entry and housing programs that support and maintain housing have a direct in uence on a steady, ourishing workforce and helps build vibrant communities. To ensure Michigan workers have a comfortable, quality and secure living environment that allows them to support business and economic growth in the state, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, MSHDA and its stakeholders are taking bold action-together.

Governor Whitmer set a goal to create or preserve 75,000 housing units across the state in the next ve years, which will help Michigan attract and retain talent and be an enticing place for all to live, work and put down roots. Cited in the Statewide Housing Plan, 47% of existing housing units in Michigan were built before 1970. is discovery provides an opportunity to upgrade, expand and supplement the types of housing stock needed for generations to come. To create neighborhoods that welcome and sustain growth and development.

MSHDA is also looking, through targets laid out in the plan, to stabilize 100,000+ households’ housing, make homelessness rare, improve energy e ciency in 15,000+ households and signi cantly reduce systemic equity gaps.

To create better housing outcomes for all, MSHDA will continue to gather data that informs equitable decisionmaking for marginalized populations, advocate for policy modi cations and practices that increase housing supply and opportunities for resident input and amplify the voices of community leaders throughout the state. is year, MSHDA convened with 15 Regional Housing Partnerships across the state to understand the unique needs of each region and

ensure local leaders had a voice in key funding priorities. ese meetings laid the foundation for crosssector collaboration and equitable implementation of the Statewide Housing Plan.

MSHDA programs — some created within the last year — played a pivotal role in increasing housing access and eliminating or pushing back on barriers to entry. ose programs include:

• The Missing Middle program, which is investing upwards of $100 million to minimize construction costs and supplement monetary gaps in housing projects to boost housing stock.

• e Michigan Homeowner Assistance Fund (MIHAF), which is providing up to $25,000 in assistance to cover housing expenses in arrears due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• MSHDA’s Down Payment Assistance (DPA) program, which is

loaning up to $10,000 in down payment assistance to homebuyers.

• e Michigan Housing Opportunities Promoting Energy E ciency Program (MI-HOPE), which is providing energy-e cient repairs and upgrades to residents across the state.

We know the Statewide Housing Plan is our blueprint to a brighter housing future for Michigan. By creating and pursuing goals and strategies de ned in the plan, MSHDA and our partners are combatting issues from the source and knocking down barriers to create

a healthier, more attainable housing landscape for the future.

As your authority on housing, MSHDA is ready to work with anyone who shares our vision of making Michigan a place where all people have quality a ordable housing as a foundation to reach their full potential.

Home.

It’s the best place on earth. We can all work together to implement the Statewide Housing Plan, so that everyone in Michigan can have quality, affordable housing. Let’s build a brighter future in the state we proudly call home.

AMY HOVEY is the executive director of the Michigan State Housing Development Authority and the rst woman to lead the agency (in a non-acting role) in its 56-year history.

MACKINAC POLICY CONFERENCE

“And.” A transformative word.

Michigan has long been synonymous with manufacturing. Present in nearly every community, and the true creator of wealth and prosperity, manufacturing is well understood as economic security for the state and the entire Great Lakes region.

From automobiles and auto parts, to pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, to food and beverage, and now semiconductors and communications equipment, Michigan makes the products that Americans and the world need to thrive.

In 2021, Michigan manufacturing output stood at more than $101 billion; its more than 11,000 manufacturing companies employed nearly 600,000 people in family-supporting jobs across the state. With a well-trained labor force, vast natural resources, and a reputation for innovation-meets-grit, Michigan is uniquely positioned to propel the entire Great Lakes region’s economic future.

Access to reliable, a ordable and sustainable energy is a key factor in the strength of the manufacturing sector and its ability to capitalize on opportunities.

According to the International Energy Agency’s most recent World Energy Outlook, primary demand for energy will continue to increase globally as populations continue to grow and urban centers continue to expand. In Michigan and throughout the region, demand for energy, in all its forms, will continue to rise. Electric vehicle, battery production and other advanced manufacturing activities centered in the region will intensify this demand.

At Enbridge, we’re embracing the power of “and” as we lead transformative changes in the energy that powers everyday life across North America and drives the world’s

strongest economies. Enbridge is committed to being the rst-choice provider for Michigan and all of North America — delivering reliable, a ordable and sustainable energy. We’re advancing our goal of net-zero carbon emissions from operations by 2050, and we’re on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions intensity from our facilities 35% by 2030.

Today, Enbridge continues to diversify our energy portfolio with infrastructure that safely transports or

generates a variety of energy sources. We’re pioneering a growing slate of low-carbon energy solutions including renewable natural gas (RNG), hydrogen blending and clean ammonia. We’re actively involved in both onshore and o shore wind power projects. We’re advancing technologies and partnerships

Earlier this year, Enbridge completed a $1 billion agreement with Divert Inc. to support the development of facilities across North America that transform food waste into renewable natural gas, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and avoiding waste in the process. Imagine the possibilities

Tomorrow’s net-zero future.

Tomorrow is on.

The “power of &” is not a compromise, but rather a commitment to pursue the best solutions for energy and the environment. That’s why Enbridge is modernizing our systems and advancing lower-carbon solutions like renewable natural gas and hydrogen power. Putting in the work today, we’re bridging to a sustainable energy future.

tomorrowison.com

“Access to reliable, affordable and sustainable energy is a key factor in the strength of the manufacturing sector and its ability to capitalize on opportunities.”

to capture carbon dioxide from industrial facilities and power plants to prevent it from entering the atmosphere, and then storing it safely underground.

Our own facilities are undergoing clean-energy transformations, with many being powered by renewable energy including that which we produce on site. Soon, many of our existing Michigan facilities could be solar self-powered, further cutting emissions and the state’s MI Healthy Climate Plan goals.

As we look to tomorrow, economic opportunity and environmental quality air, land, and water will continue to shape the region as a magnet for people to live, work and raise families. Health of the environment goes hand-in-hand with energy and economic security.

As much of the world rallies around solutions to mitigate and reverse climate change impacts, the old view — energy or the environment is being replaced with our new reality energy and the environment. We are moving forward with solutions that push e ective climate action while also sustaining a vibrant economic future.

the Divert approach holds for the future of Michigan’s world-class and economically vital agribusiness and food and beverage production industries. There’s food for thought.

Modernizing existing energy infrastructure also is necessary to continue meeting the region’s energy demand in the most reliable and environmentally protective ways. Building the Great Lakes Tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac will allow for the relocation of a segment of Line 5, and the potential siting of other critical utilities like fiber optic cables and electric transmission lines, in a tunnel, to further protect the environment. Once federal permitting agencies complete their work, we will be ready to build the Great Lakes Tunnel new infrastructure for a new era that will connect people, energy and opportunities for decades to come.

Environmental protection and reliable energy. ey exist together today and can exist together tomorrow. It is up to all of us. It is the power of “and!”

PETE SHEFFIELD is the chief sustainability of cer and vice president of U.S. external affairs, Enbridge

Embracing the power of “and”: Diversity, sustainability and investment to build a stronger Detroit

held the

of

& COO since November of 2022. Matt joined MGM Resorts in 2008 as the Vice President of Marketing in Detroit, MI. He oversaw all marketing channels for the property including advertising, direct marketing, digital marketing, public relations, casino marketing, and special events.

Since its opening in 1999, MGM Grand Detroit has played a prominent role in Detroit’s resurgence. ere are currently more reasons than ever for people to come

maintaining nancial responsibility. Our extensive meeting and event spaces are designed to accommodate the needs of a wide range of groups, from small business meetings to large conferences and conventions. By investing in these facilities, MGM Grand Detroit is helping to drive economic growth in the region while also providing opportunities for individuals and businesses to connect and collaborate.

We’ve partnered with numerous local organizations such as Forgotten Harvest, Midnight Golf, Michigan Veterans Foundations, Motor City Pride, Detroit Public Schools, and many others to help strengthen our community. We continue to meet and exceed our commitments and are so proud of our e orts to date.

We also understand that a stronger, more diversi ed workforce is bene cial for all of Detroit. Working with state and city leaders, MGM Grand Detroit promised to endeavor to have 50 percent of our employees be Detroit residents, and we’ve done just that. More than 70 percent of workforce is made up of minorities, including 64 percent of our leadership positions. When we signed the development agreement with the City

“MGM Grand Detroit is proud to be a xture of the Detroit community and an integral part of setting the stage.”

downtown. At MGM Grand Detroit, the options are endless when it comes to guests choosing how they want to

of Detroit, we agreed that 30 percent of our vendor contracts would go to

spend their time. Whether that means indulging in world-class dining, relaxing at the spa, resting their head in a luxurious suite, or trying their luck at the casino, there’s something for everyone.

We also understand the importance of investing in the future while

impact, while also contributing to economic growth in the region. Initiatives including energye cient lighting, recycling, water conservation measures, and waste reduction programs not only bene t the environment but also help to reduce operating costs. MGM Grand Detroit’s commitment to sustainability demonstrates that economic growth and environmental responsibility can coexist, creating a better future for everyone.

e Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, Campus Martius, the DTE campus

and the Downtown Detroit Partnership have created a city with a new energy. When you walk down the streets of downtown now, you’ll see people enjoying these various o erings. ere are a lot of amenities. ere are restaurants, bars, lounges, and entertainment. e collective e orts of local organizations and city leadership have attracted world-class events like the NFL Dra in 2024, and NCAA Final Four making its way to Detroit in 2025.

MGM Grand Detroit is proud to be a xture of the Detroit community

and an integral part of setting the stage. We plan to continue to build on the success we’ve had, employing thousands of city residents, and playing an important role in the revitalization of Detroit. We are focused on helping create a more prosperous future for the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan, and the broader region.

Detroit-based, minority-owned, or women-owned businesses. Today, nearly 50 percent of our spending with outside vendors is spent on minority-owned, women-owned and Detroit-based businesses.

We’re committed to sustainability and reducing our environmental

MATT BUCKLEY oversees operations of MGM North eld Park and MGM Grand Detroit. He has

role

President

Trisha Stein

Kim Trent

chief strategy o cer, city of Detroit Detroit Chief Strategy O cer Trisha Stein was chief of sta to Mayor Mike Duggan before moving into her new role at the end of 2022. Now, she’s responsible for a number of the administration’s strategic initiatives, including sustainability, mobility innovation, behavioral health, data governance and the Census. She’s working to create a climate strategy for the city, including increasing energy e ciency for Detroit facilities and protecting residents from extreme weather. Her responsibilities include building out electric vehicle charging infrastructure across Detroit and transitioning the city’s eet to electric vehicles. As chief of sta , she coordinated Detroit’s coronavirus vaccine program and led communication about American Rescue Plan Act funds. Stein graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and has a master’s degree from the London School of Economics. Prior to joining the mayor’s o ce, she was the director of administrative operations for the Detroit Police Department. Email: steint@detroitmi.gov

Deputy director for prosperity, Michigan Department of Laborand Economic Opportunity

Trent is charged with guiding and building support for the Whitmer administration’s economic prosperity e orts. Her division includes an initiative to increase the number of working-age adults with a skill certi cate or college degree to 60 percent by 2030 and the state’s high-speed internet o ce. Her team is working with the Michigan Nonpro t Association to manage $30 million in relief for nonpro ts hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. She leads a $14 million grant program for nonpro ts to boost low-income residents’ economic mobility. e former newspaper reporter, a Wayne State University graduate, served nearly seven years on the Wayne State University board of governors and worked on the sta s of U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, ex-U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick and former Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

Email: trentk1@michigan.gov

Twitter: @KimTrentDetroit

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kim-trent-53a23911

Phone: (517) 512-4197

Assad Turfe

Deputy county executive, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans

Turfe was promoted to a deputy county executive role in 2022 after several years serving as Wayne County Executive Warren Evans’ chief of sta , known as a go-to for navigating the county’s government. Like his boss, Assad comes from a career in law enforcement. Turfe spent 15 years in the Wayne County Sheri ’s O ce, rising through the ranks from a deputy to become one of the youngest lieutenants in the history of the sheri ’s o ce. Turfe joined Evans’ team in 2015 as chief assistant to Evans after the former county sheri was elected county executive in 2014 and trying to keep Wayne County out of bankruptcy court. Evans promoted Turfe to chief of sta in June 2018.

Email: Aturfe@waynecounty.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/assad-i-turfe

Kristin Turkelson

Planning Director, Grand Rapids Kristin Turkelson was promoted to planning director for Grand Rapids in 2019 after ve years as assistant planning director and a year as planning supervisor. She is sta liaison to the Grand Rapids City Commission and city manager on policy issues involving land use, development, zoning and community engagement. Turkelson also oversees the city’s Development Center, Planning Commission, Board of Zoning Appeals and Historic Preservation Commission. She’s helped to guide almost $4 billion in construction investment since 2013, including projects that have reshaped parts of Grand Rapids, like the expansion of Founders Brewing Co., creation of Studio Park and development of the Bridge Street Market. She holds a Bachelor of Science in urban and regional planning from Eastern Michigan University and is a member of the Michigan Planning Association and the American Planning Association.

Email: kturkelson@grcity.us

Phone: 616-456-4100

Heidi Washington

Director, Michigan Department of Corrections

Washington oversees the administration of the state’s $1.9 billion correctional system, including prisons, probation and parole supervision, and the parole board. She is credited with starting three Vocational Villages within prisons in Jackson and Ionia and the prison for women in Ypsilanti that train inmates eligible for parole in skilled trades such as construction, masonry, plumbing, welding and truck driving so they are career-ready upon their release. e program has garnered national recognition and is a source of talent for employers. She is the only member of former Gov. Rick Snyder’s cabinet still running a state agency in the Whitmer administration. e Michigan St ate University and omas M. Cooley Law School graduate, who joined the department in 1998 and became director in 2015.

Email: washingtonm6@michigan.gov

Twitter: @HeidiWashington

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/heidi-washington355a2210a

Since 1906, Matrix Human Services has helped Detroit residents in need. We believe in a hand-up, not a handout, for anyone ready to set goals and work toward a better quality of life. Matrix focuses on people living with the stress of day-to-day survival. People living on the edge need mentors, career coa ing and coordination of resources to help improve their future. is approa takes time as well as consistency of services to be successful.

It’s expensive to be poor and exhausting to continually overcome barriers. A low credit rating, a e ered job history and possibly a criminal record means no one legitimate will rent you an apartment or home. As a result, rents remain abnormally high for those with limited options. e cost of borrowing for buying a car is expensive and resources su as grocery stores and doctor’s o ces are a long drive away. e complexity in applying for various social services o en means a person either nds help with the process or goes without.

At Matrix, our rst step is giving people hope because, without hope, there is no future. en we help motivate people to set goals, coordinate services and assist them in working towards stabilizing their life. Society o en underestimates the resources and time commitment necessary to li an individual or family out of poverty. While well intended, program funding is o en too short-term, uncertain from year to year, or can focus

more on the number of people coming through the system versus the quality of service o ered. Given the immense resources in this country, I believe we can do a more e ective and impactful job of addressing poverty-related issues.

Addressing the employment gap for

low-income residents

All Matrix programs use a wrap-around care philosophy. For example, it’s not good enough to address one issue, su as housing. Access to assistance su as nancial literacy, adult education, workforce training and food su ciency, to name a few, creates the ability to stay in a home. We help to empower people who have been le behind, who for various reasons were never given a ance to obtain skills for decent and steady employment.

From my vantage point, there is no labor shortage. ere is a shortage of people trained to become employed and stay employed. An estimated one-third of Detroit adults have never held formal employment. Unfortunately, many of our clients do not have the work skills or reading ability to be successful. In our Matrix workforce development programs, we estimate it takes 12-24 months of coa ing and coordinating resources for someone to go from being ronically unemployed to stable employment.

We cover basic how-to-behave-at-work skills with more advanced training in areas su as heavy equipment operation, pres ool tea ing and commercial driving. We prepare people to move into living wage jobs that can support themselves and their families.

Like the housing example, placing someone in a job a er training is not enough. ere must be continuous coa ing to ensure a bump in the road does not derail a person's progress. Wrap-around support to coordinate resources is crucial to help keep someone on tra .

Breaking the cycle of poverty is a statewide issue

While Matrix focuses on Detroit, poverty is a statewide issue. I nd that rural poverty and urban poverty have a lot in common; both o en involve la of access to resources and a ordable housing, in addition to transportation barriers for accessing health care, job opportunities and food. As su , we must look at statewide solutions and strategic collaboration to e ectively address the issue.

We know what resources work to help break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. But to do so requires consistent, dependable funding, enhanced exibility in the use of governmental and private funding and better coordination among all parties involved. I believe we can a ieve this goal, and supporting Matrix helps us continue providing programs and services that can ange the future.

Learn more about our programs and support our mission at matrixhumanservices.org

Mark Washington

City Manager, Grand Rapids

Appointed in 2018, Mark Washington functions as CEO of the state’s second-largest municipality. He oversees a $596 million budget, a 1,800-person workforce and all city departments, policies and programs related to public safety, economic development, community services, mobility, infrastructure, health, environment, recreation and community engagement. Previously, he was assistant city manager of Austin, Texas. Since arriving in Grand Rapids, Washington has led e orts to create a strategic plan, an equitable economic development and mobility strategy, a public safety oversight and accountability o ce, an equity and innovation o ce and a homeless outreach team, while rea rming the city’s sustainability commitment. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from Tarleton State University and Amberton University and M.A. and doctorate degrees in education from Southwestern Baptist eological Seminary. He serves on local, regional and national boards and is a member of the International City/County Management Association and the National Forum for Black Public Administrators. Email: manager@grcity.us Phone: (616) 456-3166

Stephanie Washington

Chief of sta , Detroit Mayor Mike

Duggan

As the chief of sta to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Stephanie Washington has her hands full. She oversees governmental a airs from the local level to the federal government. She helps with the city’s vision. And she works to improve teamwork across government while building coalitions inside and outside the city organization. Washington, who has a bachelor’s in political science and a master’s in public administration from Villanova University, has been with the mayor for a decade — she started as a campaign fundraiser in 2013. She rose in the ranks through the administration, going from being a scheduler and advance director to the director of government a airs before coming to her current role at the end of 2022. Washington counts the city’s approval of the $1.5 billion District Detroit transformational brown eld plan among her greatest accomplishments in the role. She was also involved in the “Pay As You Stay” foreclosure prevention legislation and passing the $250 million Proposal N bond program. Email: washingtons@detroitmi.gov LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stephanie-grimeswashington-29b5041a/

Brian White

Chief of sta , Detroit City Council President Mary She eld

Brian White serves as the chief of sta to Detroit City Council President Mary She eld; he’s been with the council member for close to a decade. In the role, he manages employees and sta and advises She eld on legislative and policy matters. He also works with city departments as a liaison. White, a University of Michigan graduate, came to the job following a career in politics and policy. His previous roles include a number of votingrelated positions as well as public policy manager for the Detroit Area Agency on Aging and a stint with the Census Bureau. White prides himself on helping She eld challenge the status quo, particularly in ways that help people who tend to be marginalized in the public policy process. He’s also co-hosted the “Your Perspective” talk radio show on 1440 WMKM-AM and is a board member with the Detroit Association of Black Organizations.

Email: whiteb@detroitmi.gov

Phone: (313) 224-1823

Joe Wicks

Chief of sta , Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt

Wicks is the top aide to Nesbitt as Republicans work in the minority for the rst time in nearly 40 years. He oversees communications, legislative strategy and o ce operations. He also was chief of sta to Nesbitt before Nesbitt was elected to be the GOP leader. Wicks previously was chief of sta for U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg and has worked as a political consultant. He founded Flyover Country Strategies, whose clients have included Walberg, Nesbitt, former U.S. Rep. Fred Upton and the Michigan House Republican Campaign Committee. He is a graduate of Hillsdale College.

Email: jwicks@senate.michigan.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joe-wicks-b18aaa2/

Phone: (517) 373-0793

Brad Wieferich

Acting director, chief operations o cer, Michigan Department of Transportation Wieferich, a 27-year veteran of the state transportation agency, is acting director and chief operations o cer. He has played a vital role in the advancement of the Gordie Howe International Bridge as the lead MDOT o cial working with the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority on design, utility, real estate and other coordination issues. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made him acting director at the start of this year following Paul Ajegba’s retirement. Prior to becoming chief operations o cer in 2022, Wieferich was the director of MDOT’s Bureau of Development, the engineer of design held positions in the Bay, University and Southwest regions. e Michigan State University graduate started his career as a eld geotechnical engineer at SEECO Consultants in the Chicago area.

Email: wieferichb@michigan.gov

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bradley-wieferich2b572488/

Phone: (517) 335-1645

Lindsay Young

Chief of sta , legal counsel, House Minority Leader Matt Hall

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Anthony Zander

Director of Civil Rights, Inclusion & Opportunity, city of Detroit

Young is the top aide to Republican House Minority Leader Matt Hall. She leads negotiations and helps to resolve legislative and legal issues, briefs and advises legislators, and works to carry out legislative goals for Hall and the GOP caucus. She also manages caucus sta . She has more than 13 years of experience as a legislative sta er, having worked for leaders like former House Speaker Kevin Cotter and ex-House Speaker Jase Bolger. She had a role in a “super” committee that negotiated many bills when Republicans led the House, and she helped the Legislature challenge the legal authority of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 orders. In 2021, she had a stint as a lobbyist with Public Strategies Group before returning to the House. She has degrees from Michigan State University and Cooley Law School.

Email: lyoung@house.mi.gov

Twitter: @LCVYoung

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lindsay-young7a144116/

Phone: (517) 373-5257

As director of the city of Detroit’s department of Civil Rights, Inclusion and Opportunity, Anthony Zander manages everything from compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act to ensuring Community Bene ts Agreements made in the city are adhered to. His o ce oversees the O ce of Disability A airs, is responsible for monitoring and enforcing compliance for developments that receive city incentives and seeks to increase small business certi cations, allowing more city contracts to go to those Detroit businesses. Additionally, Zander’s purview includes the O ce of Marijuana Ventures and Entrepreneurship. ere, he worked to ensure there was equity among recreational license applicants. Zander joined the Duggan administration as a project manager in 2017, and served as a deputy director working to improve the user experience of small businesses by focusing on licensing, permitting and other issues. Before his government roles, he spent nearly 18 years with the American Red Cross, leading the compliance and regulatory a airs team. He has a master’s degree from the University of Michigan.

Michigan’s energy leaders prepare for an evolving energy landscape

Experts discuss how the shift to electri cation and renewable energy requires collaboration, thoughtful planning and grid investment

By Crain’s Content Studio

Renewable energy development. Electric vehicles and household electri cation. Coal plant retirement. Climate and severe weather. Mi igan’s energy landscape is anging, and today’s energy leaders are at the forefront of meeting a fast-evolving array of allenges to secure Mi igan’s energy future.

On May 11, 2023, Crain’s Content Studio convened an expert panel to understand how Mi igan’s energy organizations are rising to meet these demands. e panel featured Melissa Seymour, vice president of External A airs at the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, also known as MISO; Simon Whitelocke, vice President of ITC Holdings Corp. and President of ITC Mi igan; Tracy Samilton, a senior reporter and producer covering transportation and energy at Mi igan Radio; and Brian Calka, vice president of renewable energy sales and project development at DTE Energy.

“As the demands on our power grid and the conditions under whi it operates evolve, energy leaders must balance the need for clean energy with reliable energy,” DTE’s Calka said, noting that the company focuses on delivering reliable energy to customers while also addressing the evolving needs of electri cation and electric vehicles.

In 2021, DTE published a ve-year, $8 billion roadmap for investing in the grid of the future. e plan can be divided into four key areas: trimming trees, updating existing infrastructure, rebuilding signi cant portions of the grid and accelerating the transition to a smart grid.

“We are on this journey to getting cleaner — we’re transitioning from coal to cleaner sources of energy like renewables projects, right here in the state,” Calka said. “But at the same time, we also recognize that people, whether they’re residents or businesses, are not going to nd value in this cleaner energy if it is not there when they want it.”

DTE has built 53 renewable energy projects in Mi igan, including 20 wind and 33 solar

projects — enough to power more than 750,000 homes. “ e company will use both nuclear and natural gas te nologies to provide power to its customers consistently,” Calka said, emphasizing that renewable te nologies like wind and solar will not generate power 100% of the time. Battery storage, natural gas and nuclear will be part of the solution set to a ieve decarbonization aspirations and provide power to customers when they want it.

Another part of securing that reliability, according to Whitelo e, is ensuring a robust electric transmission system that keeps up with the pace of ange and serves as reliable critical infrastructure society relies on. It must also be able to move the energy source qui ly — some of whi may not originate in Mi igan — to where it’s needed, in an era where renewables are less predictable and the weather is more severe.

“ at’s why cooperation among the regional transmission organizations, su as MISO, and transmission owners, su as ITC, is vital as we move forward,” Whitelo e said. “We’re going to plan for a grid that’s essentially larger than the weather systems we face. We’re also planning for a grid that can handle all these new demands, like EVs and electri cation.”

Mi igan’s political leaders are playing a crucial role in this process. Samilton reports Democrats in Mi igan’s state legislature are introducing bills to move towards net-zero or zero carbon. Bills include giving the Mi igan Public Service Commission authority to consider climate ange and emissions when

making decisions on utility plans, and another would require Consumers and DTE to add 2,500 megawatts of grid-scale energy storage by 2030. e Mi igan Public Service Commission also oversees work groups to address the transition towards clean energy.

“What I’m seeing is a lot more coordination and cooperation towards the goal of clean energy among state government and utilities,” she said.

Transmission plays a vital role in implementing proposed clean energy legislation. MISO is planning for large-scale transmission projects, with two totaling over 100 miles of new 345 kV lines into Mi igan.

Building transmission into and out of Mi igan would enable exports and help to manage energy delivery to customers, Seymour said. “If you move to a system with minimal coal and minimal gas resources in the future, you’re going to need to have more import capability into Mi igan when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing to manage the energy that needs to be delivered to customers.”

“ ese projects will improve reliability, harden the system for weather and meet long-term energy demands,” Whitelo e said.

But advancing this work will also require strong market demand for renewables. at’s why the federal In ation Reduction Act (IRA) is a game anger for utilities, speci cally regarding the cost of solar projects and the use of tax credits, Calka said.

e IRA allows the use of production tax credits for solar projects, whi can reduce costs up to 10% compared to not using them for some utility projects. ere are also tax credit adders for energy communities and domestically sourced equipment, whi further reduce costs and support the economy.

“From a utility standpoint, the IRA is transformational in that it’s reducing costs for our customers, but at the same time, it is helping out the economies here in the U.S. and the Midwest, including Mi igan,” Calka said.

Calka also referenced a key renewable project that was recently completed — the Meridian Wind Project, the largest wind park in the state, whi has brought job opportunities, income for the landowners hosting wind turbines, along with millions of dollars in tax revenue within Saginaw and Midland counties.

“Upwards of $10 million were funneled ba into the local economy. e real key here is the economic bene ts can be replicated across the state as more projects are brought to the nish line,” Calka said.

is work will ultimately serve to make Mi igan a more competitive state for attracting the industry of the future, Whitelo e said. “Mi igan is actively recruiting large-scale manufacturers, and one aspect they consider is reliability of power, whi they require to be clean,” he said. “Clean power has become a mission-critical requirement for these organizations, and it is good for the state’s economy on multiple levels.”

Wat the full webcast at crainsdetroit.com/itc-webcast

Melissa SeymourSimon Whitelocke Tracy Samilton Brian Calka

Teach for America Detroit expanding program in Michigan

BY SHERRI WELCH

Teach for America Detroit is taking a high-performing teacher recruitment and retention program that’s shown success in the city to other parts of the state.

e organization is still in talks but already has agreements to take the $60 million, ve-year program to K-12 teachers in under-resourced districts in ve other cities: Sault Ste. Marie, Traverse City, Kentwood, Saginaw and Benzonia, east of Frankfort.

Piloted nationally in Detroit, the fellowship program is aimed at stemming the state’s growing teacher shortage and systemically disparate outcomes

for students growing up in low-income communities and communities of color across Michigan.

It launched in 2019 o ering high-impact teachers cash incentives over three years, along with deep professional development, individualized coaching, cohort-based learning and access to innovation funding. ose teachers accepted into the fellowships have a track record of outcomes for their students, create caring and belonging classrooms for students and “mentor in uence” other teachers around them, said Armen Hratchian, executive director of TFA Detroit.

“It’s all about the students that are in front of you, but it also is about the im-

pact that you’re having on other educators and students beyond your classroom,” Hratchian said.

Lofty goals

e pilot yielded a 95% retention rate among 160 participating teachers. Teach for America said it is con dent the model, adapted for each district to overlay district plans, will do the same in other under-served districts across Michigan.

TFA Detroit has set a goal to retain, recruit and develop 700 teachers over the next ve years, 300 of them in Detroit and the remainder in other under-served Michigan districts. A new group of 100 Detroit teachers entered the fellowship program during the current school year, kicking o the program’s expansion.

If it hits that goal, it will improve outcomes for about 250,000 students, TFA Detroit said.

A state appropriation of $30 million total in American Rescue Plan Act and Governors Emergency Education Relief Fund dollars is covering half of the costs of the ve-year program. Teach for America is working to raise the remainder. So far, the Skillman Foundation and W.K. Kellogg Foundation have made lead gifts totaling $1.5 million.

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With the state support, it is providing teachers participating in the expanded TeachMichigan fellowship program up to $35,000 in cash incentives over three years, along with the professional development and other o erings. Fellows will participate in one of three cohorts: early career educators, focused on newer educators seeking to strengthen their skills in the classroom; nationally board-certi ed educators, focused on more tenured educators looking to pursue certi cation; and aspiring leaders, for experienced teachers seeking to take on a more administrative or supervisory role in a school or school system.

“We talk all the time about how the education system is not performing where we would like it to. And yet we all sit outside this system, ponti cating ways to x it,” Hratchian said. “What we’re doing here is giving (teachers) the resources, nancial and otherwise, and the time, the agency, the voice so that they can build a better system.”

e expansion of the fellowship program is meant to build a road map for policymakers to look at what it’s going to take to retain and develop high impact educators so that it can be scaled and sustained at a statewide level, Hratchian said.

e TeachMichigan fellowships are meant to help stem the teacher shortage in Michigan and improve the reading and mathematics pro ciency of students in under-served districts, especially students of color and those from low-income families whose outcomes are worse, TFA Detroit said.

In a 2022 survey conducted by the Michigan Education Association, 20% of Michigan teachers and sta reported that they plan to leave the profession.

Districts are losing teachers at an even higher rate since the pandemic, Hratchian said.

About 400,000 kids in Michigan wake up and go to a school that has been historically systemically under-resourced.

Contact: swelch@crain.com; (313) 446-1694; @SherriWelch

SIMON

KIANNA

Dayna Peoples, dean of intervention and a third grade teacher at Voyageur Academy in Detroit, has nearly completed her rst year in the TeachMichigan fellowship program.

DAYNA PEOPLES

From inspiration to impact

www.deloitte.com

TAKING OFF: A T P IS C MM ITI S

SEE A NEW WAVE OF INVESTMENT

By Tom Walsh, Crain’s Content Studio

Two decades have passed since the opening of the McNamara Terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Airport sparked hopes that an “aerotropolis” district would emerge and fuel a wave of economic growth for towns along the I-94 corridor from Detroit to Ann Arbor.

That wave is finally underway, with a spate of new job-creating projects popping up in the four Detroit Region Aerotropolis communities: Romulus, Taylor, Huron Township and Van Buren Township.

“Pent-up demand has been building for decades,” says Christopher

VAN BUREN TOWNSHIP

$1.6B BATTERY GIGAFACTORY INVESTMENT WIN AND READY FOR MORE

For Van Buren Township and its elected Supervisor Kevin McNamara, these must seem like the best of times. But he also believes there’s more to come.

The township has landed a huge $1.6-billion Our Next Energy (ONE) battery gigafactory, bringing 2,112 jobs for Van Buren and the state of Michigan. Van Buren Township was chosen by ONE for the project over a dozen competing U.S. states and a Canadian province.

“What made this deal different is that it’s so strategic to our area,” McNamara says. “We knew people were going to want this. You could feel the pulse of that with Wayne County and the state of Michigan. You could feel that they wanted this one more than usual.”

Christopher Girdwood, CEO of the Detroit Region Aerotropolis since 2019, says Van Buren and other communities between the Detroit Metro Airport and Ann Arbor are well-positioned to take advantage of the shift from internal combustion engines to electrification. eaders in that shift will be needing large-acreage greenfield sites to build their ne t manufacturing operations.

That said, McNamara, a Van Buren resident since 2016, is well aware that a big victory in a site selection competition can turn sour a few years down the road due to an economic slump or strategic mistakes. The township is still suffering from the travails of auto supplier Visteon, which built a large “Visteon Village” headquarters campus in 2003 in Van Buren Township, only to collapse into Chapter 11 bankruptcy four years later.

Visteon never made payments that the township deemed necessary to avoid default on $28 million in bonds that Van Buren had issued to help build Visteon Village. The township and Visteon are still in litigation over the dispute.

With that experience in mind, part of the deal with ONE for the massive 659,589-square-foot factory announced last October by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was that Haggerty Road must be widened.

Girdwood, CEO of Detroit Region Aerotropolis, a four-community, two-county public-private economic development partnership driving corporate expansion and new investment around Detroit Metro and Willow Run airports. But speculative development of greenfield sites around Detroit’s airport was delayed by automotive bankruptcies and a great recession in the early 2000s.

Now several major projects have been announced and developers are getting four and five offers on a new building. “It’s sending a strong message to the market, and we’ll reap those benefits in the ne t few decades,” Girdwood says.

“What made this deal different is that it’s so strategic to our area.”

“We need lights, sewer and water line improvements, too,” says McNamara. Some of those costs are being covered by the state and county, since Van Buren can no longer issue bonds for such infrastructure in the wake of the Visteon issues.

What Van Buren, has, however, is room to grow and a prime location, with more than 1,000 acres of land for greenfield sites ripe for development.

“We’re centrally located, and we’re not landlocked,” McNamara says. “We have easy freeway access to I-75, I-275, I-94 and I-96, and you’re in a technology corridor with the University of Michigan and downtown Detroit 30 minutes away.”

ATTRACTING TALENT: Van Buren, Wayne County and the state of Michigan are also actively trying to find potential workers for companies like ONE. By the start of summer, recruitment will start for the ONE jobs.

“We thought this would be a hard sell, to help companies throw job fairs,” McNamara says.

Sure, we want to hire an Buren residents first, but we’re finding more and more companies that consider it a plus to have a community benefits program. We’re going to be out there, getting to schools, advertising the jobs. The companies love it.”

ONE is also partnering with Focus:HOPE to develop a training program that will provide skills-based training for its employee base modeled after established certification programs.

AEROTROPOLIS PARTNERS: One message that comes through loud and clear from Van Buren’s Kevin McNamara, Taylor’s Tim Woolley, Huron’s David Glaab and Romulus’ Robert McCraight is that the Detroit Region Aerotropolis partners are more in synch on strategy and cooperation with state and county officials and with each other than at any time since the new Edward McNamara terminal opened at Detroit Metro Airport in 2002.

“We’re talking constantly, thinking together, regularly working together on getting things for our communities,” McNamara says.

While the ONE gigafactory deal has received the most attention lately, Van Buren and Aerotropolis continue to promote the area as a hub for automotive research and development of electric and autonomous vehicles and mobility technology.

Subaru invested $48.2 million in 2018 to build a 56,000-square-foot North American research and development center in Van Buren that employed 101 people, with future plans to possibly triple the footprint.

Subaru is also an investor in the nearby American Center for Mobility, a nonprofit development center on over 500 acres at the historic Willow Run site in Ypsilanti.

McNamara says there’s talk among Van Buren and neighboring communities to open up Michigan Avenue north of the Willow Run airport as “sort of a high-tech highway” by upgrading infrastructure and hoping to connect with the Center for Mobility.

Kevin McNamara, Van Buren Township Supervisor

ALSO IN THE PIPELINE

“We weren’t business friendly before. We changed that mindset and it’s working.”

Robert McCraight, Mayor of Romulus

ROMULUS

BUSINESS-FRIENDLY MINDSET PAYS OFF, ATTRACTS BIG DEVELOPMENTS

When Robert McCraight was growing up in Romulus during the 1970s, the city was booming with work at Kelsey-Hayes and other auto parts plants.

But hard times followed, factories shut down and manufacturing jobs left town. Many of the little shops and restaurants did, too. By the time McCraight was elected as Romulus mayor in 2021, many residents were wondering why the city wasn’t attracting more interest in 171 acres of prime vacant land across I-94 from Detroit Metro Airport.

McCraight got the message when a project manager for NorthPoint, the nation’s largest

industrial real estate developer, called him and asked, “Why doesn’t Romulus like us?”

He set up a meeting, hammered out a deal with NorthPoint and broke ground last September on Romulus Trade Center, a project now teed up to bring $130 million of investment, 500 full-time jobs, 750 to 1,000 construction jobs and 2 million square feet of industrial and retail space to the site at Vining and Wick Roads.

Two shells of what will be 350,000-squarefoot buildings are up at the site, with work beginning on a third building. NorthPoint has already shown them to several prospective tenants. They’re now looking for the right fit,

McCraight says.

omulus officials and orthPoint have forged a solid relationship, holding bi-weekly meetings. When snags occur as the Romulus Trade Center project moves forward, they’ve been able to find solutions.

For example, when Baltimore-based Royal Farms, a combined gas station and casual restaurant, backed out as the first retail tenant to commit to the project, NorthPoint signed up a Sheetz convenience store and coffee shop to open up early next year.

“We weren’t business friendly before. We changed that mindset, and it’s working,” McCraight says.

OTHER PROMISING DEVELOPMENTS IN RESURGENT ROMULUS INCLUDE:

AEROSTAR MANUFACTURING: Expansion of the Romulus-based computer numerical control machining firm Aerostar is creating up to new jobs, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced last year.

The expansion is expected to generate a capital investment of $8.6 million, supported by a $200,000 state grant. Michigan was chosen for the project over competing sites in Georgia and Indiana.

FORD ION PARK: In July 2021, Ford Motor Co. announced that the former A123 Systems battery plant in Romulus would be acquired and converted into Ford Ion Park, itsnew global center to accelerate research and development of battery and battery cell technology.

Anand Sankaran, Ford Ion Park director, says the new lab will help Ford speed up the battery development process and is part of Ford’s commitment to making Michigan a centerpiece of its focus on electric vehicles.

The 270,000-square-foot facility was formerly part of the space occupied by A123 Systems, which in 2017 announced it was closing the location because of limited demand at the time for EV batteries in North America. The former A123 building on Ecorse Road sat vacant for several years as A123 went through bankruptcy and ownership changes. It was finally put up for sale in 2019.

Ford Ion Park represents $100 million of Ford’s $185 million investment in developing, testing and building vehicle battery cells and cell arrays. It is part of the company’s $30 billion investment in electrification by 0 and acommitment to making Michigan a centerpiece of its focus on EVs.

In Romulus, Ford will refurbish the existing 270,000-square-foot facility to house up to 200 engineers and include pilot-scale equipment for electrode, cell and array design and manufacturing engineering and innovation. Ford is starting to ramp up and move people into the building now.

KROGER: A $95-million,135,000s uare-foot roger fulfillment Center on a 22-acre site brought 250 jobs to Romulus. It was announced in late 2020 and commenced operations in 2022.

GINOSKO MODULAR: Its 105,000square-foot production facility makes components for multi-family modular housing units. The company expects to occupy its new operation this summer, bringing about 200 jobs.

MERRIMAN HOTEL CORRIDOR:

“We’re also seeing reinvestment in the hotel corridor now,” McCraight says, citing the opening of a new Leo’s Coney Island and a refresh of an Elias Brothers Big Boy.

HURON CHARTER TOWNSHIP

RACING FOR THE PERFECT MIX OF INDUSTRY, INVESTMENT, QUALITY OF LIFE

“More than ever, people value the open space and the amenities that a Metropark offers ... You must have a healthy balance.”

David Glaab, Huron Charter Township Supervisor

PENNSYLVANIA ROAD GRADE SEPARATION

In early April, Aerotropolis chairman David Glaab announced that Aerotropolis will receive $865,775 in federal funding to begin geotechnical and engineering work for Pennsylvania Road grade separation.

Rep. Debbie Dingell led the effort to secure the funds through the Federal Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Community Project Funding process.

Pennsylvania Road borders Huron Township and the City of Romulus. The CSX rail crossing at Pennsylvania Road is oftentimes blocked to roadway traffic, which led the communities to seek federal aid for a grade separation.

Public safety response times to areas west of the CSX tracks can vary significantly when the crossing is blocked with a train. Delays can extend to as far as Eureka Road (a mile north of Pennsylvania) from moving or stopped trains.

“Securing this grant is a critical step to achieving a permanent solution to the public safety and transportation quandary our communities face every day,” Glaab says.

Over the years, David Glaab and several generations of his family have seen sweeping changes in Huron Charter Township and its unincorporated river town of New Boston, just a few miles south of Detroit Metro Airport.

Glaab is an attorney, businessman and the elected Huron Township supervisor serving his fourth term in office. e’s also the current board chairman of the Detroit Region Aerotropolis.

I’ve been at it a long time, and now things are starting to gel. Lately, the Aerotropolis has just taken off,” Glaab says.

The township offers a mix of large commercial sites close to major freeways (I-94, I-275); residential one-acre lots alongside the scenic Huron River; and parts of three Huron-Clinton Metroparks. Although a failed horse racing track once grabbed headlines here, that has given way to better news: a job-creating new auto parts plant, new retail and Main Street revitalization efforts in New Boston.

That means a lot to Glaab, who has deep family ties to the area.

“I grew up in the community,” Glaab says. “My ancestors owned a lot of land that’s now part of the Metroparks. My dad worked alongside my grandfathers, who owned a dairy processing

business that served local farmers and provided milk to the surrounding communities.”

RACING AHEAD: During the Great Recession, the Pinnacle horse racing project that Huron Township bet on had fi led and closed two years after opening. In 2019, Wayne County sold the 650-acre Pinnacle track for $4.9 million to a joint venture of Dallas-based Hillwood and Michigan-based Sterling Group, which committed to invest $40 million into the property.

The pivot worked. Two Amazon warehouses and a Home Depot have been built on the Pinnacle site north of Sibley Road, and plans now call for Sibley Road to be built into a boulevard. Ashley Capital also bought 200 acres south of Sibley a while back, planning to redevelop what was once a sod farm.

“All of this employment activity will soon come right down Sibley Road into New Boston,” says Christopher Girdwood, CEO of Detroit Region Aerotropolis.

THE RIGHT MIX: And they are getting ready. New Boston recently invested $6 million into infrastructure upgrades for the downtown area, and building a modest-scale riverwalk in a park setting with rafting and other amenities is in the works.

Glaab, though, sees the management of Huron Township and New Boston as something of a

balancing act.

The three Metroparks (Willow, Oakwoods and Lower Huron) cover 30% of Huron Township. Decades ago, Glaab says, residents would rue the lack of a robust tax base because of all the parkland.

“Now the mindset has shifted. More than ever, people value the open space and the amenities that a Metropark offers, and it becomes a huge selling point for the community,” Glaab says. “And I think businesses are more in tune with what matters to workers and families. More so than ever, access to open space and recreation opportunities are at a premium. So here we have a resource that’s already there the heavy lifting’s already been done.”

The challenge going forward is to maintain a large-acre residential community along the river and create pockets of industrial development. “You must have a healthy balance between commercial and residential,” he says.

Girdwood says that Glaab, from a township management perspective, is trying “a kind of new urbanism,” maintaining a healthy parks environment and accommodating new logistics, distribution and advanced manufacturing growth along with development in New Boston, creating a live/work/ play atmosphere.

$40 MILLION INDUSTRIAL

DEAL A BIG WIN AS CITY PUSHES

ECONOMIC REVIVAL

“I’m looking to get our city back on the map.”

Tim Woolley, Mayor of Taylor

Tim Woolley was elected mayor of Taylor in 2021 after two four-year terms on its city council – and he’s proud of the fact that Taylor has turned a $5 million budget deficit into a surplus during the past decade.

Now, Woolley is hoping for more big wins for Taylor, starting with a recently announced multimillion-dollar development deal.

On March 1, the city of Taylor announced a deal whereby Metro 94 Commerce Center will invest $40 million to turn a 70-acre former landfill into a Class A industrial 531,500-square-foot industrial building for light manufacturing and warehousing. The project will create up to 185 jobs.

“It’s a big deal,” says Christopher Girdwood, CEO of Detroit Region Aerotropolis. “Taylor hasn’t seen new Class A industrial in decades.”

Metro 94 Commerce is an affiliate of Ashley Capital, one of the nation’s largest industrial investment firms with a history of redeveloping blighted property. The company anticipates site plan approval this fall, construction to commence by the end of this year and completion of the project by early 2025.

NEW LIFE TO THE SITE: As a long-time Taylor resident, Woolley is especially proud of the Metro 94 Commerce Center project. “I actually grew up in that neighborhood. When I was a kid, we used to ride our dirt bikes back there.”

The site, off Inkster Road, just north of I-94 and south of Beverly Road, has been vacant for decades. “We’re basically bringing a contaminated site back to life, making it safer for all in the surrounding area,” he says.

Woolley was on Taylor’s city council when the project was first proposed, and like many residents, he was concerned about the size of the buildings, the traffic and the noise. But the city and developers have been working together on the design and a plan to minimize those concerns, including a large, landscaped berm that will buffer the new development from the neighboring homes.

“It sounds like the buildings will be used for things like crate storage, or fulfillment centers. And it’s going to be a much cleaner site, and safer tomorrow than it is today,” he says.

MORE GROWTH: Working with Aerotropolis leadership has proven to be beneficial for Taylor.

“(Aerotropolis CEO) Chris Girdwood has had me in front of groups on a regular basis, brokers and whatnot. This guy is putting me to work. He shows me he’s working for my city.” Woolley says. “I’m looking to get our city back on the map.”

RETAIL DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY ON THE RISE IN TAYLOR INCLUDES:

l A Fairfield Inn and TownePlace Suites have replaced an abandoned Ramada Inn that was torn down in 2015 at the southeast corner of Eureka Road and I-75.

l Across the freeway to the west, an 80-acre parcel that was once home to the Gibraltar Trade Center, a gigantic indoor flea market demolished in 2015, has since been occupied by two big-box retail stores and has land for more.

l A new Biggby Coffee is being built on Goddard just west of Pardee.

l Southland Mall has added 14 new tenants during the last year.

l Gardner White is now doing business in the former Art Van building at Eureka and Racho Boulevard.

l Chick-Fil-A will soon be locating a new store at the former Little Daddy’s site in front of Southland Mall.

l New residential housing and senior living projects are underway on Goddard Road.

l Racho Ridge, a new condominium development on Northline, is beginning construction. And Brookwood Estates on Goddard west of Telegraph has begun construction on a 60-unit senior independent living development.

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144

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INSIDE: Changes in place this spring aim for solutions, accountability from utility companies. PAGE 40

OPINION: Consumers Energy and DTE Energy outline their plans of action to increase grid reliability. PAGE 41

ENERGY POLICY

POWER STRUGGLE

Denise Graves had had enough.

After losing power for four days when high winds swept through Brighton Township in late summer, the latest in a string of outages since she moved into her home six years earlier, the DTE Energy customer “bit the bullet” and bought a whole-house generator for $10,500.

No more carrying water to ush the toilets. Or showering and working at a friend’s house. Or nding a place to store food. Or running out to buy dinner, co ee and ice. Or worrying about the dog if she is out of town.

Before the generator was installed, she lost electricity two more times, including during an ice storm. All told, there were 13 outages — nine sustained and four temporary — in about 15 months.

“I understand things happen: weather, trees, animals,” said Graves, who has complained to the state attorney general’s o ce and to legislators. “However, they are a utility company and should be held accountable for what they should be doing, keeping the electricity on.”

She is not alone.

Perhaps at no other time have Michigan’s two dominant and politically in uential power companies, Detroit-based DTE and Jack-

son-based Consumers Energy, been under as much public scrutiny as now. e heat is coming from all corners and seems unlikely to wane for several reasons.

An unprecedented outside review of the utilities’ distribution systems is underway after fed-up state regulators agged their “concerning” performance. Alarm bells are blar-

ing over the grid’s resiliency against increasing and worsening extreme weather events spurred by climate change. e transition to electric vehicles is raising the stakes to curtail disruptions. And a pending rewrite of Michigan’s energy law is attracting interest as a path toward reforms.

As with other aging infrastructure — roads, water mains and dams — the grid needs years of attention and billions of dollars in upgrades and maintenance. e x will not be quick, though. Nor will it be cheap in a state where electricty rates are higher than many. e utilities, which serve about 4.1 million, or 88% of households, businesses and others statewide, are trying to reassure frustrated customers and critics who say they have been too pro t-driven at the expense of reliability.

“While we’ve been getting better in recent years, we know we have a ways to go,” said Matt Paul, DTE Energy’s executive vice president of distribution operations. “We’re not where we need to be. We get that. But we also want folks to know we have a plan. We’re working the plan. It’s not all going to happen overnight, but it’s the right plan.”

Corby Energy Services employees Yoseph Williams, left, and Giovany Rodriguez work on repairing underground power infrastructure on East Palmer Street in Detroit on May 11, 2023.

How Michigan stacks up

Michigan ranks poorly on reliability performance, regardless of whether major U.S. weather events — like ice storms, hurricanes and wild res — are factored in. e most recent year for which data is available is 2021, when August storms left about 1 million customers without power, some for more than a week.

Customers on average had no electricity for 873 minutes, sixth highest in the U.S. e average number of outages per customer was 1.6, 12th most. e average time to restore service was 527 minutes, third worst.

When discounting major event days, such as severe storms, Michigan mostly still performed badly. Each customer, on average, was without power for 178 minutes, third highest, and had just over one outage per year, tied in the middle of the pack at 24th most. e time to bring back electricity was 173 minutes, second worst.

Reliability has been a problem for years.

e Citizens Utility Board of Michigan, which advocates for residential energy customers, annually reports how the state is faring against others. Michigan’s average outage duration has improved modestly since the federal government began collecting reliability data a decade ago, “but this was from a very poor baseline, which is why Michigan’s (duration) scores are still some of the worst in the country,” the group said in its most recent report.

“Ultimately it’s deferred maintenance by the utilities over the years and lack of cost-e ective investment in the grid to maintain it,” executive director Amy Bandyk said. “It has been happening for decades, and we’re seeing the results of that lack of investment and maintenance.”

Catch-up on tree trimming

One vital step is to keep power lines free from tree branches and other vegetation. at can prevent outages in the rst place, or at least limit their impact and duration.

In DTE’s service territory, which includes metro Detroit and the umb, trees cause two-thirds of outage minutes and half of outages. Both major utilities are playing catch-up on tree trimming. Consumers, which serves much of the Lower Peninsula, used to trim along 50,000 miles of low-voltage lines on a 14-year cycle, which was not best practice. It is changing to a seven-year rotation and is roughly 55% of the way there.

Also, the company this year began trimming “smarter” by using an analytics model, including satellite images and information about where trees are growing and dying. It reports being 50% more e ective at predicting and prioritizing high-risk areas.

“It used to be about getting more miles. Now it’s about getting more miles and getting the right miles while you’re at it,” said Greg Salisbury, Consumers’ vice president of electric distribution engineering.

DTE is switching to a ve-year rotation and is 80% done.

“Until they catch up on that, they will continue to have this problem,”

said energy policy expert Douglas Jester, who is managing partner at 5 Lakes Energy, an East Lansing-based consulting rm. A lack of trimming not only increases outages, he said, but results in longer repair times that delay the return of electricity.

“Tree trimming is the thing that can have bene ts fastest,” he said. “Anything else that you do, if it’s replacing wires or poles or undergrounding or any of those other grid-hardening things, it’s going to take 20 or 30 years to work through the whole system. It’s both economically and physically not possible to do it fast. So we’ve been emphasizing tree trimming because it’s the way we can get the most rapid improvement and then everything else can be worked at at whatever pace we think we can a ord.”

Dan Scripps chairs the Michigan Public Service Commission, which regulates many of the state’s utilities

and sets the rates they charge.

“Where the trees have been trimmed, we’ve seen improvements,” he said. “But the systems are big. It’s taking a while to do some of that catch-up to get us onto a more regular tree-trimming cycle that gives better reliability performance.”

In the past, the utilities did not spend all of what was authorized for trimming, and some of the money went toward other unexpected expenses like storm restoration.

“ ere certainly have been instances where the dollars that we thought were going to reliability improvements were used for other valid purposes but for purposes that didn’t ultimately improve the reliability of the system,” Scripps said. Now, he said, the companies’ vegetation budgets are “ringfenced,” a regulatory tracking mechanism that “gives us a higher guarantee that the work is actually going to get done.”

Upgrading the grid

While the surge in line clearing should help, the grid also needs to be modernized. DTE, for instance, says its system is one of the country’s oldest. Parts were built in the early 1990s, when Detroit became an industrial powerhouse.

“It’s sort of at that point of the life cycle where we really need to aggressively rebuild it,” Paul said.

Two-thirds of DTE’s 45,000 miles of mostly distribution lines are above ground. e company plans to convert the older, lower-voltage half of the system — called 4.8kv — to 13.2kv so it can deliver more power, including for EV chargers. New poles, crossarms and wires are bigger, stronger and better able to withstand harsher weather, too, he said.

e ice storm that struck in February, which was described as the worst in 50 years, brought ice as thick as three-quarters of an inch, leaving 860,000 customers without electricity. While an event like that would have signi cantly damaged any grid, Paul said, the older sections were hit harder. Places where tree trimming and poletop maintenance had been done experienced 30% to 50% fewer outages.

dressed before they become outages. ey also are a xing more automatic transfer reclosers to poles. e devices help prevent interruptions by rerouting power to another circuit. “ e more devices we have out there, the more we’re able to more granularly isolate those outages and impact fewer and fewer customers,” said Paul, who said DTE has fewer of them than many utilities in coastal states that have been confronting harsh weather for decades. Its goal is to add 10,000 automated devices to the eld in the next ve to six years.

Underground lines

Burying lines underground is a way to shield them from wind and

“WE’RE NOT WHERE WE NEED TO BE. WE GET THAT. BUT WE ALSO WANT FOLKS TO KNOW WE HAVE A PLAN. ... IT’S NOT ALL GOING TO HAPPEN OVERNIGHT, BUT IT’S THE RIGHT PLAN.”

— Matt Paul, DTE Energy

ice during catastrophic storms. It has been routine for some 50 years in new subdivisions and other new construction. But much of the grid is aboveground. “Undergrounding” wires is rare because it is costly, disruptive and not foolproof.

“Assumptions underlying the grid have changed,” Scripps said, saying natural disasters once seen as exceptions are now occurring almost every year. “We’ve got to make sure that we’ve got a grid that’s ready for it.”

Automation, the hardening of the grid with high-tech gadgets, is key.

e utilities have installed thousands of line sensors to detect and pinpoint anomalies that can be ad-

e utilities and regulators, though, are reconsidering the feasibility as they target climate change resilience. It may make sense nancially in heavily forested rural areas when stacked up against other grid-hardening work like putting in extra-large poles and wires and trimming more often than every seven years.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we think we can do it for about the same price. We can go underground

Kevin Savaya, manager at Mr. C’s Deli, lls a generator with gasoline to supply power to the business in Grosse Pointe Farms on Feb. 24, 2023. Michigan shivered through extended power outages caused by one of the worst ice storms in decades, and hundreds of thousands of customers lost electricity. | AP

A Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant in Detroit apologizes for closing Feb. 24. Widespread damage from ice and snow downed power lines across the state, for residential and business customers alike. | AP

or we could do all this crazy aboveground stu ,” said Salisbury, of Consumers.

In its next rate case, the company will propose doing 10 to 20 miles of selective undergrounding “that we believe is the necessary step for areas that are really at risk for these resilience events,” he said. Of Consumers’ 50,000 miles of primary, low-voltage circuits, about 5,000, are “great targets” for undergrounding. e utility this year plans to bury 2-5 miles of lines to analyze and show “how good can we get the cost,” he said.

DTE’s Paul said the per-mile cost will be much lower in rural areas than in densely populated urban communities, “but frankly, some of these areas like Detroit, we’re also looking really hard there.” He noted the potential for lowering costs by coordinating with DTE’s gas subsidiary and municipalities on work to rebuild gas mains, roads and water pipes.

Burying the grid is very much a pilot project for now. But infrastructure policy experts say Michigan should be doing more to better enable it.

In a recent report for the nonpartisan Citizens Research Council of Michigan, research associate Eric Paul Dennis said undergrounding costs could be substantially reduced with “dig-once” construction, but it will not advance without a coherent state policy.

“Such policy is a prerequisite for Average

electricity prices.

Michigan’s urban infrastructure to become more reliable, resilient, and e cient,” he wrote. “If additional dig-once policy is not established, Michigan’s various public utilities and infrastructure agencies will continue to pursue uncoordinated independent priorities in a wasteful and ine cient manner, with avoidable costs such as frequent power outages imposed upon all Michigan citizens and the economy.”

Legislative changes

It is unclear to what extent, if any, legislators may directly tackle the outage problem. But majority Democrats’ desire to require that more

electricity comes from renewable sources could open the door to other revisions in the energy law.

Rod Williamson is executive director of the Association of Businesses Advocating Tari Equity, or ABATE, an interest group for two-dozen of the state’s largest energy-using companies. e manufacturers are served more by the high-voltage transmission system and are not as a ected by outages. Still, there are “some fundamental problems around how the utilities get to collect cost and a lack of accountability for not spending those dollars to make sure that they have upgraded and done the appropriate preventive maintenance on their distribution

systems and on their systems as a whole,” he said. Williamson said lawmakers who have held hearings to point ngers at regulators and utility executives should instead look at laws their predecessors passed, especially a major 2008 rewrite that “swung the pendulum as far as energy policy goes in a direction that was so favorable to the utilities that we’re now seeing the results of that.”

e utilities successfully lobbied to base rate requests on projected costs and revenues rather than actual costs and revenues, which had been the process for more than 60 years. e change has resulted in higher rates and enabled the utilities

to pay bigger dividends to shareholders instead of issuing refunds to customers, he said.

“In any business, any projection is hard to get correct,” Williamson said. “But when you also set up a system where if they project high, they’re rewarded from that nancially because there’s no true-up process? at makes it even worse.”

e ringfencing of tree trimming, he said, is a “Band-Aid” so “why not x the entire process?” He and other critics of the rate-making system say the companies get a guaranteed rate of return for their capital investment, but there generally is less incentive to spend on operations and maintenance.

In a 2018 report, the Public Service Commission said under traditional regulation, the levels of sales and capital expenditures primarily drive utility earnings whereas performance-based regulation can optimize total spending regardless of whether it is operational or capital in nature.

Regulators in April issued an order for sta to create a workgroup and report back by year’s end on potential utility nancial incentives and penalties tied to the grid’s reliability. Performance-based regulation would “modify the way that utilities make money to try to bring it more in line with customer goals, customer expectations,” Scripps said.

Contact: david.eggert@crain.com; (313) 446-1654; @DavidEggert00

It’s time to shine some light on drug prices

Dominick Pallone is executive director of the Michigan Association of Health Plans

There has been much attention surrounding secrecy in politics, from federal nonpro t and corporate accounts that keep speci c donors and expenses secret to the fact that the state legislature and executive of ce are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

When it comes to transparency, unfortunately, there has always been a difference between the goose and the gander, even in health care. The privacy pharmaceutical companies are afforded in setting drug prices is enough to make even politicos jealous.

Nearly every aspect of health care in Michigan is subject to state regulations and disclosures, except for drug manufacturers and their prescription drug prices. Health plans are state-licensed, and state regulators review and approve their policy premiums annually. Providers like physicians and specialists are also state-licensed; their scope of practice is statutorily dictated in Michigan law and enforced by state regulators. In 2021, the Hospital Price Transparency initiative went into effect, providing public access to negotiated prices for health care services at each hospital. And most recently, Michigan enacted PA 11 of 2022, the Pharmacy Bene ts Manager (PBM) Licensure and Regulation Act, allowing for greater public transparency and regulators to review PBM conduct with pharmacies.

Meanwhile, even though nearly a quarter of every dollar spent on health care is attributed to prescription drugs, drug manufacturers are not licensed by the state, nor are their drug prices reviewed by state regulators. Heck, they don’t even have to raise their hand and tell anyone when they decide to spike prescription drug prices on customers. Information on impending price increases is often learned only by listening to Wall Street investment earnings reports and projection calls. Because of this lack of transparency, drug manufacturers are about to hike covid vaccination costs on insurers by nearly 4 to 5 times greater than what they’ve been charging the federal government.

For years, policymakers have attempted to control prescription drug costs by imposing cost-sharing and utilization controls on state-regulated health plans. These efforts have only aided unregulated drug manufacturers and exacerbated the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, prescription drugs are more than 2.5 times higher than in other similar high-income nations. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has reported that prescription drug spending is projected to outpace growth in all other major healthcare sectors, averaging 6.1% annually through 2027.

The federal government has begun to allow states to hold drug manufacturers accountable. States can require drug pricing transparency reports from drug manufacturers when they increase prescription drug costs. They can also establish prescription drug affordability review boards and create importation programs to help health plans access more affordable prescription drugs for their customers.

Representative Samantha Steckloff (D-Farmington Hills) has introduced House Bill 4409, which requires drug manufacturers to inform the state of Michigan when they increase a prescription drug cost beyond 15% annually. Similar legislation shining a light on high costs drug prices have been enacted in 19 states.

The states in dark blue represent the 19 states that have passed drug transparency legislation.

Gathering information on drug pricing in Michigan is the rst step to making wise future policy decisions on combating the prescription drug cost problem. As has been said before, sunlight is often the best disinfectant.

As state leaders contemplate ideas for addressing political secrecy, the transparency desperately needed for the goose (drug manufacturers) might also be best for the gander (politicos).

SOURCE:

New rules aim to force more accountability

For the rst time in nearly 20 years, Michigan regulators this spring updated service quality and reliability standards for power utilities, including DTE Energy and Consumers Energy.

e rules lowered the threshold for what is considered unacceptable performance during outages, and boosted bill credits for customers who go without electricity and made them automatic. ey previously had to apply and rarely did.

e new rules capped a 3½-year regulatory process. A look at the changes:

Credits

Residential customers used to be able to apply for $25 if they lost power for at least 16 hours in a “normal” outage, when up to 10% of customers were out, or at least 120 hours in a “catastrophic” outage, when 10% or more lost power.

Now they qualify for $35 automatically if they lose power for at least 16 hours in normal conditions, 48 hours in “gray sky” conditions — a new category — and 96 hours in catastrophic conditions, plus $35 for each additional day. Gray sky is de ned as when more than 1% but fewer than 10% of customers are without electricity.

Customers with repeat outages, more than seven in 12 months, previously quali ed for $25. Now it is $35 for six or more interruptions in 12 months.

e $35 credits will increase every year to re ect in ation. Commercial and industrial customers get a credit based on their minimum bill amount and the number of days they have no service.

e credit amounts had been un-

changed since 2002. ey are not intended to make customers whole but do provide a disincentive for utilities to not respond to outages quickly, according to the Michigan Public Service Commission.

Restoration times

Utilities in the past were supposed to restore power to at least 90% of affected customers within eight hours during normal conditions and 60 hours in catastrophic conditions. Now it is eight hours when up to 1% have no power, 24 hours when more than 1% but fewer than 10% are out and 48 hours if 10% or more customers are without power.

Wire down response

Utilities now have less time to respond to a downed wire that is being guarded by a rst responder. It went from 240 minutes at least 90% of the time to 120 minutes in metropolitan areas and from 360 minutes to 180 minutes in non-metropolitan areas.

Number of outages

e rules now say it is “unacceptable” if, through 2029, more than 6% of a utility’s customers experience four or more outages in a calendar year. Starting in 2030, not more than 5% of customers can have four or more outages in a year.

Reliability metrics

DTE and Consumers, the state’s largest utilities, must disclose new information in their annual reports to regulators. at includes the number of customers with four or more outages and the 10 worst-performing circuits for the frequency and duration of outages.

Technology can help utilities build a better grid for future

This past winter, hundreds of thousands of Michiganders lost power after a series of ice storms wreaked havoc on Michigan’s electric grid, with a large number of residents remaining in the dark for a week or more.

Unfortunately, outage events like this are all too common in Michigan. In just the last several years, Southeast Michigan has seen the largest-ever storm related outage in 2017, the worst-ever summer storm season in 2021, and this last storm, the most expensive on record.

But Michiganders aren’t interested in storm trivia. Rather, it’s increasingly clear that the range of weather conditions that has historically served as the basis for how we plan our grid no longer holds. North American Electric Reliability Corp. CEO Jim Robb summed up the challenge at a recent meeting of state utility regulators when he noted: “In an era of a changing climate, looking in the rearview mirror doesn’t help.”

Indeed, the pace of climate change dictates that storm events will likely become only more frequent and severe.

Regardless, electricity customers have a right to expect their utilities to anticipate extreme weather events, provide a hardened grid that can withstand extreme weather, and be prepared to restore power expediently when the grid fails. ese expectations are a driving force behind much of the work of the Michigan Public Service Commission. Earlier this year we completed

the rst updates to our regulations governing service quality and reliability in nearly 20 years. ese updates include holding utilities to higher reliability standards and increasing the credits customers receive during power outages. Last year we initiated a rst-ofits-kind engineering audit of the Consumers Energy and DTE Electric distribution systems, and we also recently launched a new e ort to better align how utilities make money with the results their customers expect.

At the same time we’re working to address the immediate challenges from power outages in Michigan, we also know that the growth of electric vehicles and the potential for electrifying other end uses from home heating to industrial processes make the reliability of the electric system more important than ever.

Put simply, as we rely on electricity for an ever-expanding list of needs, we need a grid that can keep up.

Fortunately, the same EVs that add to demand on the grid are also poised to play an important role in improving its resilience. Both Ford Motor Co. and General Motors now have EVs on the market that o er vehicle-to-home bidirectional charging, providing either emergency or whole-house back-up power when the grid goes down. Using the same interconnectivity technologies and communications protocols that power the Internet of ings, a growing array of customer-centric resilience solutions increases the ability of utility customers to not just to ride out

power outages, but also improve the performance of the grid for all of us.

To keep pace with these changes, the commission has also updated the interconnection rules that govern how distributed energy resources connect to the grid. And last year we overhauled our organizational structure to re ect broader changes taking place in the energy industry, including greater focus on distribution grid planning and energy forecasting. All of this gives customers more control and more options in the short term even as we continue e orts to rebuild the grid to meet the demands of both today and tomorrow.

In 1947, and again in 2005, the Gallup polling organization asked Americans for their views on the greatest invention ever made. In both cases electricity topped the list. Today, as Ford, GM and others continue to electrify the transportation sector, as heat pumps, arc furnaces and other developments are poised to transform everything from home heating to steelmaking, the electric grid is ever-increasingly central to modern life. Given this reality, we simply cannot a ord the frequency and duration of power outages we have seen in recent years. We need a “reliability-plus” approach that addresses chronic reliability challenges while ensuring we’re preparing for an electri ed future. By combining traditional grid maintenance practices with advanced technologies that unlock still more value from EVs, batteries and other distributed energy resources, we can make the grid smarter and more automated. Most important, we can build a more reliable grid for all of us, now and for the future.

DAVID EGGERT

Dan Scripps is chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission.

DTE Energy electric workers repair utility poles during a snow storm power outage in Detroit in 2022. BLOOMBERG

At Consumers, reliability relies on 3 phases

Consumers Energy’s

No. 1 job is to keep the lights on for our customers. e bad news is that, for too long, we and many of our customers have not been satis ed with our performance. And after the February ice storms, we know customers are asking for a stronger and smarter power grid.

Consumers Energy is accelerating our e orts to make our grid more reliable with one goal in mind: Reduce the number and length of power outages.

In Michigan, fallen trees or broken limbs are the reason behind a power outage about one-third of the time, making them the leading cause of outages.

We know that traditional tree trimming is still the most e ective way to prevent and shorten power outages and improve system reliability.

For the circuits we cleared in 2021, we saw a 62% reduction in treecaused outages.

Upgrading the grid

e good news is we have made progress. In 2022, there were nearly 20% fewer customer outages after making signi cant upgrades to the electric grid and completing more than 2,000 electric projects. Moving forward, we have plans to do much more.

Our approach to prevent and respond to outages is a three-phased e ort:

Keeping trees away

We are investing more than $100 million annually in tree-trimming efforts, nearly doubling what we were spending in 2018.

COMMENTARY

We know that portions of Michigan’s high- and low-voltage distribution network are aging. We’re making investments to replace or rebuild poles, wires and substations. In 2022 alone, we replaced 10,000 poles and upgraded 100 substations. We also inspected the 50% worst-performing circuits on our distribution system and found and xed more than 1,500 assets prior to the summer storm season.

We also hear customers asking, “Why don’t you just bury the lines?” We’re looking at that. Burying more power lines requires a careful approach, and we need to be strategic

about which locations are best suited. It is not the right decision for every circuit.

Historically, cost has been a major barrier to undergrounding our infrastructure. As technology improves, the cost to bury lines continues to decrease.

Undergrounding can be more expensive up front. But as weather patterns change, severe storms become more frequent.

So, we are reevaluating how we analyze the costs and bene ts of undergrounding certain circuits. We developed a pilot proposal led with the Michigan Public Service Commission to help answer some of these questions and help us evaluate where strategic undergrounding makes the most sense.

Embracing automation

We’re designing a cutting-edge electric distribution system made for the 21st century, embracing automation and technology to help us both prevent and respond faster to power outages impacting our customers.

We recently announced plans to install 123 new automatic transfer reclosers or ATRs in 2023 to help prevent power outages and improve electric reliability for customers.

ATRs are cutting-edge devices that isolate problems on electric lines and transfer power automatically. is technology improves public safety and reduces the number of customers a ected by outages. Consumers Energy has nearly 470 of these 800-pound devices currently on the electric system. e 2023 ATR de-

ployment plan will target areas that have been most impacted by outages over the past several years. ATRs make a real di erence. For example, in a summer storm at the end of August 2022, the ATRs saved 8,645 customers — including 770 businesses — from losing power. In all, ATRs saved thousands of families and businesses from losing power during last summer’s storm season. Looking ahead in the years to come, we will continue to be aggressive with our installation of these devices. Our goal with these three strategies is simple: fewer, shorter and less frequent power outages for our nearly 1.9 million electric customers. e communities we serve are counting on their power being on — and we have the plan to deliver a brighter future for Michigan.

DTE Energy’s four-point plan to bolster stability

DTE Energy has been powering Southeast Michigan since the rst lightbulb hit the streets of Detroit in 1883. For all the innovations brought to Michigan since the 19th century, we’ve experienced nothing like the fundamental transformation underway in American energy today: the electri cation of homes and vehicles, a revolution in clean energy sources like Michigan-made wind and solar, and hightech responses to increasingly severe weather.

distribution system. is future could be a reality for Michiganders if we accelerate our investment now.

It is time that the electric grid gets a major reboot. Our plan to build the grid of the future is a practical yet transformational evolution of the system, a generational refresh that will bene t every resident and business in Michigan.

Imagine a future where the vast majority of our electricity is powered by clean energy sources — when energy is more reliable because your low-carbon supply of electricity is delivered e ciently by a smart electric

In 2021, we published a ve-year, $8 billion road map for investing in the grid of the future. e work we outlined in this plan will increase electric reliability and capacity in Southeast Michigan, driving a new economy and supporting the needs of customers and businesses. Not only will these investments combat power outages and make it easier for customers to transition to electric vehicles and a more electri ed lifestyle, but they will position Michigan as a global leader in the electri cation revolution.

Over the past ve years, we have invested more than $5 billion on our electrical grid, trimming trees, hardening infrastructure, building new substations, connecting new customers and replacing aging equipment. It’s working — our customers experienced 21% fewer power interruptions in 2022 and outage duration

times decreased by nearly 40%. Still, we must accelerate our plan to keep pace with Michigan’s growing needs. We have a four-point plan to continue increasing reliability for our customers:

 Trimming trees: With more than 1,500 tree trimmers and an $800 million investment, we have trimmed more than 25,000 miles of trees over the last ve years and will trim an additional 5,000 miles this year. is program is critical: two-thirds of the time our customers are without power is due to falling trees and tree limbs.

 Updating existing infrastructure: Modernizing and upgrading our existing infrastructure — such as poles, crossarms and transformers — continues to make a signi cant impact on reliability.

 Rebuilding signi cant portions of our grid: Metropolitan Detroit was one of the rst cities in the nation to electrify. e grid has served this community well for many years, but now it’s time to rebuild older portions, which account for one-third of our system. Rebuilding allows us to increase capacity for our customers

and strategically underground wires where it makes sense.

 Accelerating our transition to a smart grid: Over the last several years, we’ve laid the groundwork for a transition to a smart grid. Our new, world-class system operations center and recently launched grid operating system provide the foundation needed to begin installing the equipment that will automatically isolate and reroute power during outages — so the lights stay on for our customers while we make repairs more quickly. We are targeting to complete this work systemwide in the next ve to six years. Our commitment to Michigan’s energy future isn’t limited to increasing reliability. We know that our customers and our state deserve a clean energy future. at’s why we’ve proposed an aggressive clean energy plan, including the development of enough renewable energy to power approximately 4 million homes, ending the use of coal by 2035, and supporting 25,000 Michigan jobs.

We recognize that this evolution requires investment. We are also keenly aware that even modest rate increases are a burden on hard-working Michiganders and the businesses that drive our economy, which is why we are transparent about our plans for investing in a more reliable, cleaner grid for our customers. And it’s why we’ve worked hard to run DTE e ciently to keep long-term base rates from outpacing in ation.

IT’S TIME THAT THE ELECTRIC GRID GETS A MAJOR REBOOT ... NONE OF THIS IS EASY. BUT IT MUST BE DONE.

None of this is easy. But it must be done.

DTE Energy has been powering Southeast Michigan since omas Edison brought his lightbulb to the hometown of his friend Henry Ford. Our company roots and our family roots are here. Our future is here — and we’re ready to put Michigan on the cutting edge of America’s energy transformation.

Chris Laird is vice president of electric operations at Consumers Energy.

Jerry Norcia is chairman, president and CEO of DTE Energy.

COMMENTARY

Real change requires utility companies to do more

Some of the worst power outages in Michigan history came this February. With winter in the rearview mirror, summer thunderstorms — historically, perhaps the biggest cause of power outages — are looming.

DTE Energy and Consumers Energy, the major electricity providers in the state, have been getting ready for more outages — but not in the way their customers want or need. e utilities are trying to create a narrative that pushes back against the drive to hold them accountable through strict new laws being proposed in Lansing that would put in place penalties for poor utility service.

is executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Michigan, which is a nonpartisan, nonpro t organization whose members are individual residential customers of Michigan’s energy utilities.

In service of that narrative, the utilities’ statements to the public and lawmakers in the aftermath of the outages this winter have shown a pattern. ey have obfuscated the causes of the power outages, downplayed their role in the underlying conditions that made the grid so vulnerable in the rst place and put forth solutions to reliability that the utilities themselves have failed to implement despite years of warnings from watchdog groups.

e record needs to be set straight because the Michigan Public Service Commission, the state body responsible for regulating utilities, is about to kick o a review of potential rules that would impose nancial incentives and disincentives on utilities tied to their performance, creating a system of carrots and sticks to push utilities to improve electric reliability. DTE and Consumers Energy will likely want as many carrots and as few sticks in place as possible.

So let’s break down the narrative the utilities have been crafting to inuence that upcoming review.

At a Michigan House hearing in March investigating the outages, representatives of DTE and Consumers were quick to focus on how much worse the weather has become.

“What’s clear is that the weather has changed,” DTE Electric President and COO Trevor Lauer said in his testimony at the hearing. “What used to be referred to as a once in a decade or once in a century storm now is coming on a regular basis.”

What could be more out of human in uence than the weather? e

problem is that scientists have been warning for many years that the climate is changing, increasing the frequency of severe weather events like thunderstorms that down power lines. Utilities have known for a long time that they need to prepare, but Michigan utilities are far less prepared than others.

Federal data on electric reliability shows that power outages in Michigan have, for years, been much longer in duration on average than those

in most other states, including much longer than those in neighboring states that face similar weather patterns. For example, the average time to restore power following an outage was two hours and 36 minutes in Michigan in 2020, compared to around two hours in Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin (see the Citizens Utility Board of Michigan’s annual Utility Performance Report for more comparisons).

Next, the utilities demand that we trust them to x the problem. But despite repeated warnings, the utilities themselves allowed the problem to get this bad by failing for years to implement needed grid maintenance. at is clear even by the utilities’ own admission. Using the company’s own words from public regulatory lings, DTE has allowed a “backlog” of tree trimming projects to build up.

“We are playing catch-up,” Consumers Energy Vice President of Operations Chris Laird said during the March hearing, noting that while the company is now trimming 7,000 miles of vegetation a year, until recently it was only trimming 5,000

miles.

It takes years to catch up to a consistent and frequent trimming cycle. In the meantime, there are overgrown areas where tree branches threaten power lines and customers are left to su er with outages like the one in February, where trees felled by ice and snow were the main culprit of the widespread blackouts.

Finally, despite all those failures, the utilities now say they have a solution: give the utilities free rein to jack up customer rates to pay for hardening the grid. “ e answer to this is to invest in the system,” Lauer said at the hearing.

Our aging electric grid does indeed need more investment. But it needs the right kind of investments, ones that deliver value while minimizing the impact on customers who already pay the highest rates in the Midwest. Again, history shows that Michigan’s investor-owned utilities are not trustworthy stewards of ratepayer dollars when it comes to investing in the grid. Both major utilities have overlooked the cost-e ective measures that deliver the best return

on investment in terms of shortening power outages in favor of unnecessarily expensive equipment replacements that deliver a bigger return to their shareholders, as shown in expert witness testimony submitted by the Citizens Utility Board in recent rate cases before the MPSC. For example, take the issue of automated technology to improve grid performance, which both DTE and Consumers Energy said in the hearings that they were embracing. “We need to automate systems. We have been on an automation strategy at DTE for ve years now,” Lauer said. But in a recent rate case, the Citizens Utility Board urged DTE to adopt one of the most sophisticated forms of grid automation: distribution fault anticipation technology, which consists of software that analyzes electronic signals from distribution circuits and then detects signatures consistent with equipment failure, thus allowing grid operators that adopt the technology to act to prevent outages before they occur.

In contrast to the image it is portraying of going all in on automation, DTE ignored the Citizens Utility Board’s request to hold a pilot program investigating the use of this technology. e likely reason is that this software, while promising to improve reliability, is not particularly capital-intensive. But capital-intensive projects are how investor-owned utilities like DTE and Consumers make money for their shareholders. Built into the rates we all pay to the utilities is a return on the amount of capital the utilities invest. at return is essentially pro t for utility company shareholders.

All publicly traded utilities are motivated by the drive to deliver return for shareholders, so it is no surprise that DTE and Consumers focus on expensive investments over those that are cost-e ective for customers.

Michigan’s electric utilities need fundamental change that alignsnancial incentives with better performance for customers. We have ideas on how to make those changes. But it’s up to all Michigan ratepayers to not believe the false narrative and push for real change.

Audit of DTE, Consumers targets solutions

e state is calling in outside help after determining that DTE Energy and Consumers Energy have not signi cantly improved outage prevention and restoration when compared to peer utilities, despite a series of regulatory orders following big storms over the past decade.

A third-party audit of their distribution systems, including all equipment and operations, is expected to begin soon per an order issued last fall by the Michigan Public Service Commission. e review will consist of two parts.

One will determine whether installed infrastructure matches each company’s records and compare the condition of the distribution system

to that of other utilities in similar climates.

e other will gauge whether emergency preparedness, storm restoration, maintenance and spending programs are su cient and equitable, and whether they properly plan for climate change and changing load pro les. is will include a review of how maintenance is prioritized and how personnel are managed during outage recovery.

“We can’t keep doing the same things we’ve been doing, where we sort of have an outage event, we do an investigation, come up with some recommendations and then move on. at hasn’t gotten us where we need to be,” said Dan Scripps, who chairs the commission.

It is the rst time the regulatory agency has ordered such a wide-ranging audit of Michigan’s largest utilities.

“What are other states doing that we’re not? What lessons can we apply here?” he said, saying the review also may look at Michigan success stories such as the municipal-owned Lansing Board of Water and Light, whose reliability has gotten better since a 2013 ice storm left many without power, including some for 10 days or more.

Scripps said he does not think municipal electric utilities are a “silver bullet” alternative to investor-owned companies, like DTE and Consumers, that deliver power to about 70% of U.S. customers.

“We need to make sure that our

regulatory framework is keeping pace and the signals that we’re sending in terms of how they make their investments and how they make their money re ects customer outcomes and customer expectations,” he said.

“ ere are investor-owned utilities that are doing better than we’re doing. My question is, ‘Why?’ How do we sort of replicate whatever they’re doing in their states in similar situations? It’s sometimes dicult to say, ‘Oh, we should look to Arizona Public Service or NextEra (Energy) doing work as Florida Power & Light,’ because their systems are just so fundamentally di erent. But what about Wisconsin Electric?

“WHAT ARE OTHER STATES DOING THAT WE’RE NOT? WHAT LESSONS CAN WE APPLY HERE?”

—Dan Scripps, MPSC chairman

What about Ameren in Illinois? ey have sort of older systems. ey serve a mix of urban and rural communities. ey’ve got similar weather in some instances to us. How do we learn from them?” e audit will begin once a rm is hired. Requests for proposals have been submitted. e results are expected in 2024.

Contact: david.eggert@crain.com; (313) 446-1654; @DavidEggert00

Amy Bandyk

DAVID EGGERT

“You will not have to work hard to nd a story from any business out there who has hired someone and then they rescinded the o er because that person couldn’t nd housing in a close enough locale to make that work,” Winslow said. “( e shortage) is on a trajectory to reach a crisis point in the not-too-distant future, and I think it’s at a point where at least everyone recognizes that and is starting to work toward solutions.”

e MRLA does work in the housing advocacy space as a member of the Housing Michigan Coalition.

Traverse City-based Housing North is a founding member of Housing Michigan. e nonpro t formed in 2018 covers 10 counties: Antrim, Benzie, Charlevoix, Emmet, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Leelanau, Manistee, Missaukee and Wexford. e group is addressing barriers to housing that are embedded in zoning laws, development nancing, policy and public-private partnerships.

Executive Director Yarrow Brown said Housing North is working on an updated housing needs assessment for its service area. e most recent target market analysis completed in 2019 showed the 10-county region would need 15,000 new units between 2020 and 2024. According to data Housing North shared from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, about 4,146 building permits were issued in the 10-county area between 2020 and February 2023, the most recent month for which data is available. But that doesn't mean all of those housing units have come online yet.

“ e bulk of the need is in Grand Traverse County, but we do need housing across the income spectrum and across the board,” she said. “… We haven’t made a whole lot of progress toward that — we’ve made some, but what we’re seeing is still a lot of single-family home development.”

Housing North has had several recent wins on the state level, including serving on the executive committee of the Housing Michigan Coalition, which advocated for the passage of four housing bills that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed in December.

anks to the legislation, local governments can now develop Payment in Lieu of Taxes programs to support development; create Neighborhood Enterprise Zones to facilitate in ll; give tax exemptions to property owners who build in designated “attainable housing districts” via the Attainable Housing Facilities Act; and grant Residential Facilities Exemptions, or temporary tax abatements, to developers that build ve or more singleor multifamily units for those making less than 120 percent of the area median income.

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

NTH Consultants, Ltd.

Jaros ENGINEERING / DESIGN ENGINEERING / DESIGN

OHM Advisors

NTH Consultants, Ltd. is pleased to announce the execution of its leadership succession plan with the appointment of Jeffrey Jaros to President & CEO and Jason Edberg, P.E. to Executive Vice President & Chief Growth Of cer.

Jeff, with more than 30 years of environmental and risk mitigation experience, originally joined in 2005 as a Project Manager and rose through the ranks over the past 18 years to serve in various roles, including, most recently, Chief Operating Of cer.

Edberg

Jason, with 20 years of experience in the design, evaluation and rehabilitation of public infrastructure, originally joined in 2004 and has served in various capacities, including his current role overseeing our Strategic Market and Growth Initiatives.

“THE

On the local level, Housing North has added four Housing Ready Program directors who have facilitated zoning and master plan updates in more than 20 communities, developed housing opportunity maps, launched accessory dwelling unit and deed restriction programs in the Charlevoix and Petoskey areas, and helped secured approval for the Lofts at Lumber Square project in Petoskey through advocacy work. at project is expected to come online in the next few years.

Other projects in the pipeline in

Michigan Saves

Housing North’s territory include nonpro t developer HomeStretch’s proposed Lot O project on an underutilized parking lot in Traverse City, which would add 60 multifamily units; the “missing middle” Grove Place single-family development being built by the new Frankfort Community Land Trust; and the Maple City Crossings six-home project that Habitat for Humanity Grand Traverse Region is building in Leelanau County.

Brown said there is much work yet to be done to create an environment that fosters more housing development.

“I think (to people it) feels like … we’re not making a ton of progress every day, but what we are doing is getting embedded in our communities and trying to help them realize their housing goals, which takes a long time,” she said. “We still have a lot of opposition; people often don’t want change. So we’re just trying to work within our communities from the ground up and throughout the system, to make sure … some of these communities are ready and prepared for when the housing opportunities come.”

Contact: rachel.watson@crain.com (989) 533-9685; @RachelWatson86

Jon Kramer, PE, president of awardwinning community advancement rm OHM Advisors, was named 2023/2024 president of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Michigan (ACEC). Kramer has served ACEC/ Michigan’s board of directors in several governance roles – and possesses a deep-rooted passion for supporting ACEC’s efforts that allow Michigan residents to drink clean water, travel safely and ef ciently, visit state and local parks, and carry out business in safe public and private buildings.

Alternative Behaviors is pleased to announce that Emily Callis has been named as our new Chief Operating Of cer to lead our organization’s behavioral health initiatives, in the area of Autism Services. Emily brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in Clinical Behavioral Psychology to our team, having graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a degree in this eld. With Emily at the helm of our Autism Services, we are con dent that we can continue to make a positive impact.

Michigan Saves has promoted Todd Parker to Vice President. Over the past 14 years, Todd has been an essential contributor in helping to launch the organization and drive the subsequent growth to support nearly $500 million in clean energy-related projects within the state. He’s led several initiatives including the Detroit Loan Fund and the Lead Poisoning Prevention Fund and has taken on several organizational leadership roles including legislative outreach and program design and implementation.

Maple City Crossings is a Habitat for Humanity a ordable housing development underway in Maple City. GARY L. HOWE FOR HOUSING NORTH

Could a Detroit land value tax become a development driver?

ARIELLE KASS

e city of Detroit is exploring whether to switch tax systems to put the crux of taxation not on properties but rather focus it on the land on which they sit.

It’s not a completely new idea. In fact, other cities, namely in Pennsylvania, have used a version of the tax system before.

But whether the proposal, called a land value tax, has the potential to lower residential property taxes while raising taxes on vacant land in desirable areas and result in more development isn’t so clear cut.

Christopher Berry, a professor at the University of Chicago and director of the Center for Municipal Finance, pointed to Pittsburgh as an example of a city with a split-rate tax beginning in 1913, but he said it eliminated it around the turn of the century because they weren’t reassessing frequently enough, and a giant price jump led to a revolt.

In Allentown, Donald Bernhard said the research was “thin” when city leaders decided to move forward with a land value tax in the 1990s because they expected it would lead to more intense development. Bernhard, Allentown’s community development director at the time, and the current chairman of the Allentown Economic Development Corp., said some car dealerships were driven out of the city and were replaced by a bank and an auto parts store — “Not even as good tax wise” — while a fairground that’s used for weekly farmers markets and an annual event hasn’t been developed further.

While Allentown’s downtown has had a “stunning revitalization,” Bern-

TAXES

From Page 3

If approved by the legislature, any city in the state could implement a land value tax, as well.

“ e objective is to lower the burden in the city, which has a disproportionately high burden (compared to) our surrounding cities, and lower the cost of entry into the city,” Rising said, “so that when making a decision, whether it’s a development decision or whether it’s a personal decision to live in the city, taxes become less of a factor in that decision.”

“ e other side of the coin is you’re incentivizing development of vacant and underutilized properties,” he added. “And you want to provide as much incentive as you can.”

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said he intends to roll out his vision for a land value tax during his keynote speech Wednesday at the Mackinac Policy Conference.

City council has been discussing the proposal — Rising said members have been asking a lot of questions — and House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, has said he is on board.

“I’m supportive of the concept,” Tate told Crain’s earlier this year. “What we’ve seen from other states that have this ... is that it does provide a meaningful reduction in property tax burden. I think it’s something we should look at to see if this could be an option that we have here in the state of Michigan.”

Cli ord Brown, a Detroit developer who runs Woodborn Partners LLC, said the proposal would stop investors from “just holding on to stu .” “It will ultimately help developers,” Brown said. “It’ll hurt in that you can’t

hard said most of the credit goes to a state tax change, the neighborhood improvement district.

Without a split-rate tax, he said, Allentown would still have more money in its co ers thanks to that resurgence.

But those examples may not be a perfect comparison for what is going on in Detroit.

Detroit has a vast expanse of vacant and unused land, which in many cases is being held by speculative landlords waiting for opportunities to sell it rather than develop it themselves, Bernhard said. at could mean a land value tax might have a larger e ect here.

Berry said if people are holding land

just sit on land, but it’ll help in that, if you’re not ready to go with something, let somebody else step in and get something done. I think more than helping developers, I think it’ll help neighborhoods in the larger Detroit community.”

Shifting the tax burden

e concept of a tax on the value of land is an old one. Rising said it’s been discussed in the city since Mayor Coleman A. Young was in o ce up until 1994 — but received new scrutiny after the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy released a report last spring, commissioned by Invest Detroit, that championed the proposal. A spokesperson for Invest Detroit did not respond to a request for comment about the current conversations.

Initial discussions looked at a splitrate tax, where the land is valued separately from the structure that is built on it, but Rising said he reached the conclusion quickly that a strict tax on land would be better in Detroit.

e city does not yet know what the tax rate on land would be, he said. But the plan would be revenue-neutral for the city, shifting the tax burden away from homeowners and others who have structures on lower-valued land and toward vacant property and high-value land in the city.

Not only would residents save money if the policy is implemented, but the number of tax foreclosures would go down, said Josie Faass, the executive director of the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, which advocates for policies espoused by the economist Henry George, who was responsible for the land value tax concept.

Faass wasn’t involved in the Detroit

waiting for Detroit to pop but nothing is happening, a land value tax can be a way to push for those people to develop that land or sell it. He said the potential for Detroit is worth the risk.

“Detroit is in a moment where it needs bold ideas, and this is one,” he said. “If you really believe the city is poised now for its resurgence, if you believe the economic fundamentals indicate the city is poised for a comeback, this is good policy.”

John Anderson, a professor of economics at the University of Nebraska — Lincoln who organized the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy team and was a co-writer on a report released last

proposal, but said the city is in a unique position to bene t from a change.

ere are already a number of carveouts to its tax system, like abatements, she said. And the city has the highest tax burden in the state, along with a lot of vacant property. She said its implementation could “rejigger” the tax code in the city so it’s more equitable.

“Detroit’s property tax is one of the major drivers of decline in the city,” Faass said. “ e land value tax is a scal shot in the arm for the city. It could catalyze a lot of great things.”

She added that the change would incentivize development on vacant land, because improvements would no longer be taxed. She said she would expect a lot of business creation and construction to begin on once-empty parcels.

Faass said if the city implements a change, it should do so slowly, over a number of years, so as not to “create whiplash” for residents. She also cautioned that some property owners “with in uence might not like the direction their tax bill goes in.”

“You don’t want people to grab their pitchforks,” she said. “You absolutely do not want to just ip the switch.”

Rising said he was optimistic that progress could be made this year. Je Glazier, the city controller in Allentown, Pa. — which has a split-rate tax it implemented in the 1990s — said he’s had conversations with people in the mayor’s o ce who indicated the rollout would take place over time.

In Allentown, land is taxed at 23.5 mills, while structures are taxed at 4.5 mills. Glazier said there are no serious discussions about reverting to a more traditional tax structure, but he doesn’t think the split-rate tax was a successful attempt to “goose development.”

tax plan, but said it could take a decade before the impacts are clear. Anderson, and the report, tried to avoid speculating on what the change might do to Detroit’s economy and the business environment. Gabriel Cuéllar, a visiting assistant professor in architecture at the University of Michigan, cautioned that the city wouldn’t know what might happen to the land if it was marketed for sale or if someone decided to build. ere’s no telling what use they will choose, he said.

While the Lincoln Institute study concluded that a split-rate tax would be bene cial for Detroit, it said it would be most bene cial if other local governments changed to that tax method as well. e recommendations also include a payment program for past years’ tax bills and said accurate assessments are vital for the change to work.

spring, championed the idea of some kind of split-rate taxation system in Detroit. e report was commissioned by nonpro t community developmentnancial institution Invest Detroit.

“ is removes impediments to development and redevelopment,” Anderson said. “I don’t see any substantial downside risk to it.”

e Lincoln Institute report recommended Detroit implement a split-rate tax at a 5:1 rate, with land value making up the bulk of the tax rate. Anderson said a land value tax could produce the same e ect, and the focus on land value might be an easier legal lift. He called Detroit “an ideal test bed” for the

“I don’t think it’s had any serious impact on development in the city,” he said. “I can’t think of a whole lot of development that might have been spurred by this.”

He added that Allentown wasn’t a city with a lot of empty land, but many tracts that were underutilized when the tax structure changed are still underutilized now.

“I don’t think it made a whole lot of di erence either way,” Glazier said. “At the margins, it might nudge them toward development, but at the end of the day, it’s not the deciding factor.”

A bet on Detroit

ere are still those with questions. Detroit City Council Member Latisha Johnson asked Gabriel Cuéllar, a visiting assistant professor in architecture at the University of Michigan, if he could lead his urban design class in a project to look into some of the implications of a change. He did so, along with Salam Rida, a design fellow at the University of Michigan who taught with him.

Cuéllar said the proposal is still “very experimental,” though there is a lot of research behind it. e main shift, he said, would come from treating taxation as an urban planning tool — a way to direct change, not just to collect revenue.

He looked at the split-rate tax the Lincoln Institute proposed, which is di erent from the straight land value tax Detroit appears to be moving toward. Cuéllar said he was interested in what happened to properties like urban farms, that have a lot of land but few improvements, and land that was sold to residents for a low rate by the Detroit Land Bank Authority. e city

e city has a history of inequitably valuing land and the properties on it, Berry said. He said because Detroit doesn’t have a strong track record of proper valuations, he’s not optimistic the city will get it right this time. Any change to policy, he said, should come with more resources for the assessor’s o ce to do its job. Anderson said Detroit’s assessor told him he was condent he could assess land value.

Berry added that the policy could be seen as a distraction from inequitable property taxation, and a way to avoid xing the system.

“ ey’re betting on their ability to provide reasonable services at reasonable tax prices. I think it is a vote of condence of the city in itself.”

Contact: arielle.kass@crain.com; (313) 446-6774; @ArielleKassCDB

must do a good job of educating people on the actual e ects of any change, he said.

Cuéllar said he views land value tax as “potentially a very impactful tool.”

For Rida, who co-taught the course, the e ect on the city’s side lot program is a major concern. e land bank has sold side lots for $100 apiece since 2014. Rida said more than 21,000 have already been sold; there are more than 10,000 currently listed for sale by the land bank. ey’re used as gardens, playgrounds, yards and community spaces, and Rida said she worries the city will treat them the same as they would land owned by a speculator.

“It would be taxed the same. What is considered productive land?”

Rising said someone would need to own three side lots before they are negatively impacted by the proposed change.

Rising said there are still details to work out, like whether the basis for taxation is the State Equalized Value (which he would prefer) or a land’s taxable value, which is capped under Proposal A. e former, he said, would eliminate pop-ups that happen when people sell capped properties. And he expects some opposition from those who are negatively a ected but said it will make it easier to get a mortgage in Detroit.

“We’re literally going to have to reinvent the tax system,” he said. “We’re depressing the development in our current tax system and making people, homeowners, pay for that. We’re just ipping the coin.”

Senior reporter Kirk Pinho contributed to this story.

Contact: arielle.kass@crain.com; (313) 446-6774; @ArielleKassCDB

Production on cars at the Packard site stopped in the 1950s, though tenants remained in the buildings for another 50 years. Now the land is unused and Detroit has begun demolition on parts of it. LARRY PEPLIN/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

Ste. Marie on weekends in the fall to work on the ferries, and every summer she was back working those long hours.

“I became very close to the Shepler family. I learned a lot from Bill Shepler,” she said, referring to Shepler’s president then.

She got her degree in business administration, but helping run the docks was all the career she was interested in. “I loved the water. I loved boats. I loved the Upper Peninsula,” she says. “When I was in college, Bill told me ‘We really need you to run our deck operation.’” at was in 1991. In 1992, she was named director of operations and head of human resources at Shepler.

“Over the years, I hired more than 1,000 people,” she said. “I loved hiring young pe ople and watch them grow. I still hear from a lot of them. Some of them are doctors and attorneys, and some are boat captains.”

In 1993, Dobrowolski got her captain’s license, which she still has. “I didn’t use it a lot, but I wanted to have it. I’d work lunch breaks piloting the ferries, but I mainly ran the dock in Mackinaw City.

Today she is CEO of Arnold Freight Co. LLC, which ferries supplies, U.S. mail, FedEx deliveries and lumber and other building materials to the island, running daily from St. Ignace, even year round in those winters, like last winter, when the ice doesn’t freeze solid from the city to the island.

In the spring and fall, Arnold ferries the 400 horses that winter in Pickford Township in the Upper Peninsula to and from their stables on the car-free island, where they pull the taxis, tour carriages and delivery and garbage carts all season.

Arnold has 25 employees, many of them, she says, with more than 30 years of seniority.

How Arnold Freight came to be is a complicated tale of changing ownership, ongoing nancial struggles and Dobrowolski’s perseverance.

In 2010, the Arnold Transit Co., a predecessor company that carried freight to Mackinac Island, was sold to a Chicago attorney named James Wynn.

Arnold Transit was founded in 1878 and sold to Prentiss Brown in 1921 and run by the Brown family until the sale to Wynn. Dobrowolski was recruited to help run the business. “I wanted the challenge,” she said.

Brown was a U.S. senator from 1936 to 1943 and was instrumental in getting the Mackinac Bridge built, serving as chairman of the Mackinac Bridge Authority from its inception in 1950 to its 1957 opening and on until his death in 1973.

Challenges, Dobrowolski got. e operation was cash-strapped. Wynn couldn’t a ord upkeep and repairs on the eet of newer catamaran ferries. In 2014, the investment group backing Wynn foreclosed, which resulted in the public auction of two catamarans, the

high-speed vessels favored by passengers, and his removal as president.

“In 2014, we weren’t going to open the season, but I decided to put the slower, old steel-hull ferries from the 1950s back into service and cut passenger fees,” said Dobrowolski, who ran the business after Wynn’s departure.

ey got through the season, but barely.

In 2016, Jerry Fetty, owner of the St. Ignace-based Star Line ferries, bought Arnold Transit’s passenger ferries and one of its freight boats, the Huron, as part of a process to head o bankruptcy proceedings.

A new company, Mackinac Island Ferry Capital LLC, owned by Cincinnati investors, continued to own the other Arnold ferry, the 92-foot Corsair, and did business as Arnold Freight Co. Dobrowolski continued to run the business.

In April 2019, Dobrowolski and four partners based in Munising bought out the Cincinnati investors and got a longterm lease to operate out of Mackinac Island’s coal dock.

Generational wealth joins the team

Enter Dan Musser III. His family had owned the iconic Grand Hotel, which opened in 1887, since 1932, when his great uncle, W. Stewart Wood ll, bought it.

In 2019, Musser sold the hotel for an undisclosed but pre-COVID, top-ofthe-market price to Denver-based KSL Capital Partners LLC, whose website lists a portfolio of 104 high-end hotels, resorts and ski lodges.

In 2020, Dobrowolski told Musser her partners might be interested in selling their stake in Arnold.

“Dan said, ‘Count me in,’” she recounted.

Or, as it turned out, count his wife, Marlee Brown, in. She is Prentiss Brown’s granddaughter, and her father Paul Brown was CEO and her cousin Bobby Brown was the general manager when Arnold was sold to Wynn. Marlee bought out Dobrowolski’s partners and became president. Dan is chairman.

e Mussers own Musser Freight Co. LLC. As Marlee was buying her majority ownership in Arnold, Musser Freight bought another 92-foot freight vessel from Shepler’s, the Sacre Bleu, and renamed it the Senator in honor of her grandfather. Musser Freight leases the Senator to Arnold.

Dan Musser and Dobrowolski’s partnership extends beyond Arnold Freight. Since 2021, Dobrowolski has been general manager of another boat company, Sip ‘n’ Sail Cruises LLC, which she co-owns with Andrew Doud, the fourth-generation owner of the Doud’s Market grocery story on the island.

He is a cousin of Margaret Doud, who owns the Windermere Hotel on the island and has been the island’s mayor since 1975, running unopposed and winning reelection in May.

ey own an 81-foot-long party boat called the Isle Royale Queen III, which

has a capacity of 97 but they generally limit sales to 80 to allow passengers a bit more room aboard. And from Musser Freight they lease the Robin E, a 55-foot glass-bottom boat available for private charters of from 10-45.

e Robin E is named after Dan’s grandfather and sister. His grandfather, Robin Bruce Epler, was a West Point graduate who died in the Second World War as a test pilot for the U.S Army Air Corps, and his oldest sister, Robin Epler Musser, was named for him.

Musser Freight also owns a 28-foot landing craft called the 906 Express, named for the island’s area code, which is leased to Arnold Freight and used to haul U.S. mail to and from the island daily.

Dobrowolski is also involved in a third island boating operation as general manager of East Dock LLC, which runs the private dock next to the state park harbor. It is 180 feet long and provides short- and long-term docking for $6 a foot for yachts and cruise ships. e dock is owned by Patricia and William Anton. He is the chairman emeritus of the board of trustees of the Culinary Institute of America.

Dobrowolski is also a partner with Bob Benser Jr. in VB Mackinac LLC, which owns and rents out a retail building on Main Street, at the corner of the Arnold Freight dock. Benser and his family own several iconic island businesses, including Original Murdick’s Fudge, the Chippewa Hotel and the Pink Pony bar and restaurant.

“Veronica is probably the hardest-working person I know,” said Chris Shepler, the ferry company’s president. “She’s always been diligent, making sure things get done correctly. She went from being a deck hand to our dock master in Mackinaw City. She ran the show for us for many years. She’s such a huge part of the Mackinac Island community.”

Contact: thenderson@crain.com (231) 499-2817; @TomHenderson2

Dan Musser and Veronica Dobrowolski on the Arnold dock in front of the Senator freight boat. | TOM HENDERSON FOR CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

Reducing violence a priority for Detroit Deputy Mayor Bettison

Before he was deputy mayor of the city of Detroit, Todd Bettison had a short-lived career at Little Caesars. He thought he might be a teacher, too, following in his mother’s footsteps. But an uncle told him to go into law enforcement, and he brie y dropped out of Wayne State University to pursue a career as a Detroit Police Department o cer before going back to nish his degree. He quickly rose in the ranks, and last year took a role in the Duggan administration that puts him second in command to the mayor. Here, Bettison talks about his priorities in this job and what he learned from an investigation into his role fundraising for then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

 You were raised by your grandparents during the school year, then you spent time with your mom, a teacher in Detroit, when she was o in the summer?

On a personal note, I’ve never met my father. Raised by my grandparents (in Benton Harbor), my grandmother in particular had a lot to do with keeping me on the straight and narrow because, of course, there’s always temptation. But my grandmother is the key to what really kept me out of trouble and kept me grounded. Because guess what she did for a living? She worked at the Berrien County Juvenile Center. Even if she thought I was hanging around the wrong person, she ran them away.

 What did you start to do for work? In college, I got a job at Taco Bell. I still know the recipes and I can make a mean taco. (Then) I got a job at Little Caesars because I wanted to give it a change. The ovens were too hot with the pizzas. I was like, this is not for me. I just wasn’t a good Detroit-style pizza maker. I had to go back to Taco Bell.

 Can you talk about your early policing experiences and if there was anything that set you on your current path?

I started out working patrols on the east side of Detroit. Responding to high priority runs, so whatever they said it was going on, on the radio, whatever they say was happening, when we got there, it was still happening. I had an opportunity to meet a young deputy chief. He saw something in me that I didn’t even see in myself. So he inspired me, and I really owe where I’m at because of the foundation that he laid for me.

BY | ARIELLE KASS

 It’s been a year in this new role as deputy mayor. What were your expectations and what has the reality been like?

It feels like I’m in the Michael E. Duggan School of Business and so it’s just been a wonderful time. It’s the best of both worlds because I come from law enforcement and the public safety portfolio reports to me. I really view my role as that of support to make sure that the department heads get what they need. That’s my leadership style. They’re smart; they know how to do their jobs. They don’t need me in the way telling them what to do. But they need support and so whatever bureaucracy or barrier

they have from getting equipment, resources, things of that nature, that’s really my role.

 What are your priorities in the role?

The thing that really is up top of everybody’s mind is violence. The level of violence is still too high and everybody (is) all hands on deck. The crime trend is coming down. However, we still see too many acts of senseless violence. And so it’s the enforcement side, it’s the prevention side, and it’s also the intervention side. I’m leading that e ort, and so many of our community violence intervention organizations that have just been

volunteering, doing it part time... we want to ensure that we do our part as the city to send resources their way so that they can scale up to be able to make more of a signi cant impact.

 You were involved in fundraising for Kwame Kilpatrick many years ago. Can you talk about what your takeaways from that episode were? I got asked to be a part of a political action committee. And I had been a treasurer for little stu before. So some folks took me to lunch and said, ‘We’re gonna raise some money for the current mayor,’ and at the time, the mayor, I thought he was doing a great job and I was like, ‘OK, sounds like a great thing to do, but I really don’t know a whole lot about this.’ And it was like, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll show you.’ And so guess what? They didn’t show me. …When I nally read the manual about all the stu that you had to do, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, all these rules, we’ve already violated.’ And man, now that I know we’ve already violated that, how do you put the genie back in the bottle? And so I learned a valuable lesson early on, and it’s made me a better person to this day because before I sign anything now, I now know and understand everything I’m getting into. I learned a whole lot from the experience, and I will tell anybody who’s listening, it may sound simple, but to young folks, know what you’re getting into and read the ne print, read the ne print and I’m gonna say it one more time, read the ne print.

 Do you think you’ll run yourself at some point?

I never say never. And I don’t know what that run would be. I’ve never thought I would be here. So whatever God has in store, it’ll be.

Charity bourbon will get a debut on Mackinac’s ‘bourbon night’

DETROIT CITY DISTILLERY and e Detroit News have teamed up to launch a prohibition-themed bourbon to mark the newspaper’s 150th anniversary and raise money for charity.

Featuring a “Prohibition Out” front page from Dec. 6, 1933, the single-barrel bourbon whiskey has been aged for more than four years. Launching on June 9 the bottle will sell for $150, with $100 of that going to e Rosa L. Parks Scholarship Foundation, which supports interns in Michigan newsrooms, and CATCH, which improves quality of life for pediatric patients and their families at Children’s Hospital of Michigan and Henry Ford Hospital. “ is was selected as one of the best barrels of bourbon laid down at DCD’s historical whiskey factory,” said Michael Forsyth, one of three founders of the Eastern Market distillery. “ is is a

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huge honor for our distillery to play a small part in celebrating the history of e Detroit News.”

Per tradition, Detroit News Opinion Editor Nolan Finley will host his “On the Island. O the Record” party with Stephen Henderson of BridgeDetroit, Detroit Public Television and WDET FM— often called “bourbon night” — on Mackinac Island on June 1 at the Mackinac Policy Conference.

In addition to the bourbon, e News also partnered with Midtown Detroit co ee roaster Detroit Bold to o er a roast co ee blend. A 12-ounce bag is $17.99, a three-pack is $49.99 and six pack is $79.99. and 20% of the proceeds go to the Rosa L. Parks Scholarship Foundation when entering the code “DETNEWS” at checkout.

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by

Todd Bettison is deputy mayor at the city of Detroit