Whitmer’s ‘growing Michigan together council’ appointed without any U.P. representation.

(WLUC) - As of right now, the U.P. will not have a seat at the table in Lansing for important conversations about increasing the state’s population.

On June 1st, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced the ‘Growing Michigan Together Council’ and the governor appointed voting members to the council today, No one on the list is from the U.P. Invest U.P. CEO Marty Fittante said this is extremely disappointing.

“I think it’s one thing to be left off the map of a Mountain Dew marketing campaign, but this one really hurts,” said Fittante.

Fittante said this is a disappointment to the lead regional economic organization for the U.P. which has been leading conversations on the issue since 2019.

“We’ve lost 48% of our K-12 population since 1970,” said Fittante. “Our average age, the biggest cohorts, are between the ages of 55 and 69.”

We emailed the governor’s office to ask why no one from the U.P. was included and have not received a response at this time. Sen. Ed McBroom (R-38th State Senate District) said this development just reinforces the message that Lansing doesn’t care about the U.P.

“They’re more than happy to take our taxes and our minerals and natural resources when it’s good for the state and they love to come up here and recreate and tell us what to do,” said McBroom. “They also like to tell us what land we can have and where we can build our garages for our snowmobiles. They certainly don’t seem to want those of us to make a living.”

There are still two spots on the council that need to be filled and McBroom said he’s hoping after today that the Governor will make a serious effort to appoint a U.P. lawmaker.

“If one of us does get on there, we have people with true expertise who had done a lot of work and research on this already,” said McBroom. “They also would have been more impactful on the commission than simply having a legislator who’s speaking on behalf of his citizen’s frustration but doesn’t necessarily have the background to speak to the data in a real technical way.”

There remains a possibility that one of the lawmakers appointed to the council represents the U.P. and the group has to submit its report by December 1st. Fittante and McBroom said they hope people from the U.P. are included in the council’s workgroups.

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