This article originally appeared in The Detroit News June 11, 2026.

Michigan lawmakers are considering a spending hike for a program that subsidizes developers to build and tear down buildings. It’s an expansion of a program that began in 2017. As they consider the legislation, they should review whether the program has achieved what lawmakers said it would.

Let’s start with the big question. Legislators called it the “Transformational Brownfield Program.” Did it transform the places that got deals?

The record is thin. Lawmakers only made two deals for the original program, one to replace buildings in Detroit and one to redevelop a paper mill in Vicksburg. The Vicksburg mill is not complete, nor has it transformed the 4,000-person town.

Was Detroit really “transformed?” Let’s look at the basics. It remains the poorest big city in America, and slightly less than 10% of city residents are unemployed. For context, most major cities have an unemployment rate of less than 5%.

Maybe we shouldn’t expect subsidies for building development to have an influence on these broader economic trends. But lawmakers promised they would do just that. One bill sponsor pledged that the transformational brownfield program would “grow good jobs for Michigan, grow wages for Michigan families, and grow our economies everywhere in the state, from Midland to Marquette and Montmorency County to Monroe.”

None of the places named got buildings supported by the program. Michigan’s job growth has been the eighth-lowest among the states since 2017. Median household income growth was the 15th lowest. The program has not delivered as supporters said.

The program was also pitched as essentially cost-free for the state. Companies would receive a share of new tax revenue generated by their projects — revenue that, absent the subsidy, would not exist.

But experience shows that there are costs. Some businesses have relocated to new buildings in Detroit. But those businesses moved from their existing locations in the city, leaving vacancies behind. In those cases, the state is not capturing new economic activity so much as shifting it — and giving up tax revenue it otherwise would have collected. Workers in these buildings pay income taxes, but 50% of that revenue is delivered to developers rather than to the state.

The impetus for the latest round of development is to tear down some of the Renaissance Center towers, which have emptied in part because tenants moved to buildings developed with transformational brownfield funding.

The program has fallen short of specific expectations set during its passage. Supporters said the program would lead to a Muskegon paper mill redevelopment, but that never happened. The place looks like it is being redeveloped, but without getting a deal from the program. Indeed, very few of the projects pledged to be completed if legislators approved the program actually received deals after the program was adopted.

Lawmakers thought the program would accomplish more and cost less when they approved the bills in 2017. It has fallen well short of expectations.

One thing that lawmakers (and taxpayers whose money is used by this program) may not have expected is the program’s lack of transparency. When a reporter requested the amount of money that was going to program recipients, administrators denied the request. This is egregious because such information is explicitly required by statute and acknowledged by economic development officials. Payments are public records, and statutes require agencies to provide reports, but the Michigan Department of Treasury is trying to treat payments to recipients as private information. That is why the Mackinac Center is representing that reporter in court and trying to get them this information.

The public should know when the state gives select developers tens or even hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for economic development. If the promised growth has not materialized, lawmakers should pause and ask whether the program is working before they spend more taxpayer dollars on it.

Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.