LANSING — As Michigan’s budget stalemate continues in the weeks leading up to Labor Day, one area of consternation between the Democratic-led state Senate and the Republican-controlled state House is how to pay for road repair and maintenance in perpetuity as existing bond funding and projects lapse.

A clear outlook for road funding has been deemed critical for the current budget process to finally wrap, with both the House and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer emphasizing that no budget for the coming fiscal year would be complete without a negotiated plan for roads.

The lack of a plan from the Senate has jammed up the process, at least as far as the House is concerned.

Entering the next fiscal year and beyond without a smoothly paved funding path has other dire consequences for Michigan aside from the political machinations of the Legislature.

In a statement released Tuesday, the Michigan Department of Transportation said the department was reviewing critical unfunded infrastructure needs across the state, which it said includes more than 100 state trunkline bridges at risk of closure by 2035 if lawmakers don’t act soon to fund road repairs and rebuilds.

MDOT said the potential for bridge closures statewide would have a daily impact on more than 1.8 million drivers and the roadways they serve.

“As MDOT works to continue addressing declining road and bridge conditions, securing a comprehensive road funding package is becoming more critical,” the department said Tuesday. “Following the conclusion of the Rebuilding Michigan bond funding program, MDOT will see a decrease of more than half the annual reconstruction budget, bringing the yearly investment for rebuilding roads from $495 million per year to just $222 million per year, and supporting about 2,800 fewer construction jobs in 2026.”

MDOT Director Brad Wieferich added that, “at this rate, by decade’s end, nearly 50 percent of state routes, which carry 53 percent of total traffic and 80 percent of commercial traffic, will be in poor condition.”

“Without additional investment, those projections will get worse,” Wieferich said.

The predictions should cause concern for the Legislature and motivate it to get moving on roads, whether it completes that plan before the whole budget or along with it before the constitutional deadline of Sept. 30.

Both Whitmer and House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) have put forward plans to fund Michigan’s roads, but the Senate has yet to do so.

In a news conference held Wednesday to castigate House Republicans for not completing their full budget as the clock winds down, the onus was put back on the Senate for its own inaction on road funding.

Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids) was asked about MDOT’s new predictions, and when the state might see the Senate’s plan.

Brinks said the chamber continues to have conversations about its plan and that it can’t get a good grip on roads without a responsible budget passed in both chambers, which the Senate has done while the House drags its feet.

The majority leader said the key factor was consideration for other areas impacted by the budget, such as K-12 funding, if that money is pooled to pay for roads.

“We continue to work on that, and we are committed to that,” Brinks said. “I refuse to make the choice between funding schools and funding roads. The people of Michigan should be able to expect us to fund all of the fundamental things that the state government is responsible for.”

Brinks was asked how many more conversations needed to be had given that it was already eight months into the calendar year without a Senate plan in play.

State Sen. Sam Singh (D-East Lansing) jumped in to answer that one, saying people needed to be in the room to negotiate, and to possibly understand the frustrations the Senate was facing.

“Obviously, the speaker’s plan, we haven’t seen how he actually funds that plan, because he hasn’t shown us the budget,” Singh said. “We are willing to have the negotiations. I know our leader has been in those rooms, having those conversations with the governor and others. And we can take a look. There’s some elements of the governor plan we like. There’s some elements that we don’t like, but you have to have everyone in the room to do the negotiation.”

Singh added that the Legislature doesn’t need five or six competing plans to start negotiations, calling each existing plan more of a framework.

“We have to do this within the context of the budget, and that’s what we’re seeing,” Singh said. “By not having people in the room having that conversation, not having a full budget, you can’t talk about all these pieces.”

Brinks and company were also asked if they were willing to take drastic measures on roads with a plan containing cuts to either Whitmer or Hall’s plans just to get things moving.

Brinks said she and the Senate were “entertaining every possible means to get a responsible budget passed.”

In response to the Senate’s press conference and the roads issue at large, Hall told Michigan Advance that the Senate’s refusal to pass a plan came as both he and Whitmer called for the chamber to include it in the larger budget talks.

Hall also accused the Senate budget that was passed in May as being short by more than $1 billion and “illegally unbalanced, but they refuse to fix it.”

“And they refuse to vote on our bigger and better school budget, which has been stuck in their chamber for months,” Hall said. “At every step of the process, they’re holding up the budget and dragging things out.”

While the school funding plan passed by the House in June included one of the largest increases to per-pupil funding for public schools in years, Democrats and education advocates argue that the GOP plan would result in many key costs for school meal and at-risk programs either needing to be reduced or eliminated or otherwise paid for with dollars meant for classrooms.

Regardless, Hall said he believed Senate Democrats needed to either step up to the plate and embrace the existing road plans, or let Whitmer pinch hit for them in the negotiating process.

“She would actually do a good job,” Hall said of Whitmer in that scenario. “This standoff between the radical wing of the [Democratic] Party and the reasonable Democrats is delaying everything.”