WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The WRFH Interview: State Rep. Jennifer Wortz, 02/11/26

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Michigan State Rep. Jennifer Wortz joins WRFH's Sophia Mandt to discuss school spending, a ban of cell phones in schools, and more. From 02/11/26.

You're listening to Sophia Mant interview Michigan State Representative Jennifer Warts on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. She represents the 35th District in Lansing, covering most of Hillsdale and Branch counties. The Detroit News has reported that Michigan has spent about $1 billion over the last decade attempting to boost students' reading scores. Instead, scores have decreased. Governor Whitmer wants to throw more money at the problem. Are there solutions or reforms that should be pursued instead? Yeah, good morning. Thanks for having me. I think there are. We really need to revisit in education. Several years ago, we passed that it was required that all students had to be able to read by third grade. I believe that legislation passed in 2018. We're looking in the House right now are revisiting that requirement last year. we passed.

One of the things we passed was a requirement for a reading program in public schools to actually be phonics-based programs. And that's another hopefully thing that will help turn this around. We've really strayed from that. And the simple truth is I'd love to see us return to a classical-based model as a homeschool mom. I used classical education. Obviously, we know the Academy uses a classical-based model along with Think Will Carlton over there in Hillsville County. And I think it's one of the best ways to learn.

We strayed from that greatly in public education over the last 100 years, but it's an education model that worked for thousands of years prior to that. And I think if we return to that, we'd see a lot of improvement in our education in the state. Michigan K through 12 students will be banned from using smartphones during instructional time, starting this fall, after Governor Whitmer signed that bill into law. Are you encouraged that this can make a actual difference in our classrooms? Yeah, again, as I just mentioned, you know, classical-based education, really the thought there

is that you can learn with a stick and stand. And, you know, it's that basic. It starts out with a lot of memorization. As young children, young people, our minds are really made for memorization and repetition and repeating. And so starting there and then learning from there. And so we've actually started to see even countries, Denmark, Sweden is another one that of actually, they're now banning technology altogether and returning to textbooks in

elementary education in particular. And I think that there is, I think there's a push coming. I think we're going to see a return to that, especially with the advancement of AI that's coming. You know, it's really hard to know when a young person writes a paper. Did they write it or to chat GPT write it. And so we have lost, this is the first generation where we are seeing every other generation, we've seen advancements, educational advancements, even neurological advancements, from one generation to the next. This current generation, we have seen a dramatic decrease.

There was actually just testimony that took place in Congress on this. by a neuroscientist that pointed this out. And what has changed in the last 25 years? Technology advancement. Obviously, it's not going away, but we need to give our kids a solid foundation to start. And I think getting cell phones in particular and even in those elementary years, returning back to books and paper and pencil is key to do that. Thank you.

Governor Whitmer is reportedly set to propose a 90 million property tax break for Michigan seniors in her state budget presentation. Wouldn't this result in relatively higher taxes for younger people that the state is trying to attract? No, I think there's ways. We also in the House, we had a meeting last week on this. We were also looking at property tax reform. In fact, there is a, the act my tax acts. my tax proposal that's been circulated for signatures to even place that on the ballot in Michigan. There's other states that have started to do this, Florida being one in particular.

Part of the issue in Michigan is that some of the ways that our property tax laws are written is that you continue to have your property taxes increase at the rate of an inflationary rate or it was capped at 5%. So for multiple years, all of our property taxes were going up 5% during the Biden era when inflation was soaring. And that greatly increased the burden on, especially retirees with fixed income.

And then the challenges, even if they would like to move and downsize to a new home or a smaller home and the price of, real estate has skyrocketed as well, the moment you sell your house, then the cap on property taxes also less. So we're looking at some things like that. And, you know, as we continue to investigate in the state budget, last year we found 2,000 ghost employees that we were sending money to departments and they were never even hiring anyone. They were just holding on to that money. There's more of that there. There's more waste. There's more fraud that we continue to find.

And so I think there is a way to do this and actually help our aging population out and not actually have to increase the burden of taxes on to the rest of society. We just need to cut state government. Wait, can you tell me a bit about this fraud and the money going to nobody and was not familiar with this previously? Yeah, so last year we found over 2000, they called FTEs full-time employee allocations to various state departments. So they would get awarded this money and told to hire, you know, supposed to go to hire an employee.

And they wouldn't hire the employee. they just pocket that money and sit on it. So all of these departments, you know, Eagle in particular was one, the technology department, Secretary of State, they're just stockpiling this money, and they're not hiring anyone, and the money just gets to sit there and grow. It's like they are creating their own little savings accounts by department,

When that's all of our money, it's the money that we've paid into taxes. And we're saying, hey, if you're not using that money, it needs to go back to the state to be reused in next year's budget. Additionally, if you saw recently, we pulled back over $600 million in money that was earmarked for these special projects that were awarded. and two years ago budget and never got spent by the end of the fiscal year last year. And so we pulled that money back and then the Senate sued us over that, that we didn't have authority under the law and the Attorney General. And we've won in court three times the last request for appeal was denied again yesterday, I believe it was.

And so, again, that's money that was sitting. was supposed to be spent by projects throughout the state, but the labor and economic opportunity fund never distributed those funds. So they're just sitting on that money and holding it. And again, that's not their money. That's all of our money. And so making sure that we are being responsible with the taxpayers' dollars and using that. And I think by taking some of these funds that have been really wasted or not used as they were intended for and offering direct tax breaks, especially again for our elderly and maybe our vulnerable in Michigan, actually is more of a service. And we don't need more money in state government.

Thank you. Recently, the Michigan House approved your plan to lift a ban on deer baiting during open seasons. Why is this a needed reform for our high? hunters and outdoorsmen. Yeah, well, I grew up in rural Helfield County, and now I've lived over 20 years in rural branch county, and we farm, and the excessive overpopulation of deer has become a real challenge in the last five years and crop damage that's being caused by deer. you know, Michigan, we have the second highest population of deer in any state.

Texas beats us, but Texas has three times the landmass of Michigan. So that's why we have so many deer, and especially in southern Michigan, lower Michigan. Batting is legal in the UP. They're actually, they have the exact opposite problem in the UP because of some of the issues with predators up there and less access to food, they're really suffering in their deer population. I've offered we could do a roundup if they wanted and collect some of the deer down here and we'll move them up there, but DNR doesn't like that idea either. So deer baiting is really brought forth by a suggestion from a former sheriff there in Hosedale County as a way of

making something that could be a useful tool to help increase success of hunters during hunting season. It would allow baiting just during hunting season in Michigan. And hopefully it would, again, increase the number, especially doze that need to be harvested. It's estimated we need to take 40 to 50 percent of the dough. population for the next several years to even bring our deer herd back into a reasonable amount. We have less hunters hunting than ever before, and we've had some mild winters, and so the deer population just continues to grow. Another issue in our area is the fact of how many fields are being converted to solar arrays

with high fences that, again, pushing all that deer population out. of those areas and into fields and crops and decimating crops that it's really costly to agriculture. Thank you. It was recently announced that Michigan's Natural Resources Commission, NRC, will begin live streaming its meetings. How might this plan increase transparency with the NRC? Yeah, I think this is pretty critical. NRC, actually sets a lot of people don't know this, but NRC is essentially the guidance for DNR. They're kind of the big brother of DNR, if you will. They come together and they set kind of the rules and guidance.

For example, going back to the deer baiting bill, NRC would still have the authority to set the guidance if they deemed that there was an outbreak of disease in an area, for example, chronic wasting disease that we had challenges with back in 2018, 2019, why they implemented the ban on baiting to begin with in this area. So they could analyze that and then say we're going to, you know, adjust the measures for this year. They also do a lot with water assessment and usage around the state. We had an issue several years back ago over here in Branch County with them wanting to reassessing

to reassess a stream from a warm stream to a cool stream, which would have caused detrimental impacts, again, to agriculture and the usage of water from that stream. Having those live stream just really offers transparency statewide. You know, Michigan's a very large state. To get down to Lansing from northern Michigan is an eight to nine hour drive, depending on where you're at in the UP. And so live streaming these meetings allows people to understand and hear and really to hear from the experts at times that they bring in and understand the why behind

some of these decisions and then also be able to speak in response to those and just communicate better what's going on. So I think that's a really good thing. Thank you. You're listening to Sophia Mant interview Michigan State Representative Jennifer Warts on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. A new report shows that Michigan lost the second most jobs of any state in January 2026. Why is the state struggling to create an environment that keeps people employed? Well, I think there's a lot of factors there. You mentioned property taxes earlier. I would say that's one issue, property taxes. We have a lack of housing in Michigan.

We have, I would say, a lack of jobs that are sustainable to support a family on. And unfortunately, our governor in the last administration has taken a lot of state. and to the economic development fund and tax credits, the SOAR account, and given a lot of that money to large corporations that have produced very little in job growth. If you look at the situation, the battery plant and Marshall, for example, I mean, the jobs that are now saying that they're going to have their, I believe, are half of what they were originally told was going to come. and the state has spent millions of dollars to develop that site and facility.

Another example would be a CHIPS facility that was supposed to go in outside of the Flint area in a township. And I believe the state spent $200 and some million there. And then the CHIPS manufacturing plant pulled out last fall because of, lack of some federal tax credits that they were hoping to get to move there. So unfortunately, it's a very frustrating concept in way that this current leadership has gone in pursuing job growth instead of offering what I would like to call as fertile soil to grow jobs from the ground up here in Michigan. And, you know, if there were tax breaks, going back to some property tax breaks for small business owners, for farmers to start developing more opportunities for growth for affordable housing, I think you would see things turn around dramatically. But we've really, it's estimated that the state has spent $80,000 in trying to recruit jobs.

And the return on that has been generating jobs that only pay $50,000. So you've wasted $30,000 of taxpayer money for every job you've tried to create in Michigan in the last eight years. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has unveiled an immigration action reporting form to collect eyewitness accounts of ICE agents operating in Michigan. might this place Michiganders at greater risk of being in a dangerous situation? And could this make it harder for law enforcement to do their jobs? Well, I don't think Attorney General Massel is going to make much traction there. We've seen, you know, this battle going on, for example, in Minnesota. And frankly, it's hard for a state to think that they're going to override what the federal

This is, ICE is a federal agency. I do think there needs to be, you know, clear accountability there. Obviously, we've seen some situations where ICE has acted, maybe picked up the wrong individual or, in some cases, have possibly used excessive force. So there needs to be accountability there. I think Tom Holman going to Minnesota to ensure that and just kind of bring that situation into a state of agreement with the state government there was really helpful and good. But unfortunately, we are in a situation where, again, an open border for the four years of the Biden administration has led to this situation that we're facing. in our state. I think everyone would agree that we don't have a problem with immigration. Most of us, if we look back in our family heritage, we were immigrants here to America as well. But there has to be a

legal process for that, and the legal process needs to be followed. You know, if you are here illegally and you're not following the path for citizenship. And if there's not a path for that, then the State Department has indicated that, you know, you have to return to your own country. And so I don't really see that going anywhere at this point, but the Attorney General seems to like to file a lot of things against our federal government that don't take a lot of traction in the end.

Thank you. This has been Sophia Mant interviewing Michigan State Representative Jennifer Warts. She represents the 35th District in Lansing, covering most of Hillsdale and Branch counties. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.