Governor Gretchen Whitmer this week called for more bipartisanship during her Road Ahead address in Detroit, noting Republicans control the Michigan House while Democrats control the Senate. But can there actually be bipartisan cooperation in Lansing?

State Representative Brad Paquette, a Republican, has an open mind after the governor extended an olive branch.

“I’m very interested in what’s going to come about from this,” Paquette said. “The governor’s team reached out to me for the first time in two years, since I was a minority last term. I hadn’t heard anything from their team, but now we have a meeting that’s going to be scheduled to talk about some bipartisan initiatives.”

One issue Paquette thinks Republicans and Democrats will need to work together on is roads. He says a large increase in revenue for the state, by itself, isn’t a solution.

Meanwhile, state Representative Joey Andrews, a Democrat, tells us there is indeed a $4 billion shortfall in the roads budget coming. Can the two sides come up with a plan without the talks falling apart?

“It’s going to take a lot of negotiating,” Andrews said. “I think we have divided government now, obviously, which complicates it in some different ways. But from our perspective, we want to see some sort of revenue generation tied to it so that we’re creating a funding source so that the road funding is a little more permanent in nature.”

Andrews says Republicans are unlikely to agree to a solution that only relies on increasing revenues, while Democrats likely won’t agree to massive spending cuts elsewhere. He believes this could force the two sides to reach some compromise.

As for other bipartisan efforts, Paquette is working on ethics and government transparency reforms, while Andrews says he and Representative Pauline Wendzel are talking about reviving their small modular reactors legislation from the last session.

Photo: state Representative Brad Paquette.