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Snyder Calls For Billions Of Dollars In Infrastructure Upgrades In State Of The State Address

LANSING (WWJ) - Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says Flint's water crisis and the massive Fraser sinkhole show the need to start discussing how to pay for expensive but necessary infrastructure upgrades across the state.

"We need to literally invest billions of dollars of new investment over the next several decades," Snyder told state lawmakers, Tuesday evening. "We need to look at all public and private sources for this — including fees, taxes, grants, bonds. We need to start now working on this issue, and we need to state committed to it."

The governor made infrastructure a theme in his 7th annual State of the State address in Lansing.

The Republican governor says that to start, there must be better coordination so local road, water, sewer and other projects occur simultaneously to save cash.

"We saw what happened in Fraser with the sinkhole," Snyder said. "We're at risk in every corner of Michigan for aging infrastructure, and we cannot take this for granted.

"Michigan residents deserve safe, relabel, sustainable infrastructure. That's why I created the 21st Century Infrastructure Commission last year."

During last year's state of the state address, the Flint Water Crisis dominated the dialogue from Gov. Snyder. This year it was more than a half hour before he touched on the issue.

Snyder said progress has been made, but there is still a lot of work to do in Flint and across the state.

"On water quality we need to improve; we learned that from the Flint situation," Snyder said. "And I'm excited to enforce a stricter standard than the federal government for the lead and copper rule. We need a better rule. That was part of the problem."

"It needs to have lower acceptable levels, it needs to have better testing protocols, it needs to have better notification and it needs to have better public input," Snyder said. "So I look forward to working with the Legislature on that."

As far as what we're doing well, the governor touted job growth in the state.

Snyder said, since 2010, nearly 500,000 jobs have been created and unemployment is at the lowest rate in 15 years — making Michigan number one in the Great Lakes region and number six in the region for private sector job growth.

"Manufacturing: We're simply leading the nation," he added. "We've created over 160,000 manufacturing jobs since December, 2010. We lead the nation. We are number one both in number of manufacturing jobs and growth rate percentage."

Snyder said — when it comes to the issue of public safety — it should be noted that Detroit, Flint and Saginaw have all seen a double-digit decrease in violent-crimes since 2012.

The governor also touched on the issue of health care, reiterating that the Health Michigan plan has enrolled more than 640,000 low-income residents in insurance.

As Republicans in Washington DC work on a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)— and with changes likely coming in health insurance across the U.S. — Snyder says states should look to Michigan to be a "leader in that dialogue."

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