House leads way in eliminating 2,000 ghost employees — Speaker vows to defund remaining 3,000

House leads way in eliminating 2,000 ghost employees — Speaker vows to defund remaining 3,000

In a Tuesday press conference, Speaker of the House Matt Hall, R-Richland, announced that Michigan lawmakers have made progress in eliminating so-called “ghost employees” from the state budget, but the work is far from over. Hall said that during the drafting of the 2026 fiscal year budget, Republican leadership identified and removed roughly 2,000 ghost employee positions. These state-funded positions exist on paper but are not held by any work…