Hillsdale — It’s a running joke here that drunk drivers drive straight, and sober drivers drive like drunks.
Of the 50-odd miles of roads in the city of Hillsdale, the majority have deep cracks and crevices and a patchwork mess of band-aid fixes that can last no more than a year or two.
Hillsdale faces its share of challenges in fixing its streets. The town has a disproportionate number of nonprofits dodging the local property taxes that are used to pay for new roads. So while the city is likely the worst-paved in Michigan, it doesn’t have the means to address the problem.
Every year, the streets get worse. For each mile repaved, several others crumble from winter ice and road salting.
The reality of the situation is borne out in the State of Michigan’s road quality statistics. According to data from the Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating system, Hillsdale County has the worst roads in the entire state.
According to the Transportation Asset Management Council’s annual roads and bridges report, 75% of the county’s roads were in “poor condition” in 2024—a full four percentage points worse than the runner-up, Gogebic County, a sparsely populated corner of the U.P.
And yet, as the streets fall to pieces, municipal governments in the county have shown little urgency in addressing the problem.
As local officials cite lack of road funding as a major cause of poor road quality, they spend the city’s cash reserves on economic development programs—including long-shot efforts such as boutique hotel renovations and issuing corporate tax subsidies to suburban housing developers.
Of course, the road troubles did not arise in a vacuum. For better or for worse, the state has the power to alleviate the burden. It’s just that Democrats in the legislature don’t want to.
For instance, Republicans proposed a bill in March that would double local road funding across Michigan’s counties without raising taxes. The better part of the increased funding would come from slashing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s corporate welfare program, known as the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.
But Democrats have resisted such attempts. The bill passed the Republican House but has stalled in the Senate, where Democrats are likely to kill it altogether.
State Sen. Jonathan Lindsey told Michigan Enjoyer that Democrats in the Senate—who hold a narrow majority—lack the focus necessary to get the roads fixed.
“While House Republicans have taken bold action to address our failing roads, I have yet to see the Democrat-controlled Senate take the issue seriously,” Lindsey said. “They seem more focused on passing anti-Trump resolutions than ‘fixing the damn roads.'”
And the local response to deteriorating infrastructure mirrors the larger state response. Like Whitmer and the Democrats, Hillsdale politicians won elections by promising road repairs but have been unwilling to make the program cuts needed to get more streets paved, the thing that the citizens of Hillsdale want above all.
Jacob Bruns is managing editor of the Hillsdalian, an effort to revitalize local political reporting.
