Every jurisdiction in this catalog has entries whose figures move when a bill passes, whose act takes effect on a later date, or whose program is repealed while its agency keeps advertising it. This page watches each jurisdiction's law, follows a bill through its own jurisdiction's process where its stages are recorded, and names the catalog entries each instrument touches.
9 instruments in Michigan. Tracked across 51 jurisdictions. Every other jurisdiction on the board is still watched by hand.
A bill that died is listed only where a guide, an agency, or a news story has described it as current law. That is the failure that puts a number in front of a veteran which no assessor, registrar, or school will honor.
▲Expands benefitsRequires 26 days of paid military leave a year for full-time firefighters and police officers.
Created the military leave for first responders act, MCL 419.221 to 419.229, with immediate effect on July 23, 2026. At the beginning of each year an organized fire department or a law enforcement agency, including the Department of State Police, a county sheriff’s office and a local police department, must provide each full-time member enlisted in the reserve components with not less than 26 days of paid military leave at the member’s regular pay rate, plus contractual fringe benefits for a member covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Leave may not be carried over or cashed out and lapses at the end of the year. A member who is not yet enlisted but has orders for a preinduction physical examination must be given paid leave to attend. Part-time, volunteer and paid on-call members are expressly excluded. The companion act, 2026 PA 57, amended MCL 32.273a so a local unit’s option to provide paid military leave is now subject to this act.
▲Expands benefitsCreated a National Guard member benefit fund that pays child care and TRICARE reimbursement.
Three acts effective December 9, 2025. PA 31 created the Michigan National Guard member benefit fund. PA 37 created the Guard child care assistance program, paying a stipend at a rate the adjutant general sets annually for up to 12 hours a day of care for weekend drills and annual training, to a maximum of 39 days a year, but only where the member is a single parent or the member’s spouse is also an eligible member. PA 36 created the TRICARE premium reimbursement program for individual TRICARE Reserve Select and TRICARE Dental premiums. A fourth act, PA 38, amended the tuition assistance act so that the reimbursement route draws on the new fund and the unencumbered balance of the tuition assistance fund at the end of the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025 transferred into it. Tracked because three programs now compete for one pot and each is expressly contingent on there being sufficient money in it.
▲Expands benefitsRequires every employer to post a notice of the resources available to veterans.
Created the veteran’s employee resource notification act, MCL 35.1271 to 35.1275, effective April 2, 2025. Every employer with one or more full-time employees must display, in a conspicuous place accessible to employees, a poster listing at least nine items: the state and federal veterans department contacts, the veterans crisis line telephone number, mental health and substance abuse services, education and job training resources, tax benefits, how to obtain the veteran designation on a driver licence or state identification card, unemployment benefit eligibility, and legal services. The Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity must create the poster with the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and supply it free. The act carries no penalty and names no enforcement agency.
▲Expands benefitsEnds annual reapplication for the disabled veteran property tax exemption once it is granted.
Amended MCL 211.7b so that an exemption granted as to taxes levied on or after January 1, 2025 remains in effect, without subsequent reapplication, until rescinded by the individual or denied by the assessor under the new section 7c. The act also added the proration rules in subsection (3) for a year in which the veteran does not own and occupy the homestead for the whole year, and extended the surviving spouse exemption to a homestead acquired after the veteran’s death. Tracked because guidance written before October 2023 tells veterans to refile every year, and a veteran who believes it may stop filing under the impression the exemption has lapsed, or keep filing in the belief it is required. Immediate effect October 19, 2023.
▼Restricts benefitsCreated an audit and rescission duty for the veteran exemption with a four-year clawback of erroneous exemptions.
Created MCL 211.7c, the other half of the bargain that ended annual reapplication. The individual must file a rescission form within 45 days of ceasing to own and occupy the homestead or of no longer qualifying, which includes a VA rating change. Each local assessing unit must implement a State Tax Commission audit program covering all information filed, auditing a property no more than once every three years absent a reasonable belief of ineligibility. An assessor may deny a claim for the current year and the three immediately preceding calendar years, with interest at 1 percent per month, and a denial is appealable to the residential and small claims division of the Tax Tribunal within 35 days of the notice. Tracked because the continuing exemption is widely reported and the continuing duty that came with it is not. Immediate effect October 19, 2023.
▲Expands benefitsLets a Guard member pass tuition assistance to a spouse or child.
Amended MCL 32.433 to permit the adjutant general to establish a policy allowing a lawfully married spouse, or a dependent child, stepchild or legally adopted child who has graduated high school or obtained an equivalency certificate or has turned 18, to use an eligible member’s Michigan National Guard tuition assistance. A child must use it before turning 26. Tracked because of the form of the grant: the section says the adjutant general "may establish a policy", so the transfer exists by departmental choice rather than by statutory entitlement, and a member relying on it should confirm the policy is current rather than cite the act. Immediate effect May 22, 2023.
▲Expands benefitsAuthorised Michigan's first state-run veterans cemetery.
Created the veterans cemetery act, MCL 35.1251 to 35.1259. The Department of Military and Veterans Affairs may acquire, purchase or designate land for a veterans cemetery in a county with a population of not less than 12,500 and not greater than 13,500, a bracket that names a place without naming it; the department has pursued a site in Crawford County. The director shall apply for and accept all grants available under 38 USC 2408, and a veterans cemetery fund was created that does not lapse at the end of a fiscal year. Section 35.1257 requires the cemetery to be administered in compliance with federal law, so eligibility will follow National Cemetery Administration rules rather than a Michigan standard. Tracked because the act authorises a cemetery rather than opening one, and a veteran planning around it needs the current construction and interment status from the department rather than the statute.
▲Expands benefitsLets a disabled veteran deduct a Department of Education student loan discharge from Michigan income.
Added a subdivision to MCL 206.30 letting a disabled veteran deduct, to the extent included in adjusted gross income, income reported on a federal Form 1099-C attributable to the cancellation or discharge of a student loan by the United States Department of Education under the total and permanent disability discharge program, 34 CFR 685.213. A disabled veteran for this subdivision is one determined by VA to be permanently and totally disabled and entitled to benefits at the 100% rate, or rated individually unemployable. As enacted the subdivision reached the 2016 through 2019 tax years retroactively and each tax year from 2025 on; 2025 PA 24 (House Bill 4961) re-enacted it for tax years 2025 on only, which is why the compiled section no longer names the earlier years. Tracked because the federal exclusion for student loan discharges under the American Rescue Plan Act reached discharges occurring in 2021 through 2025, so for a discharge after that period the Michigan deduction is the operative relief rather than a duplicate of it. The Michigan subdivision carries no expiry date of its own.
▲Expands benefitsRequires public employers to count a veteran's military experience when setting pay.
Added MCL 35.401a, effective March 19, 2019: if this state or a political subdivision of this state hires a veteran, it shall treat the veteran’s military experience as relevant professional experience for the purpose of determining the veteran’s wage or salary. It is a duty rather than a discretion and it bites at the moment the step or grade is set. Tracked because it is absent from most descriptions of Michigan’s veterans preference, which stop at the hiring preference in 35.401, and because it is the provision to cite when a Michigan public employer offers a starting salary that credits nothing for a military career.
A bill moves when the people who vote on it hear from the people it affects. Enter your address to see who represents you in Congress and in your state legislature, and where to get free, accredited help with a VA claim: your county veterans service officer or town veterans’ agent, and your state’s service offices.