Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday put her signature issue on hold when she agreed to do a budget without a long-term road funding plan. A move experts say takes away a key leverage point with Republican lawmakers who have been reluctant to raise new revenue.

Adrian Hemond, co-owner of the political consulting firm Grassroots Midwest, said the budget was her best negotiating tactic because the constitution requires it to happen.

“It’s not her only leverage point, but like I say, it was her best one,” Hemond said.

Whitmer staked her campaign on a promise to “fix the damn roads” and proposed a 45-cent gas tax increase to do so shortly after taking office.

For months, she signaled to Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clark Lake, that she wouldn’t sign a budget that didn’t include a long-term road funding fix. She reversed course Monday and agreed to move the budget forward without a roads plan.

Without a looming budget deadline or a firm commitment from Republicans on a new timeline -- Whitmer said only that she expects to get right into it after the budget is done – Hemond and others say a critical window of time to get legislation that generates new transportation revenue is closing.

That’s because members of the House of Representatives are up for election again in 2020 and won’t want the campaign trail to be about a tax increase they voted for.

“The more daylight you can put between that tax increase vote and your election or reelection, the better,” Hemond said.

Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy Research at Michigan State University, said the earlier part of a governor’s term tends to be when it’s most likely they will accomplish priorities, because there is leftover good will from the election “It’s kind of the honeymoon opportunity.”

He said it doesn’t mean it never happens afterward, but it does get less likely.

Asked Monday what she’d say to those who say she caved on road funding, Whitmer fired back.

“I’d say that there are a lot of people who probably think that this is an easy job, who don’t understand the ramifications of what the shutdown would mean, and think that the Republicans have shown any seriousness in solving the road problem. And unfortunately, they would be misinformed if that was their position,” Whitmer said.

“The fact of the matter is, a shutdown would be catastrophic for a lot of people who are counting on us to get this done and I’m not willing to play games with people’s lives.”

Both Grossmann and Hemond said one factor that weakened the governor's negotiating position was a perceived lack of support from members of her own party, most notably House Democrats.

The caucus proposed their own road plan earlier this summer, and House Democratic Leader Christine Greig, D-Farmington Hills, recently characterized Whitmer’s plan as likely being too “extreme” to happen.

“It’s clear that she did not have the democratic caucus fully behind her, and it’s hard to make any deal when you don’t have the majority in the legislature. It’s obviously harder if you don’t even have your minority fully behind you,” Grossmann said.

Hemond described Greg’s comments as “the knife sticking in her back from the minority leader,” and said it was likely a factor in Whitmer’s decision to move ahead on the budget without a roads plan.

Republican legislative leaders described Whitmer’s 45-cent increase proposal as a “nonstarter” early on. They presented her with options during a closed-door meeting last month, but Whitmer rejected the options, saying they impacted education funding.

Asked whether she thought leadership could ultimately come to an agreement House Democrats could get behind, Greig said, “We’re going to be looking for what we’re always looking for - education, water, improvements in our roads. We’ll be basing our support of a budget on our values.”

But as the budget cycle closes and the number of session days left this year dwindle, the time horizon extends and experts say Michigan’s road problem gets bigger.

“One of the driving features of the road funding debate is that the longer you wait, the more expensive it gets,” said Ken Sikkema, a Republican former Senate Majority Leader and co-founder of the Consensus Policy Project, a bipartisan group of former lawmakers which has also proposed a gas tax increase.

It doesn’t get any easier, either, he said.

A recent study from the Senate Fiscal Agency found Michigan’s road spending hadn’t kept pace with inflation, and the Michigan Infrastructure Trades Association pegs the increased cost of waiting at about $100 million per year.