Where's Gretchen?  Kaitlyn Buss of the Detroit News notes that Gov. Whitmer was nowhere to be found during the release of the FY 2026/27 Executive Budget:

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/kaitlyn-buss/2025/02/06/buss-whitmers-still-missing/78289090007/

Whitmer's still missing
By Kaitlyn Buss - February 6, 2026

At this point it would be newsier if Gov. Gretchen Whitmer actually showed up to work in Lansing than it is that she does not.

Michigan’s problems are too big for its governor to be in the check-out lane, Buss writes.
Her avoidance of the public and the press has become commonplace since the November 2024 election when she stopped working to either get on or elect a Democratic presidential ticket.

But Michigan’s problems are too big for its governor to be in the check-out lane.

If Whitmer does care about the challenges facing the state she still governs, she has repeatedly failed to show it.

State Budget Director Jen Flood speaks with others before she presents Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s proposed 2026 fiscal year budget to a joint session of the House and Senate appropriations committees in the state Capitol’s Heritage Hall
Rather than be present and answer questions at her own budget presentation Wednesday morning, the governor dropped the details of an $84 billion spending plan remotely on lawmakers and sent along her budget director, Jen Flood, to answer questions.

Whitmer was enjoying a more celebratory environment, attending a Michigan Reconnect graduation, in Grand Rapids.

She clearly wanted to avoid accountability from Republicans and the press for proposing a record-high spending plan that offers almost no solutions except more spending and new taxes. It glosses over failing schools, bad roads and population stagnation.

Whitmer should have been at the Capitol. She is still the state’s chief executive officer, however uninterested she is in that role. It's a job that requires in-person leadership, interactions with the Legislature and explanations about where taxpayer money will be spent.

Every budget presentation since 2002 has been followed by an opportunity for reporters to ask questions of the governors themselves, according to Gongwer.

Yet Whitmer couldn’t show up to perform this one basic task?

It's a show of disrespect for the governing process, and for the Legislature, which now has a House controlled by Republicans.

Lawmakers have seven months to finalize the state budget — though ideally it should be done in June. Meanwhile, the governor has delayed her State of the State address until an unusually late Feb. 26.

In what has become typical fashion, she issued a string of social media videos about the budget — full of props and condescendingly short on details — in lieu of her physical presence.

Her abdication of leadership is also an insult to her own party, which has been in disarray and ignored by her since Democrats suffered losses in the fall election.

Since then, Whitmer has been AWOL, with the exception of a 20-minute speech at the Detroit Auto Show in early January.

By contrast, Republican Speaker of the House Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, gave a more than hour-long press briefing Thursday, addressing everything from roads, taxes and the budget to the lawsuit against him from Senate Democrats and a new transparency plan.

Democratic Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson is seemingly distancing herself from Whitmer's absence, perhaps rightly deducing that the governor's neglect hurts her own chances in 2026.

"Leadership isn't about words — it's about action," Benson wrote on X Thursday morning. "It's about showing up."

Whitmer isn't showing up for the people of Michigan, who are still paying her salary. She spent long stretches outside the state in 2024 campaigning for Democrats and promoting her book and is continuing the pattern of absentee governing this year.

Meanwhile, Michigan stagnates without an engaged, effective leader.

Whitmer’s overtures to bipartisanship and the "road ahead" will continue to fall flat, along with her legacy, while she ignores the job she was elected to do.