ALPENA — Road commissioners across Northern Michigan are deciding whether to join a new organization that wants to give rural roads more of a voice in Lansing.
The Rural Roads Alliance of Michigan was started in November 2025 by three rural road commissioners from Mackinac, Isabella, and Houghton counties.
President of the organization and Mackinac Road Commissioner Lester Livermore said Northern Michigan counties need more of a voice when the state is making decisions on rural roads.
“It’s just really easy with these smaller, less dense populations to get forgotten in the past legislative process,” Livermore said. “So we’re trying to organize and get the federal commissions to help find somebody who will make sure that we just have that constant, persistent voice for rural roads in Lansing.”
Michigan counties, including those in Northeast Michigan, are at the finishing stages of cleaning up after historic flooding and ice storms this past spring.
James Lake, Michigan Department of Transportation north region communications representative, said while the damage from the ice storms this year isn’t nearly as bad as last year, floods have washed out routes throughout Northern Michigan. Many road commissions are still working on construction from the washouts.
Rogers City Mayor Scott McLennan said the flooding caused massive damage to some county roads and M-68, which is the city’s major route to get to I-75.
“We’ve been thankful that our state representative and senator have been working to secure additional funding because frankly, our budgets aren’t made to handle these disaster scenarios,” McLennan said.
Forty six counties, from Isabella County to throughout the Upper Peninsula, were invited to be part of the alliance. Livermore said he wants all counties that are part of the alliance to have an equal voice.
The alliance will focus on issues specific to rural roads in Northern Michigan. Livermore said some of the issues could include increasing funding for federal forest fund roads that have had the same funding since the 80s to creating regulations on gravel pits.
Roads across Southern Michigan tend to have more care because road commissions have more money to hire lobbyists, Livermore said.
“The big urbans can afford to hire their own lobbyists,” he said. “Small counties like Mackinac and Alpena and Cheboygan and all these…we don’t have the budgets to start doing that on our own.”
Alpena County Road Commission was one of the commissions that received the invitation. The commissioners moved to table their decision of whether to join with them in July.
“We’ve determined that it might be beneficial for (the alliance)...to give a presentation to my board about the Rural Road Alliance and that way they could have a better understanding of what the objectives are,” Ryan Brege, managing director of the road commission, said.
Livermore said the alliance is currently trying to get as many road commissions as possible, but this may take some effort.
“The reality is that we’re going to have to probably work and we’re going to have to prove ourselves,” he said. “Road commissions are very frugal with their money and to join something like this, they’re going to have to believe that it’s going to be beneficial to the people of their counties.”
