A shady $250,000 grant to rehabilitate a Detroit church included in the $82.5 billion budget approved by Democrats last month is raising questions lawmakers in Lansing aren’t interested in discussing.

The earmark is among roughly $400 million in pet projects for state lawmakers in the 2025 budget approved during a 19-hour session that started on June 26 and concluded with party-line votes at 5 a.m. July 27.

Tatiana Grant, the Detroit event planner associated with the grant, told The Detroit News she worked with House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, to secure funding to rehabilitate the St. Columbia Episcopal church and parish house on the city’s far east side with the help of Invest Detroit.

“Developments in the city, the numbers start to become very difficult and start not making sense without the support of the state and the government,” Grant said.

Tate and Anthony, however, are distancing themselves from the project.

Amber McCann, Tate’s spokeswoman, told The News the speaker spoke with Grant but “he is not the sponsor of that grant and did not specifically ask for that money in the budget, though he is supportive of the work done by Invest Detroit.”

Anthony wouldn’t even discuss the grant, pointing to a new practice against revealing grant sponsors until after Whitmer has signed the spending into law.

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“Anthony’s office confirmed it was approached by Grant and said the money was meant to go to Invest Detroit to help with a development called 1822 Project,” The News reports. “The appropriations chairwoman would not answer additional questions.”

While budget documents point to Grant as the person behind the St. Columbia renovation project, the funding is directed to the nonprofit Invest Detroit, which helps developers restore buildings that don’t qualify for commercial mortgages. Grant plans to house her event planning business on the upper floor of the church, and to lease the rest of the space to commercial tenants.

“Though we do not have a funding commitment, we were working through due diligence items with Invest Detroit in order to be approved for a loan,” Grant said, adding that process is complicated by an ongoing divorce from her estranged husband and their co-ownership of the church they purchased in October for $1.3 million.

Her husband, Tony Saunders, is facing domestic violence charges, and Invest Detroit’s policies prevent loans to individuals with pending criminal charges, The New reports.

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Invest Detroit hasn’t committed to accepting the grant, but CEO Dave Blaskiewicz said the nonprofit is “excited to review and conduct due diligence on any proposed projects in this corridor.”

The questionable quarter-million dollar grant is only the latest included in billions of earmarks for lawmakers since 2022, with much of the money flowing to campaign donors, for-profit businesses, shady nonprofits, and the politically connected.

Some of those earmarks are now the subject of criminal investigations after The New exposed how the money is actually spent.

An FBI referral forced Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel this spring to launch an investigation into a $20 million grant for Whitmer appointee Fay Beydoun, a Democratic donor to both Nessel and Whitmer.

“Beydoun spent about $800,000 through December of the first $10 million tranche of the grant,” The Detroit News reported in April. “Among her expenses were a $4,500 coffeemaker, an $11,000 first-class plane ticket to Budapest, more than $40,000 in furniture and $408,000 in salary costs for two people over a three-month period.”

The money was supposed to go toward the launch of the nonprofit business accelerator Global Link International, which was incorporated days after lawmakers approved the grant in 2022. Whitmer in 2019 appointed Beydoun to executive committee for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation that distributes the business incentive grants, and she served in that role until April 5.

“My intentions have always been to strengthen Michigan’s global footprint and attract businesses to the state of Michigan from all over the world,” Beydoun told The News.

Nessel is also investigating another $25 million Whitmer-approved grant for a “Complete Health Campus” in Clare that was secured by former House Speaker Jason Wentworth, R-Clare, that was awarded to a nonprofit created by his former aide, David Coker Jr., and was used to purchase a $3.5 million plot of land from a firm co-owned by state Rep. Tom Kunse, R-Clare.

The state suspended that grant in 2023 after the first $10 million was paid out following a series of “red flags” raised by Bridge Michigan.

Lawmakers are now attempting to claw back the grants for both the Complete Health Campus and Beydoun with Senate Bill 749. The bill, sponsored by Anthony, cleared the Senate in May and is now pending in the lower chamber. Claw-back language was originally included in the budget, but Democrats removed it prior to final passage.