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Why the road building industry is focusing on mental health · Talking Michigan Transportation

• 0:07
  Jeff Cranson: Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast.
• 0:10
  Jeff Cranson: I'm Jeff Cranson.
• 0:11
  Jeff Cranson: Today's episode is going to focus on a troubling issue, but something that people are working hard to address, and that's mental health challenges in the road construction industry.
• 0:26
  Jeff Cranson: Gregg Brunner, who is the chief engineer and chief operations officer for the Michigan Department of Transportation, has taken a lead role in trying to educate people about this and the need to talk about issues that they're facing and, hopefully, through being out in the open, about them finding help, finding comfort in knowing that others are dealing with the same things.
• 0:49
  Jeff Cranson: He recently spoke on a panel at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, also known as AASHTO, at their annual conference, and Gregg has some real insights on why this is important to him, why he saw this as an extension of advocacy work he's been doing for safety the safety of workers and drivers pretty much the entirety of his career as an engineer at MDOT, and he also talks about some of the troubling statistics that have informed the conversation.
• 1:24
  Jeff Cranson: Later, we'll touch briefly on some other news related again to work zone safety, and that is the approval by the state Senate of a bill that previously made it through the Michigan House that will allow for work zone safety cameras.
• 1:38
  Jeff Cranson: About half the states use cameras in work zones to monitor speeds and initiate citations for drivers who exceed those speed limits, and they've made a tremendous difference.
• 1:51
  Jeff Cranson: As we've touched on in the podcast, with experts advocating for this previously, it's lowered the crashes in those work zones and lowered the fatalities and injuries because of that.
• 2:02
  Jeff Cranson: So I hope you enjoy the conversation.
• 2:05
  Jeff Cranson: So, Gregg, thanks for taking time to be here talking about this important topic.
• 2:10
  Jeff Cranson: I want to talk first about what's really driving this conversation, and that's your work, your advocacy for taking on mental health challenges in the road construction industry, and then, secondly, maybe touch a little bit on some legislative movement that's positive from an MDOT perspective concerning work zone safety cameras and our hope that that'll get across the finish line soon.
• 2:37
  Jeff Cranson: But this panel that you were on at AASHTO in Philadelphia last month Sounded really interesting.
• 2:47
  Jeff Cranson: And just talk a little bit about what drives your interest Somebody who's long been involved in safety and trying to find innovative ways to make the workforce safer and what they do, because the work obviously has its perils, but most people don't think about the, the other part of that, the part that you don't you know, the part you don't see, you see injuries to the body.
• 3:10
  Jeff Cranson: You don't necessarily see injuries to the mind.
• 3:12
  Jeff Cranson: So talk about what sparked your interest.
• 3:14
  Gregg Brunner: Well, thanks again for having me today, Jeff.
• 3:16
  Gregg Brunner: And again, this is something that's become very important to me.
• 3:19
  Gregg Brunner: I know at MDOT people kind of think of me as a big safety advocate in everything I do, whether it's work zone safety or traffic safety, occupational safety.
• 3:28
  Gregg Brunner: Early on in my career I was involved in traffic and safety design.
• 3:31
  Gregg Brunner: So I looked through crash reports and see where there are issues and try to find engineering solutions to stop people from getting hurt or killed in traffic crashes out there.
• 3:40
  Gregg Brunner: But what really sparked my interest in safety is when I got involved in traffic incident management training where I was an emergency management coordinator for our area.
• 3:50
  Gregg Brunner: So what I would do is kind of work with first responders in the area whether it's police, fire, EMS, tow trucks or even MDOT first responders and how to respond when crashes or incidents happen to kind of clear the roadway, get things open faster and, most importantly, keep them all safe.
• 4:07
  Gregg Brunner: I went out to lots of crashes and incidents.
• 4:10
  Gregg Brunner: I saw lots of bad things, things that kept me up at night.
• 4:13
  Gregg Brunner: You know, I realized there's a lot more that goes on to these crashes.
• 4:16
  Gregg Brunner: There's the personal impacts, the folks that are impacted out there, you know, as these occur and that kind of got me thinking even further what can I do to not only clear these faster but to stop these from happening because it's horrible?
• 4:29
  Gregg Brunner: So, with that, I remember the first three crashes I went to that were fatal.
• 4:35
  Gregg Brunner: I walked up to the state police and kind of talked to them and they said all three of them they said this person would still be alive today if they wore a seatbelt.
• 4:44
  Gregg Brunner: Which really hit home with me.
• 4:46
  Gregg Brunner: You know, I can look.
• 4:47
  Gregg Brunner: I looked at each of those from an engineering standpoint.
• 4:49
  Gregg Brunner: What could I have done different on the roadway here to to stop this person from dying or whatever happened?
• 4:54
  Gregg Brunner: And again it comes down to wearing a seatbelt.
• 4:57
  Gregg Brunner: Which kind of got me into how, as an engineer, how can I impact driver behavior?
• 5:01
  Gregg Brunner: So what can I do to make them wear a seatbelt or make them want to drive safe?
• 5:05
  Gregg Brunner: So I started talking a lot about Toward Zero Deaths to anyone that would listen, just kind of giving facts of what's going on in our roadways out there, trying to make a difference there.
• 5:14
  Gregg Brunner: And then from then I got more involved in work zone safety and the Work Zone Safety Task Force in Michigan where we partner with the contracting industry to see what we can do to keep our work zone safer and I know we'll talk about that a little later with our work zone safety cameras that are going through legislation right now.
• 5:30
  Gregg Brunner: But kind of as a result of that, what I started doing just for awareness is wearing orange every Wednesday, which everyone sees at work.
• 5:37
  Gregg Brunner: Quite a few other people do it as well, and during Work Zone Awareness Week I bought an orange suit which stands out and gets lots of compliments whenever I wear it.
• 5:47
  Jeff Cranson: Or at least lots of comments.
• 5:49
  Gregg Brunner: That's right.
• 5:49
  Gregg Brunner: Either way, it's getting noticed and that's what I want to do and I've also kind of overseen our occupational safety area there and so, again, looking at making sure people are wearing the proper hard hat, safety vest, those types of things when they're out in the field doing the job to keep them safe.
• 6:05
  Gregg Brunner: But kind of what really sparked my interest in the mental health side of things is I was asked to be on a panel at our Consulting Engineers Conference last year and to talk about mental health and I just kind of started thinking that you know, what do I know about mental health?
• 6:21
  Gregg Brunner: How has it impacted me?
• 6:22
  Gregg Brunner: And I just started thinking of what our department's been through in the last four or five years.
• 6:26
  Gregg Brunner: I started thinking about just the number of suicides that have happened in the department and that far outweighed a lot of the other safety initiatives I had focused on, whether it's work zone safety or traffic safety, occupational safety, those types of things.
• 6:39
  Gregg Brunner: I was so concerned about making sure people wore their hard hat.
• 6:43
  Gregg Brunner: I wasn't really thinking about what was going on under their hard hat.
• 6:46
  Gregg Brunner: So, again, this is something that's not just a Michigan-type thing or MDOT thing.
• 6:52
  Gregg Brunner: This is something that's going on nationally.
• 6:54
  Gregg Brunner: Right now, that's being talked about, which is why I was pleased to see it happen nationally at that AASHTO conference recently.
• 7:00
  Gregg Brunner: But when you start looking at stats overall, in the construction industry that has the second highest rate of suicide out of any industry in the US, behind mining, and you know when you start thinking about it.
• 7:13
  Gregg Brunner: Construction is a high stress job.
• 7:14
  Gregg Brunner: Everything's low bid, so there's tight, tight time frames, tight schedules.
• 7:19
  Gregg Brunner: You're away from your family a lot long hours.
• 7:21
  Gregg Brunner: Those types of things all build up with mental health.
• 7:24
  Gregg Brunner: That's going on out there.
• 7:25
  Gregg Brunner: And when you look in the US, there's almost 50,000 suicides a year overall and in 2022, 5,000 of those were from construction folks and in 2023, 7,000.
• 7:37
  Gregg Brunner: So, that number is increasing and those are just national numbers.
• 7:40
  Gregg Brunner: But when you look in Michigan, in 2022, construction suicides increased by 65% overall, which is a huge jump.
• 7:48
  Gregg Brunner: And kind of overall, when you look at construction itself, you're 12 times more likely to die by suicide if you're a construction worker than an occupational hazard.
• 7:58
  Gregg Brunner: So again, that was kind of unbelievable to me.
• 8:02
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, those stats are unbelievable and we know that mental health issues increased tremendously in all age groups and certainly across other industries too.
• 8:13
  Jeff Cranson: But during the pandemic and now that we're a couple of years out of it and some people have, you know, gone back to complete normal and maybe even forgotten what it was like there for a couple of years, especially that first year, these mental health challenges remain.
• 8:27
  Jeff Cranson: What did you hear in your panel from the experts and people studying this?
• 8:31
  Jeff Cranson: You know why they think that is.
• 8:33
  Jeff Cranson: Is there something?
• 8:35
  Jeff Cranson: Are the pressures greater because of people driving faster?
• 8:42
  Jeff Cranson: I mean, that's obviously a phenomenon across the country.
• 8:44
  Jeff Cranson: We saw that started with the pandemic and has continued.
• 8:47
  Jeff Cranson: Is it just a whole bunch of things?
• 8:50
  Gregg Brunner: Yeah, it's just kind of a whole bunch of things.
• 8:52
  Gregg Brunner: There's not one kind of silver bullet solution to this.
• 8:55
  Gregg Brunner: You know, people tend throughout the pandemic and remote work and other things.
• 9:00
  Gregg Brunner: People are a little more isolated so it might not be as easy to see something going on, but kind of what it boils down to, at least in the construction industry and other areas, a lot of it.
• 9:08
  Gregg Brunner: What it boils down to, at least in the construction industry and other areas, a lot of it.
• 9:11
  Gregg Brunner: When you think about construction workers, lots of those are males and so you know, kind of growing up, if you're a man you're taught to kind of be tough and if you're going through these types of things, to bury it deep and push forward.
• 9:21
  Gregg Brunner: So there's a lot of internalizing that goes on with this and just kind of the more or less the stigma or taboo that mental health isn't really something to talk about.
• 9:31
  Gregg Brunner: When you start talking about physical health, people are fine to tell you you know, I broke my wrist or my sore throat or hurt my knee or whatever happened.
• 9:39
  Gregg Brunner: But it's not like that.
• 9:40
  Gregg Brunner: When you start talking about mental health, there's just a stigma associated to that.
• 9:44
  Gregg Brunner: Like if I mention mental health to a group they're going to say anxiety or depression or suicide or bad types of things.
• 9:52
  Gregg Brunner: They aren't thinking about mental health as kind of work-life balance or disconnecting from your phone or exercising, or what do you do to kind of clear your head, to relieve a lot of those stressors that we all get day to day.
• 10:05
  Gregg Brunner: So, again, a lot of it is just, I think, the stigma or perception that if you do talk about mental health there's some sort of weakness there.
• 10:13
  Gregg Brunner: And that's kind of what I'm trying to get over is just to start the conversation.
• 10:17
  Gregg Brunner: Again, I'm an engineer.
• 10:18
  Gregg Brunner: I'm not trained to be a social worker or counselor or therapist like that.
• 10:22
  Gregg Brunner: I'm just an engineer that's trained to find solutions.
• 10:26
  Gregg Brunner: So the best thing I can do, I think, is just start the conversation, get people talking about it so that they can get the help they need.
• 10:34
  Jeff Cranson: And you've found that there are, you know, obvious benefits.
• 10:37
  Jeff Cranson: I mean, it's almost like a spontaneous support group can break out when you start talking about these things and somebody shares something and then others find comfort knowing that other people have similar experiences.
• 10:49
  Jeff Cranson: Can you talk a little bit about that and how that went at this particular panel?
• 10:54
  Gregg Brunner: Sure, and actually what I mentioned on the panel is just within our department, within the Michigan Department of Transportation, what we recently did is started employee resource group tied to mental health.
• 11:05
  Gregg Brunner: So again, this is something that just kind of sparked up.
• 11:08
  Gregg Brunner: Two people actually volunteered to lead that group, liz Wilson and Julia Collins Lightfoot but what they did is just kind of put an ad out in our communication that we're starting a mental health group.
• 11:20
  Gregg Brunner: You know, we set up an initial meeting which was just to kind of see for anyone that was interested and to be honest, I didn't know if anyone would even show up.
• 11:29
  Gregg Brunner: It might just be the three of us there talking.
• 11:31
  Gregg Brunner: But the meeting started and I was surprised to see about 50 people over 50 people attended and that's about 2% of the department's total employees, which just blew me away.
• 11:43
  Gregg Brunner: And again, I didn't know how the conversation would go.
• 11:47
  Gregg Brunner: But people started talking and sharing experiences and things that had happened.
• 11:52
  Gregg Brunner: And you know that I think was an hour meeting and we didn't stop short.
• 11:57
  Gregg Brunner: We could have kept going, I think, just because people started opening up to talk.
• 12:00
  Gregg Brunner: And what I heard kind of after the fact even is that people within the department that didn't know each other would call someone from that meeting that shared an experience, just to continue the conversation.
• 12:12
  Gregg Brunner: So things kind of took over organically from there to continue those conversations, to keep moving forward and keep this on everybody's radar, which just blew me away kind of how that started initially, which was fantastic to see, obviously we're not going to get into who, but can you just talk about some of the kinds of things you heard?
• 12:32
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, sure.
• 12:33
  Gregg Brunner: Lots of people dealt with suicides from people they knew, or talking about depression or other types of things and how they got treatment and how it helped.
• 12:41
  Gregg Brunner: One person even said that they wish this group had been here three years ago and they were going through some tough times, so it was kind of a full range of discussion there.
• 12:53
  Gregg Brunner: But again, all related back to mental health and how they deal with it and things they've done to be helpful on their end.
• 13:01
  Jeff Cranson: What do you see going forward?
• 13:03
  Jeff Cranson: I guess, what's your best hope about what can come out of this?
• 13:07
  Jeff Cranson: I mean, it sounds like you would consider victory if more people just feel comfortable opening up.
• 13:12
  Gregg Brunner: Right, and I think, as a leader in the department, that's my goal is to try to change the stigma associated with it so that if somebody is going through a tough time and needs counseling, they get the help they need.
• 13:27
  Gregg Brunner: We have some fantastic resources working for the state of Michigan.
• 13:31
  Gregg Brunner: We have an employee support program that's totally free to all of our employees.
• 13:35
  Gregg Brunner: I think sometimes, though, it's hard for people just to take the initiative to make that call there, because again, a lot of the perception is it gets back to being weak or something else, which is far from the case.
• 13:46
  Gregg Brunner: So, again, my goal is just to change the stigma, to see what we can do to make this work and kind of get this more on everybody's radar out there, because this is I don't want the numbers to keep going up I know at when you talk to anyone that runs a corporation or business, their employees are their number one resource, so anything we can do to make things better for those folks.
• 14:07
  Gregg Brunner: I know lots of us that work for the state of Michigan.
• 14:10
  Gregg Brunner: We're here because we want to make a difference, and so, when I look at things, if I can save a million lives, that would be fantastic.
• 14:16
  Gregg Brunner: If I can save a thousand lives by anything I did safety related, that would be great.
• 14:20
  Gregg Brunner: But at the end of my career if I can say I saved one person's life, I'll know I made a difference.
• 14:26
  Gregg Brunner: So that's my goal with all of this is just to make a difference.
• 14:30
  Jeff Cranson: Stay with us.
• 14:36
  Safety Message: We'll have more on the other side of this important message.
• 14:38
  Safety Message: Did you know Newton's first law of motion states that a body in motion will continue moving at the same speed and same direction, while the second law states that an object acted upon by the force will undergo-- Wait, I thought this was a snowplow safety message.
• 14:51
  Safety Message: It is, which is why this is relevant.
• 14:53
  Safety Message: Don't you think that's complicating things just a bit?
• 14:56
  Safety Message: Not at all.
• 14:57
  Safety Message: A snowplow weighs 17 times more than your average car.
• 15:01
  Safety Message: Right, and snowplows tend to travel at slower than posted speeds.
• 15:05
  Safety Message: So the third law states that action and reaction are equal and opposite.
• 15:10
  Safety Message: I think it's easier just to remind motorists to give plows the room they need to do their jobs, follow at a safe distance and don't drive into snow clouds, things like that.
• 15:20
  Safety Message: Well, if you're going to make it that simple, why don't you just say don't crowd the plow?
• 15:24
  Safety Message: Great idea Stay safe this winter.
• 15:27
  Safety Message: Don't crowd the plow.
• 15:28
  Safety Message: That's it?
• 15:29
  Safety Message: Yeah, that's it.
• 15:32
  Jeff Cranson: Do you think in talking to the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association, they've got a focus on safety and they have people that advocate and try to come up with creative and innovative ways and study what goes on nationally.
• 15:48
  Jeff Cranson: Do you think these conversations can lead to some tangible changes?
• 15:54
  Jeff Cranson: I mean, can you think of anything that, beyond getting people to talk about it and open up about things that can relieve some of the stresses and pressures of the job?
• 16:05
  Gregg Brunner: Yeah, again, there's definite benefit there.
• 16:07
  Gregg Brunner: I know most of the industry in Michigan has had speakers at their conferences or other things tied to mental health and a lot of it just gets down to day-to-day things that we can do different.
• 16:16
  Gregg Brunner: You know, if you're, I have some things I do.
• 16:19
  Gregg Brunner: I'll go for a walk if I'm stressed out on my lunch break or after work or disconnect the phone, those types of things.
• 16:24
  Gregg Brunner: But again, there's not a one solution for everybody.
• 16:29
  Gregg Brunner: You have to find what works to you when it ties into this.
• 16:32
  Gregg Brunner: But again, it's just keeping it on everybody's radar out there is, I think, the best thing we can do, at least from a starting point.
• 16:39
  Gregg Brunner: If companies don't have some kind of employee assistant program or something else, that's something they could look into.
• 16:45
  Gregg Brunner: But again, just let people know where the resources are and where they can go to get them I think is a huge first step here.
• 16:51
  Jeff Cranson: What would you advise a manager or a coworker when they see signs of a coworker perhaps having issues, but not not wanting to talk about it, not willing to to to face up to the possibility that that's affecting them, affecting their, their work and their life?
• 17:11
  Jeff Cranson: How do you approach that?
• 17:14
  Gregg Brunner: Well, to start out, it's not easy, I know when you ask anyone how they're doing they just say fine and that's about it.
• 17:19
  Gregg Brunner: But at least in the department we have resources that that employees support or employee services program that can help managers start to initiate the conversation with employees, give them almost a script to go through when they're talking to their employees about what's going on.
• 17:38
  Gregg Brunner: You know what are the deeper issues and kind of what resources are available from that standpoint.
• 17:49
  Gregg Brunner: So again it all gets down to just starting the conversation.
• 17:52
  Jeff Cranson: I think yeah, I think so.
• 17:54
  Jeff Cranson: I think one of your panelists said that there's a 75% remission rate for mental health and substance abuse issues if one stays engaged six months to a year in a treatment plan.
• 18:07
  Jeff Cranson: Did that surprise you?
• 18:10
  Jeff Cranson: Had you heard that before it came up during that discussion?
• 18:13
  Gregg Brunner: No, that actually surprised me.
• 18:14
  Gregg Brunner: It was kind of an interesting panel there because there were people from different backgrounds.
• 18:19
  Gregg Brunner: Of course I'm with the Department of Transportation, there's one from the Association of General Contractors, Another was a doctor in substance abuse and mental health issues and fourth was a professor.
• 18:31
  Gregg Brunner: You know each brought a different perspective, so usually when you're on a panel you don't learn a lot.
• 18:37
  Gregg Brunner: But this is the one, one of the panels, where I actually had to take notes at the end on a few action items that I had learned there and best practices from others.
• 18:44
  Gregg Brunner: So it was a fantastic session.
• 18:47
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, and I think the AASHTO publication covered it well.
• 18:51
  Jeff Cranson: I think you used a good mix of the quotes from you and the other panelists.
• 18:56
  Jeff Cranson: That one that I just talked about that stack came from Richard Jones, who's the chief clinical officer at something called your Turn Health.
• 19:04
  Jeff Cranson: So, yeah, very, very interesting.
• 19:07
  Jeff Cranson: Well, thanks, greg, for talking about that and for everything you're doing on that front.
• 19:13
  Jeff Cranson: Let's pivot a second, related obviously to all of these things safety and safety in construction work and keeping the workers safer, which would obviously, if they feel safer, that reduces their stress, reduces the pressures on them that lead to these mental health issues.
• 19:30
  Jeff Cranson: Have some kind of work zone enforcement safety cameras that capture license plates and allow for sending citations to people that speed in work zones, because we found that no amount of public service ads or messages or signs, discussions, whatever seems to be making a difference, especially again since the pandemic and the chronic speeding through work zones putting workers at risk.
• 20:10
  Jeff Cranson: So we're pretty pleased the full Senate passed this bill and the House just needs to concur because it had previously come out of the Michigan House.
• 20:19
  Jeff Cranson: Talk about what you think this will mean for MDOT road projects.
• 20:25
  Gregg Brunner: Sure, again, this is something that we're excited about.
• 20:28
  Gregg Brunner: I had mentioned previously that I'm on the Work Zone Safety Task Force and in talking to industry and contractors and even MDOT folks, the one thing that really scares them the most isn't necessarily the work they do, it's the drivers going by them at 70, 80 plus miles an hour, looking at their cell phone, not paying attention to the work zone that they're in, or the person standing right next to them driving by at those speeds.
• 20:51
  Gregg Brunner: So enforcement is always something that seems to come up, and we have a great partnership with the Michigan State Police for work zone enforcement, just to kind of keep people driving.
• 21:00
  Gregg Brunner: Number one, keep their eyes on the road and keep them driving at safe speeds.
• 21:04
  Gregg Brunner: So what this legislation would do, it would allow us to put in work zone safety cameras in our work zones, because I know the state police can't be everywhere.
• 21:15
  Gregg Brunner: They have resource concerns as well, so it gives us another option to kind of reinforce the posted speeds through our work zones to keep everybody safe.
• 21:25
  Gregg Brunner: So what this entails is these bills would allow us to get a contractor on board to put up these safety cameras within our work zones that would be able to, like you had mentioned previously, capture license plates and driver pictures and then mail out citations to those that are speeding through the work zones, and these aren't like normal traffic tickets that have points and other things associated.
• 21:51
  Gregg Brunner: The way the legislation is written is it's the first offense the person just gets a letter in the mail stating that they were caught speeding through a work zone.
• 21:59
  Gregg Brunner: The second offense would be a $150 fine, and then the second offense would be a 150 fine, and then the third offense would be a 300 fine, so more, instead of getting them with points, it actually hits them in the pocketbook, which is a little bit of an eye opener for many folks out there.
• 22:14
  Gregg Brunner: I think, and again, the goal of this whole program here is not to force citations.
• 22:21
  Gregg Brunner: The goal is driver compliance is what we're after, to be honest.
• 22:25
  Gregg Brunner: Honest, I hope we put these out and nobody's got speeding through a work zone.
• 22:28
  Gregg Brunner: That's my goal when it comes down to this, because what we've seen, like you had mentioned, about half the other states have these in place right now and the results they've seen from those are amazing in terms of changing driver behavior.
• 22:42
  Gregg Brunner: And that's again that's what our goal is here is to change driver behavior to keep everybody safe.
• 22:49
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, I've spoken a couple times on the podcast to Juan Paiva in Illinois, the Illinois DOT, who was a driving force in getting them there, and he has some great success stories about what a difference it's made in terms of the work zone crashes and saving lives.
• 23:05
  Jeff Cranson: Talk about where the money will go, because that's an interesting component too.
• 23:11
  Gregg Brunner: OK, yep.
• 23:12
  Gregg Brunner: So the way this current legislation is set up is that there are any citations received would go to a work zone safety fund that would be held by the treasury.
• 23:25
  Gregg Brunner: So it's not a money-making initiative for MDOT.
• 23:30
  Gregg Brunner: This all goes to a work zone safety fund and what that fund can be used for with the department is to fund the contract for additional work zone enforcement and everything associated you know the mailings and everything else to from that standpoint.
• 23:46
  Gregg Brunner: So it's kind of would become a self-funding initiative.
• 23:49
  Gregg Brunner: The way it's looked at.
• 23:50
  Gregg Brunner: Any excess funds then left over at the end of the year would go to libraries.
• 23:55
  Gregg Brunner: So again, it's not a definitely not a money-making initiative.
• 23:59
  Jeff Cranson: The goal here is to keep everybody safe and the funds will initially go to the Department of Treasury correct, correct?
• 24:05
  Jeff Cranson: I think that's important to note that this isn't just like you said.
• 24:10
  Jeff Cranson: This isn't like MDOT trying to raise revenue.
• 24:13
  Jeff Cranson: That's not what this is about.
• 24:14
  Jeff Cranson: Well, thanks, greg.
• 24:16
  Jeff Cranson: We'll be talking more, and I know that MITA, the operating engineers, the laborers, have all been big advocates.
• 24:24
  Jeff Cranson: They've all testified at committees and pushed, and it's taken a long time, but this is a testament to everybody's perseverance.
• 24:31
  Jeff Cranson: I think that we're so close to finally having this legislation be a reality.
• 24:35
  Gregg Brunner: Right, yeah, I know it's been in the discussions for a while, so it's good to see it taking another step forward.
• 24:40
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, absolutely.
• 24:41
  Jeff Cranson: Well, thanks.
• 24:42
  Jeff Cranson: I know you're getting ready to start a weekend of deer hunting Michigan tradition.
• 24:49
  Jeff Cranson: So, good luck out there.
• 24:50
  Jeff Cranson: Be safe.
• 24:52
  Gregg Brunner: Sounds good.
• 24:53
  Gregg Brunner: Thanks for having me, Jeff, and stay safe.
• 24:55
  Jeff Cranson: I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Michigan Transportation.
• 24:58
  Jeff Cranson: You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or Buzzsprout.
• 25:03
  Jeff Cranson: I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proofs the content, Courtney Bates, who posts the podcast to various platforms, and Jacke Salinas, who transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.