LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan judge will consider pausing millions of dollars in taxpayer money that lawmakers approved for two baseball stadiums that an advocacy group believes violate the Michigan Constitution.

Judge Brock Swartzle, during a Tuesday hearing in the state Court of Claims, said he would rule by the end of the year on a motion by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy to temporarily halt the grants.

The case seeks to rein in the state earmark process, which lawmakers in recent years have used to add billions of dollars to state budgets for pet projects in their districts.

Last year, lawmakers narrowly approved a budget that included $2.5 million for the Lansing Lugnuts stadium and another baseball field in Utica. The Mackinac Center argues lawmakers violated the Michigan Constitution.

An attorney for the state, which is defending the earmarks, said Tuesday that only $200,000 of the money has already been disbursed.

The center, a free market, nonprofit think tank, alleged the grants — part of a sweeping spending bill signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — violated rules that prohibit lawmakers from approving “private or local” projects unless they are approved by two-thirds of both the House (74 votes) and Senate (26 votes).

A larger budget bill that included the grants passed the House in a 56-54 vote, and the Senate in a 21-17 vote.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Swartzle focused his questions on whether the grants were local in nature or whether they benefited a wider swath of the state. He challenged a prior precedent, based on a 1984 opinion from then-Michigan Attorney General Frank Kelley, which defended state funding for the Detroit Institute of Arts.

In that opinion Kelley argued that if people came to the DIA from afar, as they often do, the funding was not for a “local” project.

Swartzle said it was not clear if the ballparks now under scrutiny are tourist or recreational destinations, or simply local.

If the Center prevails, it could challenge millions in other grants approved in recent years, money that’s gone to nonprofits, parks, cities, townships and counties, attorney Patrick Wright said after the hearing.

“They’re all bad,” Wright said of the hundreds of grants approved in recent years without a two-thirds vote.

In most cases, lawmakers have added grants to large state spending bills shortly before passage, with no debate over the merits of the individual earmarks. The grants are considered essential to secure enough votes to pass the bills that fund Michigan’s government.

Since 2018, total earmarks in the annual state budget have grown from $100 million to more than $1 billion the past three years.

The grants named in the lawsuit included a $1.5 million earmark for Jimmy John’s Field in Utica. But most people reading the actual law would not know what it was for. The budget language called for the money to go to “a ballpark located in a city with a population between 5,000 and 5,500 in a county with a population between 800,000 and 900,000 according to the most recent federal decennial census.”

That could only be Utica, a small community in Macomb County. The $1 million Lansing grant was written in a similar fashion.

Kyla Barranco, an assistant attorney general representing the state, argued that the ballparks benefit more than just the communities of Utica and Lansing, saying people come there from a broader area.

Swartzle said he was skeptical. Other ballparks around the state did not get similar grants, he noted.

“If this is just for the people of Utica or the people of Lansing, I don’t see how this survives,” Swartzle said. “How is this not predominantly local?”

The state constitution first addressed such spending over 175 years ago, in 1850, according to the Mackinac Center. The constitution at that time called for such spending only when a supermajority of members agreed. The idea is lawmakers can not spend money on a specific area — unless they secured approval from a large number of their peers.

Wright, the attorney representing the Mackinac Center, said the think tank would not have challenged the ballpark grants if a supermajority of lawmakers had approved them.

“We think that there is a benefit for these things to have a lot more agreement,” Wright said after the hearing. “We want the law to be followed.”

Critics for years have derided the earmark process for its lack of transparency. But this year, House Republicans have attempted to make the process more transparent by requiring members to make their requests public long before any are approved.

A lack of oversight on earlier grants has led to allegations of impropriety.

Earlier this year, David Coker Jr., a onetime aide to former House Speaker Jason Wentworth, was charged with multiple felonies for allegedly steering one grant to his personal benefit.

Coker faces allegations he bought gold, silver and platinum with money lawmakers intended for a health and fitness center in Clare. Wentworth was not implicated in the case, Attorney General Dana Nessel said. Nessel’s office is also investigating two other grants that lawmakers had previously approved, including a $20 million earmark awarded to a Whitmer political donor, metro Detroit businesswoman Fay Beydoun.

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This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The Assocated Press.