by Eric Freedman
August 16, 2009

Charley Ballard

Need an economist to shed light on the Cash for Clunkers program? Ask Charley Ballard. Curious about the relationship between college degrees and employability? Ask Charley Ballard. What about extending Michigan’s sales tax to services? Ask Charley Ballard. Want to understand the public’s pessimism about the economy? What about unemployment trends, the shrinking manufacturing sector, climate change or tax cuts? Why not ask Charley Ballard?

After all, the news media regularly pose exactly those types of questions to Charley — Charles L. Ballard, a veteran economics professor at Michigan State University and author of the ambiguously titled 2006 book, Michigan’s Economic Future: Challenges and Opportunities.

And when journalists ask, odds are that he’ll answer, whether you’re a reporter for the small-circulation Gaylord Herald Times or the Washington Post, the Upper Peninsula Business Today, Bloomberg News Service or the Economist. There’s time for the broadcast media as well, whether it’s Al Jazeera, Fox News, BBC, CNN, NPR or Saginaw’s WEYI-TV. And time for the online media, including Businessweek.com, Politico.com and MSNBC.com.

Accessibility, academic and research credentials, accessibility, a colorful way with words, accessibility, a sense of media savvy and accessibility have made the 55-year-old Ballard the state’s highest-profile, most-quoted and best-known economist.

All the snowballing media attention was unplanned, he insists, leaning back in his chair in a bare-walled, sparsely furnished office in one of MSU’s oldest buildings, Old Botany Hall. Serendipitously, the building once housed the School of Journalism, and his own office with its yellow piles of the Lansing State Journal and Wall Street Journal formerly served as Journalism’s conference room.

The son of a Detroit-born mother and a Texas father who worked for Dow Chemical, he started his educational career in kindergarten in Midland but spent most of his childhood in Texas when his father got a job transfer. He earned degrees at Princeton — with Inside Michigan Politics editor Bill Ballenger, another much-quoted pundit — and Stanford, worked for the U.S. Commerce Department and joined the MSU faculty in 1983.

What would Charley Ballard do if he were Michigan’s economics czar? Dome asked for his top three priorities:

Tax policy: Eliminate the Michigan Business Tax and replace it with a graduated income tax — 36 states have some form of a graduated income tax — and a tax on services. The aim should be to raise more revenue than the MBT — not merely break even — and use the extra money to support key public services.

Education policy: Lengthen the school year to a minimum of 195 days and provide children with pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten.

Regional governance in Southeast Michigan: “Find ways to break down the Berlin Wall at 8 Mile.”

As for Michigan’s condition in 2014, Ballard emphasizes that five years isn’t much time to reverse trends that have been running against the state for the past 60 years. But it is long enough for hard times to bottom out and begin improving if the auto manufacturing sector can at least stop shrinking.

“We’ll know a lot in the next year or two about whether the auto companies have set themselves on the road to long-term viability.”

– Eric Freedman

His media career began by happenstance in 2000, when he happened to be in the Economics Department office when a couple of reporters called seeking expert commentary on rising gas prices. He handled the calls and soon learned that “if you stand on camera and don’t make a fool of yourself, they might call you back.”

Call back they did, again and again. And unplanned or not, Ballard makes the most of it. In addition to the usual roster of scholarly publications, grants and teaching awards and professional affiliations, his curriculum vita lists interviews with more than 140 media outlets. For some of them he’s become a regular. Gongwer News Service cited him more than 10 times between March and the end of July this year, for instance, and he appeared in seven Detroit News stories between March and mid-August — plus writing an op-ed column for the paper.

His rising media profile coincided with a shift in research interests that also began in 2000. He moved his attention from national and international tax and budget issues to focus more on Michigan’s economy. He became one of the editors of Michigan at the Millenium, a four-pound volume, and then was commissioned to write the more readable and understandable Michigan’s Economic Future. “Some would say the title is an oxymoron,” he jokes, but the book triggered a continuing stream of speaking invitations, such as one earlier this month to a business group in Cadillac. He holds up a map of the state peppered with green pushpins to mark all the places where he’s spoken — some, like Lansing, many times — from Mackinac Island to Monroe in the southeast to Cassopolis in the southwest.

“Everybody uses him. I think it’s because he picks up his phone and answers his e-mail,” says John Bebow, a former journalist who is now executive director of the Center for Michigan, an Ann-Arbor based think tank that examines economic development, governmental reform and education.

“I really admire Charley and his willingness to engage on the front lines in these rough times,” Bebow says of Ballard, who is affiliated with the center. “He’s come way down from the ivory tower. He’s making his research directly relevant to the state where he works.”

Ballard certainly can speak the argot of economics and talk about such things as “elasticity,” and his PowerPoint presentations include plenty of the graphs that economists relish, but coming down from the ivory tower also means mastering the knack of the ear-worthy quote. “He does try to talk in non-economist speak and put things in a framework that’s understandable to the average person,” says Gongwer publisher John Lindstrom.

Non-economist speak? Discussing the relationship between higher education and employment prospects, for example, he told the Lansing State Journal: “If what floats your boat is to be in the theater, realize only one in 10,000 becomes a Julia Roberts.” Talking about the recession, he told the Detroit Free Press: “Too many of us have kept our eyes in the rear-view mirror.” Disagreeing with dire descriptions of Michigan’s economy, he told the Saginaw News: “You’d think we’d be living in straw huts. We have weathered much worse.” Describing the Cash for Clunkers program, he called it “a medium shot in the arm for automakers” in the Detroit News. Assessing a proposed overhaul of the state tax structure, he told Gongwer, “It wouldn’t mean the streets are paved with gold.”

On his first NPR appearance — “it’s cool to be on NPR” — he said “a lot of terribly profound things,” including a quip about General Motors’ decision to eliminate the Oldsmobile nameplate: “If they name it the ‘Newmobile,’ they’d still be in production.”

Ballard’s media window opened wider in 2007 when former state Treasurer Doug Roberts, director of MSU’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, invited him to head the institute’s State of the State Survey. That positions him to discuss the latest quarterly survey findings on the attitudes and opinions of Michigan residents about public policies such as crime, health care and education.

Lindstrom says that role “automatically means he’s going to pop up a little more than usual,” and he has pushed for more media attention to the survey in the two years since he took it over.

Interacting with the press has given him insights — or at least opinions — into how journalists operate and what they know — and often don’t know — about economics. He regrets a shortage of in-depth reporting on state policy but singles out several veteran journalists for their ability to ask him “really good questions”: Rick Pluta of Michigan Public Radio, Chris Christoff and John Gallagher of the Free Press, Gongwer’s Lindstrom and Peter Luke of Booth Newspapers.

The media spotlight has its moments, he says. For example, there was the time he went to WKAR-TV in East Lansing for a satellite feed appearance on the “News Hour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS. As he listened intently, his earpiece was picking up the MSU Children’s Choir recording Christmas carols in another studio. And sure, he’s been misquoted, “but to my knowledge not badly enough to call up and shout at somebody.”

Interacting with the legislature and Granholm administration has also provided insights — or at least opinions — into how politicians operate and what they know — and often don’t know — about economics. He calls Sen. Gilda Jacobs (D-Huntington Woods) his favorite legislator, although he considers himself more progressive-liberal than she is.

“She has reached out and genuinely wants to talk, not just the politics but the policy,” he says. “It’s not just the fame or how do I poke my finger in my opponent’s eye, but what’s good for the people.” He also was impressed by questions posed by Rep. Brian Calley (R-Portland) at a House Tax Policy Committee hearing — Calley “disagreed with much of what I said but knew what he was talking about” — and by Rep. John Proos (R-St. Joseph) at a GOP Strategic Task Force on Jobs session: “He wouldn’t necessarily agree with my policy prescriptions but gave me a fair hearing.”

The dumbest question from a legislator came when Ballard tried to dispel the “urban legend” that Michigan is one of the highest-taxing states when, in reality, its taxes are below the national average as a percentage of personal income. When Ballard explained that Alabama was among the lowest-tax states but also offered among the lowest level of public services, the legislator “looked at me like I was speaking Swahili and said, ‘Why wouldn’t we want to be like Alabama?’” The legislator is no longer at the Capitol — “the good side of term limits,” Ballard remarks.

At the same time, he acknowledges there are limits to how much the administration and legislature can do to turn the state’s economy around. Who the governor is “makes a little bit of difference,” he explains, but “the fundamentals are pretty profound,” and nobody driving past the shuttered Ford plant in Wixom is apt to believe it would still be open if Dick DeVos had won the 2006 election.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Eric Freedman teaches journalism at Michigan State University, where he directs Capital News Service. He and Dome columnist Stephen A. Jones are co-editors of African Americans in Congress: A Documentary History (Congressional Quarterly Press).