August 1, 2009Michigan needs to clear away the municipal underbrush. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to prosper again in an economy no longer dominated by building and selling motor vehicles.
That business is unlikely to resume at anything like its former scale, and common sense tells us it wouldn’t be smart to return to such heavy dependence on one industry anyway.
Most important, we should reduce the costs of what might be called governmental overhead — taxes. The heavier the burden they create, the more difficult it is for business to prosper.
As mentioned in this space before, Michigan has a large and tangled clutter of tax-consuming governments, 62 in Oakland County alone.
Remember that Florida gets along just fine with one public school district per county.
So why do we have the more than two dozen districts in Oakland County? It’s simple. There were automobiles when Florida was settled. Michigan was established in the horse-and-buggy era. Townships in this state provided the primary local government and were six miles square, so a citizen could walk to the centrally located township hall, or one-room school, in an hour or so.
Florida never has had townships. It’s never needed them — just as we haven’t since reliable cars became widely available. But we still have them.
That our local township-based public servants are so physically close to us is by now, of course, a costly anachronism. The same goes for school district administrations.
Measured in terms of modern-day travel time, even Lansing can be as close to one’s home in much of southern Michigan as the county seats such as Pontiac were when the horse reigned.
Far fewer people, and far smaller payrolls, could handle the business at hand in Michigan with, for example, countywide school districts, as in Florida, and no townships.
Apart from government waste, the most dysfunctional aspect of our reliance on anachronistic governmental boundaries is the economic distortions they create. Witness the City of Pontiac, Oakland’s county seat.
From the 1920s through the ’70s, that city enjoyed spending the very high levels of property taxes and, later, income taxes generated by General Motors Corp. factories and payrolls.
By the 1970s GM had some 30,000 taxpaying workers in its Pontiac factories. But when the new corporation’s current downsizing ends, there reportedly may be fewer than 5,000 altogether employed in the city, in a stamping plant, some engineering labs and the On-Star phone operation.
The rest of the corporation’s buildings in that city either have been torn down, are empty or are used for storage.
The GM buildings devoted to the assembly of Pontiac autos for some 40 years were long since replaced by a huge U.S. Postal Service distribution building.
The City of Pontiac and its school district, like all others in this state, rely heavily on property taxes. So with the loss of all those jobs and vehicle production, the city and schools went from being relatively “tax rich” to “tax poor” as GM’s assets first boomed, then dwindled.
But what if the auto factory-generated tax dollars had been spent over the years on a countywide, or even statewide basis, instead of making one city — an area outlined by horse-and-buggy boundaries — temporarily “tax rich?” There would not have been such a big economic benefit from the plants, but not such a big comedown, either.
Meanwhile, the city’s population has declined by about a third since 1980, largely because of the dwindling factory employment.
Because such communities depend so heavily on local property taxes to pay their bills, the steady loss of GM’s portion naturally forces them to reduce spending in self-defense. The latest factory shutdowns are expected to cost Pontiac 20 percent of its remaining property tax revenue. And shrinking income already was being blamed for the financial turmoil in Pontiac’s government, turmoil that forced Gov. Jennifer Granholm to send in a financial manager to take day-to-day control of city operations.
But Pontiac retains one huge asset. No, not the long-vacant Silverdome Stadium, but “location, location, location.” The city is smack in the middle of Oakland County — to accommodate those walking taxpayers and slow horses, remember. Quite apart from the factories, other business growth in the rest of the county has made Oakland one of the nation’s top half-dozen or so very wealthiest.
The Automation Alley organization it founded is successfully scouring the world for high-tech businesses willing to locate operations there, and in Greater Detroit in general.
So it’s too bad the county, and the region, continue to support with tax revenues all those school administrators and, literally, horse-and-buggy-era governments.
But that burden could be lifted. Remember that we have the upcoming ballot option — November 2010 — of voting to rewrite Michigan’s “organizational chart” at a new state constitutional convention.
Start contemplating it now.
Neil Munro is the retired editor of the Oakland Press in Pontiac.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Mike H. // Jul 30, 2009 at 8:00 pm
I am a Michigander who had to move to Maryland in order to teach. I was laid off from Lansing Schools after the 2005-06 school year due to budget cuts and was unable to find another job in Michigan.
Out here in Maryland, we group our schools by county. We have one superintendent, five area superintendents, and one school board. Every teacher and staff member is employed by Baltimore County Public Schools. If a school is experiencing a drop in enrollment, teachers aren’t automatically pink slipped. They are transferred to another school. If a teacher wishes to go to another school, they may put in for a transfer.
Students in Baltimore County are assigned a home school based on their residence. However, they may attend different school in their area with a parent/guardian request. In addition, a student may attend a school in another area of the county if the school has a magnet program the student is interested in.
Imagine how much money would be saved if Lansing, East Lansing, Mason, Holt, Okemos, Haslett, Dansville, Williamston, Leslie, Stockbridge, Waverly, and Webberville were consolidated under an Ingham County Public School system.
Imagine how many teachers and staff wouldn’t lose their jobs just because their school loses students.
Imagine a student in Stockbridge attending East Lansing High School’s magnet program, but Stockbridge doesn’t lose money and staff because the student left.
2 Larry Merrill // Jul 31, 2009 at 6:36 am
I recognize that Michigan’s crisis mentality inspires a lot of “Ready-Shoot-Aim” thinking, but I have to point out that U.S. Bureau of the Census data shows that states with townships (except New York) experience far less local government expenditures (excluding education)per capita than comparably sized (over 5 million population)non-township states. Michigan spends $300 per capita less on general purpose local government services than is spent in other large states without townships. Consolidating small governments into fewer big governments does not reduce costs. Fact.
3 Scott Ray // Jul 31, 2009 at 7:40 am
I would be interested to see non-anecdotal data supporting the claims of greater efficiency and better outcomes resulting from more centralized/regional government.
At first blush, the push to garner economies of scale by eliminating local governmental entities seems worth considering, but when you stop and consider what might be good examples of this model, some of the intuitive logic seems to slip away.
If there is statistically significant data and truly relevant examples of more efficient government and better educational outcomes through centralization/regionalization of governments and educational entities, bringing that information into what is currently a rhetorical debate, could go a long way toward bringing clarity to the discussion.
As for now, I remain somewhat skeptical of the promise of greater efficiency and better outcomes through bigger government – that is further removed from communities. That is not to say that “regional cooperation,” and statutory reforms of the manner and extent to which local governments operate, fund and regulate couldn’t make better use of limited resources. I just haven’t seen many (any?) large city governments or large school districts that are operating more efficiently and with better outcomes than their smaller, more locally controlled counterparts.
4 Bill Gill // Jul 31, 2009 at 11:52 am
Good idea…worthy of serious consideration, Neil…BUT…
lemme tell you a story. When with a university in NJ in
the 70′s, the President told me to develop and sell the
idea of county services in Bergen County, right across the
Hudson from NYC. There were, as I recall, over 50 cities
in the county at the time, each with their individual police
and fire department, school system, etc. When the program was ready I asked a senior VP at the University to
join me in presentations to the governing body in each
city. Not a one welcomed the idea. And when we were
on the 9th presentation, and a Mayor called us
“communists”, we shut it down. If ever common sense
set in, turf battles might weaken. I hope we do better
in Michigan. Nice piece.
5 Dave Lambert // Aug 19, 2009 at 7:33 am
Mr. Munro makes several valid points. However, if governmental consolidation was the answer, then the City of Detroit would be a model of efficiency. It’s better to encourage cooperation and service sharing between local governments rather than forcing a “one-size-fits-all” solution fashioned by State Government. Empower individual citizens and local institutions to find solutions.
6 Lynn Ochberg // Sep 25, 2009 at 10:47 pm
I love these ideas and even though I would lose my job as a township trustee, I could still volunteer to facilitate the transition to a more efficient system.
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