by Tim Skubick
August 7, 2009

All the principal players contend they don’t want to do it, but there’s a school of thought that suggests some of them really do. The bad news is you’ll have to wait until October 1 to discover the truth.

The reference here is to another shutdown of Michigan government. For those with a short memory or for recent transplants from another planet, Michigan’s beloved legislature and governor hemmed and hawed themselves into a temporary shutdown of government because they missed the deadline for adopting a new budget in 2007.

It was the kind of history-making embarrassment all claimed they did not want to repeat. Yet here the state sits, with less than two months until another October 1 deadline, and there is no budget deal.

In reality, two months is an eternity in legislative terms. If all the sides agreed to a deal anytime between now and then, the shutdown could be avoided. But increasingly, there are those who believe some want to create a shutdown crisis for a variety of reasons.

Take Andy Dillon, the Democratic House speaker, for example. One theory goes that if he could delay a budget settlement until the October 1 date is within earshot, he could go to the governor and suggest this: “Hey, if you are willing to give me my state-run public employee health care bill, I can bang out some votes to raise new revenue to balance your budget.”

Interestingly, he is telling her right now he is having trouble lining up those votes. Huh?

Remember that she is at best lukewarm to the speaker’s health care scheme, but she is not fond of being the first governor in state history to preside over not one, but two government shutdowns. It’s not the legacy she wants.

Take Senate GOP Leader Mike Bishop. He has played this budget-balancing game pretty much the way he played it last time. He started out in 2007 with lots of bravado about not wanting to raise taxes and being able to cut state services to balance the books. Ditto for this round.

With the clock ticking toward shutdown two years ago, Bishop engineered a very political move, which graciously allowed Lt. Gov John Cherry to be the deciding vote on boosting the income tax.

Everyone knew back then that the GOP would use that vote against Cherry when he ran for governor.

Fast forward to the present. Cherry, indeed, is running for governor…and wouldn’t it be loverly if Bishop could maneuver Cherry back into the same corner, at the 11th hour, to vote for another tax hike?

Waiting until the very end also creates more of a crisis atmosphere, which gives Republicans an “excuse” for supporting the tax hike, too. By delaying, those Rs can go home and explain, “Lookit, I had to back the tax to avoid a government shutdown. You wanted to get your unemployment check, didn’t you?”

In fairness, all this is mere conjecture. Minus any hard evidence, you must take Messrs. Dillon and his pal Bishop at their word, that the last thing they want is a government shutdown.

But if that were really the case, how come they didn’t sign off on a budget deal yesterday and be done with it?

Tim Skubick is Michigan’s senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series “Off the Record” since 1972.

Tim Skubick Extra Extra… (A weekly bonus for Dome readers)

Text-Message Queen, Look Out!
The governor should be grateful she has a driver, because if lawmakers vote to ban text messaging while driving, she’d be doing time behind bars big time.

The governor, queen of text messaging, spends more time with her Crack.…err…Blackberry than she does with her kids. And, of course, she has lots of company. But the national transportation secretary has begun urging state legislatures to get on the stick and ban the practice in traffic, and it looks like Michigan might fall in line.

“I expect a vote on it after the summer break,” reports Dearborn Rep. Gino Polidori, who’s been on a mission to ban not only texting but cell phone usage as well.

So far he is O for life on both fronts, but the chair of the House Transportation Committee here has promised to put this up for a vote soon.

“On text messaging,” an upbeat Polidori observes, “we have the votes.”

He is not nearly as sanguine when it comes to hanging up on cell phones behind the wheel. “Too many of the guys do that,” he notes, referring to colleagues who probably don’t want to create a law they can’t or won’t obey.

The federal government for about five years has been sitting on evidence that taking your eyes off the road for even five seconds dramatically increases your chances of a crash. Hope they didn’t spend too much of your money to find that out. It’s just common sense, a no-brainer, but up until now lawmakers in this town have not acted.

Assuming Polidori is successful in the House, he has to tackle the decidedly more conservative and libertarian state Senate, where lawmakers never met a ban they didn’t hate.

The job of lawmakers is to protect the public. It says so right there in the constitution, and a ban on texting and driving does just that.

Wonder what the texting queen will do when she has no chauffeur?

Sin Tax Hike
If you drink beer and smoke cigarettes, and who doesn’t in this state, this is a lousy way to start a new month. The governor is willing to hike the sin taxes on both.

All this surfaced during one of those infamous closed-door, high-level meetings last week as the governor and four legislative leaders huddled to find some way to fill in the $2-billion hole in the state budget.

The governor proposed a “list of options” that included doubling the beer tax and slapping another 25 cents on a pack of smokes.

The beer tax is now a measly 1.9 cents per 12 ounces. That would go to 3.8 cents and net about $42 million in new money.

The tobacco tax would go from $2 a pack to $2.25 and raise about $53 million. That would be on top of the 62-cents-a-pack increase imposed by the federal government on April 1. Pretty soon smoking around here is going to get expensive.

But just because the governor is willing to go there, that does not mean the four leaders will tag along. House Speaker Andy Dillon said last week that Michigan’s beer tax would be out of line with other states in the region, so he’s against it.

And the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, who generally has no aversion to hiking taxes, won’t touch the beer tax. Rep. George Cushingberry says it would be a form of political suicide, since folks who drink beer in this state also vote.

And if ole “Cush” can figure that out, betya the other 147 lawmakers, many of whom are running for something next year, can too.