by Gongwer News Service
June 12, 2009

After weeks of looking for ways to avoid state trooper layoffs, members of the House Appropriations Committee used some creative financing to restore funding for 102 troopers, but don’t look for a happy ending just yet. While the Senate has said it still wants to avoid trooper layoffs, leaders have expressed hesitance in the House’s tactic of funding troopers on next year’s dime.

The House supplemental appropriation would use the state’s commercial mobile radio service suppliers fund to cover an executive order cut issued in May of $1.7 million from the Department of State Police.

Most of those troopers, scheduled to be laid off as of June 28, are “cubs,” or recent graduates of trooper training. While the legislature approved the Executive Order containing the cuts, the layoffs raised some of the greatest concern among lawmakers, many of whom have been debating restoring funding for the troopers since the vote.

The vote on the supplemental came the same day Rep. Paul Scott (R-Grand Blanc) said he would sponsor an amendment to another bill using some of the state’s 21st Century Jobs Fund to pay for the trooper program. That bill (HB 4182) was on the session agenda that day, but was not taken up.

Rep. Andy Neumann (D-Alpena) also called for money from the state’s 911 fund to be used to pay for the troopers and for the bureau of fire services.

But Matt Marsden, spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester), said replacing the funding that the legislature has already agreed to cut in the E.O. is “like robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

“We had an agreement in the Executive Order and going back on it by sticking in some other temporary funding source might be the easiest answer, but then we put off the solution for next year,” he said.

Mr. Marsden said the Senate spent the week discussing ways the State Police might trim $1.7 million from its budget, such as by tweaking what some members see as top heavy staffing levels, without layoffs.

“The governor didn’t mandate layoffs; she just said: cut this amount of money,” he said. “It’s the State Police that are saying they need to lay off troopers.”

He said the troopers union should expect to make concessions so layoffs don’t need to happen, the same way unions around the state have had to.

Ms. Granholm, not surprisingly, is sticking by the already approved cuts in the E.O., with spokesperson Liz Boyd echoing Mr. Marsden’s comments that if the State Police can find ways to avoid layoffs without cuts, so be it, but she’s not endorsing new revenue.

Ms. Boyd said the governor isn’t making decisions on public safety based on politics, and that it “is still her number one concern.”

However, the governor is forced to “be responsible and govern with the money that we have in the budget, a budget that has continually declining revenues,” she said.

But with all of the public discourse surrounding the trooper layoffs and tension even within the Democratic Party, there’s already speculation that Lt. Governor John Cherry may see some backlash from the cuts as he attempts to fill Ms. Granholm’s shoes in 2010.

Should the layoffs, or for that matter, announced prison closures, turn sour, Republican candidates for governor have already marked their stance on the issue, bracing to say: “I told you so.”

Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, now also a GOP candidate for governor, suggested that perhaps if the state would pull out of its deal to relocate next year to a new State Police headquarters, it could save trooper jobs.

“This brings attention to the ongoing problem we see every day from Lansing leaders and this administration,” said the gubernatorial hopeful in a press release. “Even as they are [laying off troopers] they continue to plow ahead with building a new multi-million-dollar state police headquarters, which our state troopers haven’t asked for and don’t want.

“Putting an end to this deal now could save our state enough money in the long run to avoid having to lay off state troopers,” Mr. Bouchard said. “What good is a state-of-the-art building without the troopers?”

Then there’s Attorney General Mike Cox, who said Michigan will be a higher crime state because of the governor’s plans to release prisoners and lower numbers of police on the streets.

Ms. Boyd said she finds his reasoning “interesting,” considering his history of budgetary constraint.

“For the attorney general to insinuate that [crime will increase] when he has made a suggestion to eliminate the business tax, and with it $2 billion of revenue, with no suggestion on how to replace the revenue, which would result in even more draconian cuts, is interesting,” she said.”

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