Nothing Getting Done

by Jack Lessenberry
April 2, 2010

When it comes to responsible state government, Michigan may be on the road to disaster.

Nobody seems to be able to agree on anything. The lawmakers are all scrambling to keep their jobs or find other jobs, since this is an election year for virtually every position in state government.

The state faces a looming deficit in the general and school aid funds approaching $2 billion or more, a budget they are supposed to try and balance by the end of June.

Governor Jennifer Granholm says new revenue has to be raised, and that she will veto any budget that cuts education.

Republicans, who control the state Senate, say there will be no new revenue, period. That sets the stage for another government shutdown, if neither side blinks. A major crisis is clearly approaching.

So what are Michigan lawmakers doing about this?

Why, giving themselves a two-week vacation.

Though they are among the highest-paid legislators in the nation ($79,650 a year), though they are supposed to be a full-time body, they are off on vacation, scattered to the four winds.

Last week, Speaker of the House Andy Dillon (D-Redford) tried to pretend this wasn’t party time. He said that while the legislature wouldn’t exactly be in session, the lawmakers would be industriously working away in their various committees.

However, Gongwer News Service found that only a very few House committees were meeting at all. Some meetings that had been scheduled had suddenly been canceled.

State Rep. David Agema’s office said the former airline pilot was off on a cruise. This was not especially surprising: three years ago, during an earlier budget crisis that temporarily shut down state government, the Grandville Republican missed the key votes because he was off in Siberia hunting.

To the average voter, it may be hard to see why lawmakers feel they should take two weeks off (with pay) at this critical time.

They have accomplished very little. For the last few months, the legislature has failed to make progress on much of anything. They are coming up on a June 1 deadline for preliminary funding for a new bridge over the Detroit River, a bridge the vast majority of officials in both the United States and Canada agree is necessary.

Yet they have made no decision. Earlier, legislative leaders vowed to try to get the process done and the budget balanced by July 1, the start of most state fiscal years. (Michigan, because of budget shenanigans decades ago, starts its fiscal year October 1.)

Lawmakers have moved some pieces of budgets through committees, but are nowhere near to being done.

The governor proposed balancing the budget by slightly cutting the state sales tax, but then extending it to most services. Legislative leaders have essentially ignored that idea.

When she realized that was happening, she said that if the legislature wouldn’t consider her idea, they should at least put it on the ballot for a statewide vote. They have ignored that too.

The governor offered another money-saving proposal, to change pension and benefit rules to encourage nearly 50,000 state workers to retire. She wanted this done by April Fools Day.

Surprise. It isn’t. Lawmakers have thrashed the proposal around, but have failed to act. “It’s not dead. It can’t be,” the governor told reporters last week. “We have to balance the budget. You can’t say no to cuts, no to reforms and no to revenue and balance the budget.” She’s right about that.

However, nothing is happening. Eventually, however, the lawmakers will have to do something about the budget.

State Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith, a term-limited Democrat now running for governor, thinks they will end up passing a last-minute temporary “continuation budget” and shove the problems and deficits into the laps of the new legislature that takes office in January.

Thanks in large part to term limits, the majority of those lawmakers, and nearly the entire state Senate, will be new.

Term limits are, in fact, a large part of the reason for the current state of dysfunction. Instead of worrying about pension packages for state workers, many legislators are working on their own “retirement packages.” That is to say, their next jobs.

Largely, this is musical chairs. Speaker Dillon is also running for governor. Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester Hills) is running for attorney general. Others are running for other things, or trying to find some paying place to land in January.

That’s part of the reason why the lawmakers needed a “vacation.” Meanwhile, school officials are waiting to see how much money they won’t have next year. State officials and teachers are waiting to see if they are going to have to abruptly retire.

Meanwhile, polls have shown increasing support for slashing lawmakers’ salaries, and even moving to a part-time legislature.

Hard to imagine why.

Veteran journalist and national Emmy Award winner Jack Lessenberry teaches at Wayne State University, serves as Michigan Radio’s senior political analyst and writes regularly for several publications. He also serves as The Toledo Blade’s writing coach and ombudsman and is host of the weekly television show Deadline Now on WGTE-TV in Toledo.