No Middle Ground

May 14, 2010

The burly bean counter from some outstate school district apparently had heard enough. He and 800 colleagues were attending a conference on how to fix the school funding mess and listening to three lawmakers — two Republicans and one Democrat — who were going back and forth but showed no signs of moving toward a solution.

During the Q and A portion of the event, this frustrated lug finally got up and demanded, “Why don’t you guys just stop the political bickering and work together to get something done?”

And with that, the joint erupted in spontaneous applause.

This comment was not an isolated observation. Everywhere on the rubber chicken circuit, public demand for bipartisan cooperation comes up time and time again (right after folks ask, “Where does the lottery money go?”).

Yet “official” Lansing is either tone deaf to the complaint or doesn’t have the nerve to change the culture here, which has flipped “compromise” into a four-letter word. With about a month and a half to go before a self-imposed July 1 deadline for getting this year’s budget done, this seems like a timely place to insert this column. It is written with the full knowledge that it will not change a thing, as neither political party is committed to giving up something to get something in return.

Let’s take tax hikes.

Some of the state’s heavy-hitters at the corporate level are running around the state doing little skull sessions with other business types, urging them to pressure lawmakers to institute so-called government reforms and expand the sales tax to services at the same time.

They’ve even purchased radio ads, basically worthless, trying to drum up support among the citizenry as well.

And what does Lansing do?

So far, nada.

The GOP party line, personified by Senate Republican leader Mike Bishop, is plain and simple: there won’t be any tax hikes before the election — and maybe not even any after the election.

So much for skull sessions and radio ads.

The Democratic Party line follows the same reasoning: if union members are going to take a hit, we are going to do everything we can to kill it.

When you have two lines in the sand and neither side is willing to move into the middle ground, you get what you got: a stalemate and one angry, burly bean counter who can’t understand why.

The really curious element in this inability to give a little to get a little is that if lawmakers did, they would find that most of the folks would not storm the Bastille.

Oh sure, there would be many who would be upset with “higher taxes” or having to pay more for health care benefits, but most of the voters would conclude, “I may not like everything my lawmaker has done, but if he/she thought this was the right thing to do, I respect that.”

In fact, the polling data suggest that some of the citizens get it.

In a recent Detroit Free Press survey, 21 percent of the independent voters favored new taxes and 28 percent said balance the books with a combination approach. Forty-six percent said it should be done with mostly cuts or all cuts.

Put another way, there is no tax revolt, per se, out there, the type where 80 percent of the people oppose sending more money to Lansing to save vital services.

But tell that to lawmakers in this town running for re-election. Self-preservation trumps everything, including bipartisan cooperation.

Ugh.

Tim Skubick is Michigan’s Senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series “Off the Record” since 1972. He also covers the Capitol and politics for WLNS-TV6 in Lansing.

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Can You Say Self-Serving?
You can understand why lawmakers are a tad nervous about voting for a tax hike during an election year. Think self-preservation.

But why don’t they have the guts to shift the issue to the local units of government and let them take the heat for raising money for local services?

That’s what local officials around the state must be asking as it appears state legislators are afraid to even let those officials impose a new alcohol tax with a vote of the people.

It’s so democratic. If local voters say yes to a tax that could be anywhere from a penny a glass to 50 cents, then all the money would stay in that community to keep cops on the beat and fire fighters on their trucks.

If they say no, so be it and the tax is not imposed. Who could oppose that?

Let’s start with legislative Republicans. They have consumed so much anti-tax-increase Kool-Aid that they can’t even see the brilliance of this proposal. They are not the ones increasing taxes; they’re just letting the citizens back home do that. Yet, and here’s the Kool-Aid part, anything that even hints of a tax increase is foreboden under the GOP anti-tax dogma.

This must drive Rep. Marie Donigan nuts as the Royal Oak Democrat quietly concedes her brainstorm is going nowhere fast. Even if it got through the House, Sen. Mike Bishop and company would just sit on the thing until it died in the Senate. Which means nobody in the House would vote for it either.

So much for that.

The sorry truth is the state lawmakers want it both ways. For years they’ve been slicing and dicing state support to the local governments, and now comes a self-help bill to make up the lost revenue and they say no to that, too.

Another classic example of good public policy being trumped by the more important self-serving need to get re-elected.

Cue the Relatives
John Engler’s mom did it.

Mike Bouchard’s daughter did, too

And now 13-year-old Kelsey Snyder is getting in on the act.

At some point in each election year, you can count on the relatives of candidates appearing in campaign commercials. It’s a great way to “humanize” the candidates to make them look and feel like they are one of us.

“Hey, I’ve got a mother, just like John Engler. Imagine that. So, he must be a great guy,” the voters must have said years ago when Agnes Engler appeared in a soft and fuzzy commercial. She noted that her son had been demonized so much by his opponent that even she had a tough time recognizing him as her son. She reassured everyone that indeed he was and he was not as bad as Geoffrey Fieger made him out to be.

Just recently, GOP governor candidate Rick Snyder asked his daughter to “star” in his latest tube offering. She said yes and worked with the campaign on what to say. She’s been in three theater productions and loves to sing, so this was a no-brainer for her.

First she beautifully rolled her eyes and told the camera, “My dad is such a nerd.” Then she explained that he’s a businessman, not a politician, as if having a politician for a dad would be grounds for foster care. In case you missed the point, she repeats, “He’s the only businessman running, so he’s the only one that even knows what he’s doing.”

Oh, Oh, Kelsey. Mike Cox, Pete Hoekstra, Mike Bouchard and Tom George are not going to like that. As your daddy’s competition, they think it’s the other way around.

To be sure, her comments about the opponents were not mean-spirited, but it was a jab nonetheless, which got the point across to voters without offending them. After all, who could get upset with such a cute 13-year-old stuck with a nerd for a dad.

But let’s see what Mike Bouchard’s daughter has to say about that.

In fact, every candidate has a kid, so let’s trot them out, too. And the good news is, they will probably work for nothing.

As for Kelsey, let us collectively hope that she never wants to become a career politician.

Kwame Kard in Play
What’s the old line: for every action there is a reaction. We’re not talking about nuclear fission here, but plain old, down-on-the farm, hardball politics in the race for governor.

The first “action” was the TV commercial launched by Mike Cox. It is an attack ad, not aimed at the personality of Pete Hoekstra, but at his policies and votes in Congress. The commercial suggests the West Michigan Republican is a big spender and tax waster.

The “reaction” came from John Truscott, who is the mouthpiece for Hoekstra. In the course of picking apart the Cox spot and defending his client, Truscott played the Kwame Kard. He was not prompted by the media to do so; it just sort of came up, but not by accident.

“The one thing that we don’t have is a lot skeletons in our closet,” Truscott began the counter reaction.

By skeletons, you mean? “Ah, the Manoogian Mansion party and ties to Kwame Kilpatrick,” he responded.

Bam! And with that you have a dramatic sea change in the race for governor.

By playing that card, Hoekstra seeks to damage the credibility of his opponent who investigated the alleged party at the home of the former Detroit mayor and found it to be an “urban legend,” or not true.

The Cox campaign manager, who knew this was coming but perhaps not right now, was ready.

Stu Sandler suggested that if the credibility of his boss was in question, so was the credibility of the Michigan State Police and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, which interviewed “hundreds of people and there was no criminal evidence.”

So this is not a problem, he was asked?

“This isn’t a problem,” he answered.

But now that Hoekstra et.al. have gone there, they apparently want to nurture this into a problem for Mr. Cox.

Even though most of the MSM under-reported this angle or ignored it altogether, the elephant in the room is now clearly visible and we have not seen the last of it. It could get messy in there.