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A Question of Fairness

khopdome — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:01:12 +0000

Columns

Jack Lessenberry

A Question of Fairness

May 18, 2012

LANSING, Mich. – If you had to sum up the Republican Party’s creed in a sentence, it might well be: Raising taxes is a bad idea, no matter what. After all, the GOP’s rising “Tea Party” faction’s name began as an acronym: Taxed Enough Already.

So how do you suppose Republicans would react if someone proposed slapping a massive tax increase on the working poor, one that was certain to hurt small businesses as well?

In Michigan, the answer is clear, even if it‘s not what logic might lead you to expect. Hitting the working poor with a huge tax increase is exactly what the GOP-led state government did last year.

And the results are beginning to show. Last year, a heavily Republican legislature reduced the Earned Income Tax Credit, usually known as the EITC, from 20 percent of the federal amount to just six percent. That has meant an effective tax increase of an estimated $244 million on Michigan’s poorest working families.

Gilda Jacobs is president of the non-partisan Michigan League for Human Services, which calculated that figure. She said, “That’s money that would otherwise have gone to small businesses across the state that serve the needs of working families.”

Particularly hardest hit, she said, are inner cities, but also rural Michigan communities. That’s because when the working poor do get a little extra money, they don’t sock it away in banks in the Cayman Islands. They tend to spend it almost immediately in the local economy. That produces a pro-growth multiplier effect.

In fact, the generally conservative Anderson Economic Group calculated that every dollar returned to the working poor actually generates $1.67 worth of economic activity.

That not only helps keep the working poor from falling into poverty, it helps the small businesses who service them.

Jacobs, a former Democratic state senator from the Detroit suburbs, agreed that impoverished Detroit is being hard hit by the fact that the working poor now keep less of their income.

But the century-old League for Human Services thinks the biggest impact might be felt upstate, where there is not a lot of affluence outside of resort towns like Petoskey and Harbor Springs.

“Many lawmakers don’t realize the impact the EITC has on rural regions of our state, particularly in northern Michigan, which have high levels of poverty,” Jacobs said.

She fears that the cuts to the tax credit “may well put out of business some small businesses such as independent grocers, small auto repair shots and second-hand stores that cater to low-income working families in rural communities.”

The situation could have been worse. Last year, there was some discussion about actually doing away entirely with the EITC. Gov. Rick Snyder came into office saying everyone should be treated the same under the tax code, and vowed to do away with special deals, like the massive tax breaks given to the film industry.

However, despite massive cuts, the EITC survived. Democrats who were fighting to save it last year often irritated Republicans by quoting a famous politician who drastically expanded the federal EITC while he was President of the United States.

“The Earned Income Tax Credit is the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress,” said that president, who was not, as some might have guessed, Lyndon Johnson or Franklin D. Roosevelt.

It was Ronald Reagan.

Three months ago, State Rep. Phil Cavanagh (D-Redford Township) introduced a bill to fully restore the Earned Income Tax Credit, arguing that it was clear how much it was needed.

But it appears to have no chance of going anywhere. Democrats are heavily outnumbered in the legislature, and major bills they introduce tend to be merely ignored.

The governor and his GOP allies seem to feel that the key to regaining prosperity for Michigan lies almost entirely in tax breaks designed to lure more business to the state.

That doesn’t make sense to Gilda Jacobs. When asked whether cutting the amount of disposable income the working poor get to keep was apt to topple more families into poverty, she said “absolutely.”

“This has as much of an economic impact as there is in giving tax credits to business,” she said of the tax credit program.

“Low-income families pay a larger share of their income already in sales and property taxes than the wealthy,” she argued.

Not only does is make more economic sense to let them keep more of their income, there is, she feels, a question of fairness.

There’s no sign, however, that the majority Republicans agree.

***

How much can you make and still qualify for the Michigan Earned Income Tax Credit? According to a state website, for tax year 2011, the maximum for families with one child was $36,051. That rises, depending on circumstances, to a maximum of $49,077 for married workers who file jointly and have at least three children.

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.

Love And Marriage Belongs To All

khopdome — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:59:12 +0000

Columns

Tom Watkins

Love And Marriage Belongs To All

May 18, 2012

There has been much about gay marriage in the news of late. President Obama is now for it and his GOP challenger, former Governor Romney, against it.

I must admit I find my Republican friends twisting themselves in knots trying to explain what business government has interfering in the most personal decision adults make, who to love, who they have sex with and who they marry. Isn’t the GOP platform about less government and keeping it out of our personal lives?

Growing up in the shadow of our nation’s capitol in the 60′s, I heard older boys talking about beating up “queers.” I had no idea what it meant.

I had some friends who I thought “different” than me. Some were different, like Calvin and Francis, because their skin color was black and brown, some because they had long last names that ended in “ski” and some went to “church” that they called synagogue on Saturdays. Some friends seemed different in other ways that I was too young to adequately understand.

It Is About Equal And Human Rights
Later in life, in retrospect, I understood a few of my childhood friends were gay. What did I care? They were my friends.

Everyone has a right to experience love and to marry if they choose to.

I moved to Palm Beach County, Florida as a “male trailer,” following a successful former spouse in the mid 90′s. My first job there was to help salvage a nonprofit organization, Hope House of the Palm Beaches, an organization serving persons dying of AIDS. The previous director was accused of stealing half the agency’s budget and the board chair, Hal, was openly gay.

We became friends and later neighbors. I got to know him and his lifetime partner, John. They have a relationship that any one of us would envy. They were best friends, supporters, partners, and yes, lovers. It was watching and learning from John and Hal that I concluded that love and marriage belongs to all.

Watching these two human beings who so obviously loved and cared deeply about each other made me realize it would simply be wrong to deny them the ability to express their love in a man-made ceremony called ‘marriage’.

President Barack Obama attributes his change of heart and embracing the concept of gay marriage to a series of key conversations and experiences. He decided after talking to people on his staff who are gay as well as gay military members in committed relationships, it made it impossible to justify why he or anyone else might deny someone the right to marry.

In a 2011 poll, the Washington, D.C.-based Public Religion Research Institute found that support for gay marriage is twice as high among people who have a close friend or family member who is gay. While 47 percent of Americans favor gay marriage, according to the poll, that number rises to 64 percent among people with close ties to someone who is gay.

At a commencement address at Barnard College in New York recently, President Obama summed up his view that gay couples should have the right to marry, saying that the country has never gone wrong when it “expanded rights and responsibilities to everybody.”

To know someone in love and deny them the right to express their love through marriage is simply wrong. Marriage equality is a fundamental right.

Thank you Mr. President, for saying so.

Tom Watkins is a former Michigan State Mental Health Director and State Superintendent of Schools. He can be reached at: tdwatkins88@gmail.com

Looking Over Overlooked Stories

khopdome — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:45:40 +0000

Columns

Eric Freedman

Looking Over Overlooked Stories

May 18, 2012

We swim in an ocean of untold stories. When Capitol reporters – especially the dwindling ranks of the veterans – gather, you can hear them – us – whining about all the great stories that don’t get covered.

Such great missing stories don’t bloom from the self-aggrandizing posturing of 148 lawmakers with their eyes on the next election. They don’t emerge from the governor’s press conferences, or from political party keynote addresses, or from advocacy group picketing outside the Capitol, or from stiltedly written court opinions, or from the attorney general office’s well-publicized busts of ne’er-do-well local officials and Medicaid cheats.

You can hear them – us – blame short-sighted media company executives who chop staff, ban overtime and meat-ax travel budgets, all the while shrinking the news hole or airtime for entrepreneurial and analytical coverage. And blame newsroom supervisors who demand that they blog, podcast, photograph, film, write and update the same story over and over, although such multimedializing prevents them from covering more stories, or the same story in more depth. And blame news producers and news shapers – House and Senate caucuses, trade associations, Cabinet communications offices and others – that bypass the traditional press by going directly to the public via websites, Facebook, Twitter and other social and new media.

They’re – we’re – pretty much right on all accounts.

But time-pressed journalists share the blame because they – we – we don’t make enough time or effort to look harder, deeper, wider and more creatively for stories that aren’t spoon-fed and that our competitors miss as well.

In Lansing, many of those missing stories are buried – and often not deeply, to be frank – in the executive departments, independent agencies, boards and commissions that often set and implement – or not implement – policy and legislation. Only a handful draw reporters’ attention on at least a periodic if not sustained basis, including the Public Service Commission, Natural Resources Commission, Board of Elections and Board of Education.

But I suggest that there’s another rich trove of missed stories to be found buried – also not deeply – in the steady stream of oversight reports and performance audits emerging from the General Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress. Many years ago, when I started to cover New York state government and politics for a daily newspaper in Albany, I subscribed to GAO reports by mail. I continued to do so when I joined the Detroit News Lansing Bureau in 1984. Several times a week a stack of blue-covered reports appeared in my mailbox at home, so many that the carrier asked me to get a bigger mailbox. I obliged.

At best, wire services or individual news outlets in Washington cover some of those reports, usually from a national perspective.

Yet it doesn’t take much time, effort or creativity to identify which reports may be newsworthy from a state and local government and policy perspective – and relevant to taxpayers – even if the word “Michigan” doesn’t appear in them. I don’t see our Capitol press corps or its dwindling counterpart of Michigan media D.C. bureaus grabbing these missing stories.

One of my Capital News Service correspondents recently used a GAO report about K-12 physical education national trends as a jump-off point for a story about challenges facing PE in Michigan public schools. His article discussed relevant legislation and the views of the departments of Community Health and Education.

Here are some recent GAO reports that I didn’t see or hear covered with a Michigan focus by Michigan media:

Dozens of federal economic development programs intended to support entrepreneurs are fragmented and duplicative, impairing their ability to support “economically distressed and disadvantaged areas and programs that assist disadvantaged and small businesses. The study looked at 53 of 80 programs run by the Commerce Department, Small Business Administration and Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Relevant to Michigan? “Economically distressed and disadvantaged areas?” Michigan has plenty of those.

More anti-fraud steps are needed to protect Medicare, including efforts to strengthen enrollment by health care providers. Also needed: measures to prevent multiple payments. GAO calls Medicare a “high-risk program,” says that “its complexity makes it particularly vulnerable to fraud” and adds, “It is clear that fraud contributes to Medicare’s fiscal problems.”

Relevant to Michigan? Recent trophies earned by federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies in Detroit include guilty pleas in March by owners of three Livonia clinics accused of cheating Medicare of $5.4 million. And in early May, the U.S. Justice Department announced indictments against 22 metro Detroit residents on charges of $58 million in fraudulent Medicare billings.

The federal government should take further steps to ensure that school districts and contractors are held accountable for the quality of services and programs under the School Improvement Grant program. The program underwrites improvements in low-performing schools, including teacher professional development and contracting out for services.

Relevant to Michigan? We surely have low-performing schools, and this is one of the states participating in the program.

The rising cost of housing vouchers for rent subsidies? The length of time it takes OSHA to develop and issue safety and health standards? The fiscal soundness of Medicaid and Medicare services? Preventing exploitation of the crop subsidy program? The list of unplowed fields goes on.

Do I expect an imminent, dramatic turnaround in Capitol coverage that will enable reporters to chase a lot of these missing stories – and to minimize coverage of the routine and predictable he-said-she-said political patter and platitudes? Do I expect media owners and news directors to suddenly shift directions and assign reporters and photographers to delve into stories with meaning and relevance rather than press ops and stump speeches?

Sadly, no. But that doesn’t mean that we journalists shouldn’t push, prod, pry, pump and persevere to pursue and produce powerful stories with impact on our audiences and our communities.

Eric Freedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is associate professor of Journalism and director of Capital News Service at Michigan State University. He and Dome columnist Stephen A. Jones are co-authors of the newly published Presidents and Black America: A Documentary History (Congressional Quarterly Press)

The Promise

khopdome — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:40:30 +0000

Columns

Lawrence M. Glazer

The Promise

May 18, 2012

In 2005 Kalamazoo, like many mid-sized cities in America’s “rust belt”, was visibly fading, having gradually lost jobs, home values and tax revenues.

On November 10 of that year. a meeting of the Kalamazoo School Board opened. Michelle Brown, the Superintendent of the Kalamazoo Public Schools, stepped to the podium. Brown was about to reveal a closely held secret that she hoped would revolutionize the lives of her students and reach beyond them to the city itself.

A group of anonymous donors had funded a scholarship program to be known as the “Kalamazoo Promise”. Under its terms, any student who lived within the school district, attended its public schools and graduated from one of the district’s public high schools would be eligible for a scholarship paying all tuition and mandatory fees for four years at any Michigan public college or university, or at a community college until attaining a certificate. A student would have ten years to complete the degree. And the program was designed to continue long into the future.

The announcement made headlines around the nation. Nothing like it had been seen before.

But then Kalamazoo has always been a bit different. Unlike most Michigan cities, it’s major employers were pharmaceutical and paper manufacturers; its only car company was Checker Motors, which produced taxis.

Today, pharmaceuticals are still a major piece of the local economy, as are medical devices. Paper manufacturing is pretty much gone. And Checker Motors closed in 2009.

And from the start, community leaders and economists have regarded the Promise as much more than a scholarship program.

A year after the launch of the Promise, Ronald R. Kitchens, chief executive of Southwest Michigan First, a nonprofit regional economic development agency, told the New York Times that the Promise was “already working in Kalamazoo, influencing an economic transition from a collapsed industrial
past of paper and auto-related manufacturing to a new era of enterprise related to academics, science, medicine and engineering.”

Economist Timothy Bartik, a member of the Kalamzoo School Board, told Great Lakes Bulletin News Service, “The issue is broader than just the merits of tuition assistance … The issue is how communities and states can develop and attract human capital.”

Now, 6-1/2 years into the Promise, I wanted an objective look at the program’s impact on the community.

Since 1945, Kalamazoo has been home to the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a non-profit organization established to do research into the creation and maintenance of employment.

For scientific study of the Promise’s effects on the community, the Upjohn Institute was a natural. And it has enthusiastically accepted the role of lead organization for research requests on the Promise.

Dr. Michelle Miller-Adams, holding a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia, took leave from Grand Valley State University in 2006 to study the Promise’s effects as a visiting scholar at the Upjohn Institute. She has already published one book on the subject “The Power of a Promise: Education and Economic Renewal in Kalamazoo” and is at work on another.

Miller-Adams says that “the largest, clearest impact of the Kalamazoo Promise has been on enrollment in the Kalamazoo public schools, and a lot of things flow from that, both educationally and economically.”

The district’s student population had been declining for years. The Promise reversed that immediately. Enrollment grew by 10% (about 1,000 students) the first year, and growth has now reached 22%. This has led to construction of a new middle school and two replacement elementary schools, supported by the voters’ approval of millage proposals. These construction dollars have gone back into the community. Additionally, the incoming students bring their families, and the families bring their incomes and their spending.

Moreover, state funding is tied to student population, so the population increase has cushioned the state’s overall cuts in aid to local education.

Other economic impacts are more difficult to measure. Miller-Adams points to “a moment, soon after Kalamazoo Promise was announced, when it looked like we had an upward tick in the housing market” within the school district (the district includes the City of Kalamazoo). This was widely reported in the media. Others have pointed to Kalamazoo home prices, which had trailed Grand Rapids in 2005, then moved $17,000 higher in 2010 (Chris Andrews in Bridge Michigan, December, 2011).

But Miller-Adams and her colleagues have looked at the local housing market statistics periodically since that first year and they have not found a measurable impact on home prices. Yet, she points to something else of significance: after years of annual decline, the city’s population has stabilized. She thinks that the Promise may well be having a positive effect, but “the volume is not big enough to move the needle” on housing prices, given the very slack housing market.

Downtown Kalamazoo office, retail and residency vacancy rates are very good (the residential vacancy rate is a miniscule 1.9% and the retail vacancy rate is 10.4%, according to Downtown Kalamazoo, Incorporated (http://www.downtownkalamazoo.org/Do-Business/Economic-Indicators-Vacancy/Occupancy-Report.aspx). By comparison, Michigan’s over all residential vacancy rate for 2010 was 14.56% and Grand Rapids’ was 10.53%. Miller-Adams says that “whether this is [at least partly] a result of the Kalamazoo Promise is impossible to say”. She acknowledges the long-term downtown development work of Downtown Kalamazoo, Incorporated. Still, personally, she thinks that the Promise’s effect on overall morale and enthusiasm of the City’s people and businesses has “helped push that downtown dynamism forward.”

But perhaps the best effects of the Promise are yet to come. Many economists agree that the best jobs of the future will go to the areas with the most educated work forces. Miller-Adams says that roughly 90% of Kalamazoo public school graduates are going on to higher education. This is a fantastic number for an urban district. And 85% of the Promise students attending four-year colleges are on track to graduate. If most of them come back to Kalamazoo, the region should end up with one of the best-educated workforces in the country. And the jobs will follow.

Lawrence M. Glazer is the author of Wounded Warrior, a recently published biography of former governor and Supreme Court justice John Swainson. He is also a retired Ingham County Circuit Court Judge and former legal advisor to Gov. James J. Blanchard.

Personal Property Tax: Rhetoric vs. Reality

khopdome — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:35:36 +0000

Columns

Patricia M. Randall

Personal Property Tax: Rhetoric vs. Reality

May 18, 2012

The proposal to eliminate Personal Property Taxes has created two distinct camps: those cheering on the side of business and economic development, and local government leaders wailing with cries of fear and despair on the other. How can one segment see this as such a clear victory for Michigan business, while the other views it as the loss of an entitlement?

The origins of PPT in the State of Michigan date back to 1893 with the creation of the General Property Tax Act. It is Michigan’s oldest form of taxation and is divided into two types: Real Property and Personal Property. An Assessor levies Real Property (consisting of land, buildings, and all permanent fixtures). Personal Property is that which is not permanently affixed to land (such as equipment, tools, furniture and computers).
This is a self-reporting system due to the difficulty—and legality—of assessors entering one’s property each and every year.

Today only commercial properties, utilities, and industries pay both. Up until the 1930’s Michigan households also shared the burden of the personal property tax. When State Senator Mike Nofs (R-Battle Creek), first addressed the subject of eliminating the PPT, many agreed it was long overdue. While thirty-five states have some form of PPT, Nofs stated, ”Surrounding states do not have this tax and this is hurting both expansion of existing business and recruitment of new business.”

Many believe this is just one more unnecessary burden to doing business in the state. Until recently, Michigan was ranked forty-ninth in corporate tax burden. Chief Executive magazine’s survey of six hundred and fifty CEO’s ranked Michigan the fifth worst business climate nationwide based on taxation, regulations, workforce quality, educational resources, infrastructure, and living environment.

If statewide business associations are listing the repeal of the PPT as a major legislative goal, regions are pumping millions of dollars into economic development, local governments are rolling out the red carpet to prospective businesses and our youth are leaving the state in record droves, surely we can all agree that something must change.

However, as with most good ideas for change, that is easier said than done. Dependence on a tax that has been around for over one hundred years is at the heart of the debate. First, eliminating this revenue stream will affect all levels of government from the smallest township to the largest city. Second, anger results from having a local tax eliminated at the state level, thereby eliminating any choice in the matter back home.

Obviously, the impact varies depending upon the amount of PPT each tax jurisdiction receives. Statewide, the average PPT comprises 25% of a municipality’s revenues. While all commercial, industrial, and utilities share in this tax, the heftiest share of the PPT is paid by only twenty percent of the businesses. However, the other eighty percent complain that this annual self-reporting tax is both time consuming and puts them at a competitive disadvantage.

As a member of a southwest Michigan City Council serving forty-six thousand people, my observations about the PPT were the subject of healthy debate during budget discussions this past week. The front page of our local newspaper had just proclaimed, “Officials: Tax Repeal Would Threaten Vital Services.” One city leader was even quoted as stating that due to the elimination of PPT, “…police and fire services, therefore, public safety may be impacted.” Fear travels fast: My phone started ringing immediately!

For months leading up to that budget meeting, our Council was provided data graphs claiming that if the PPT is eliminated our city would lose over four million dollars. Last week’s budget binder contained the same number. However, according to Senator Nofs, if the current proposal is signed into law this year, the PPT would be eliminated for only those businesses with real properties valued under forty-thousand dollars.

Since the bigger businesses are picking up eighty percent, that leaves twenty percent for the so-called “Mom and Pops.” So, where is that number in our city’s budget? The newspaper article? When looking at actual numbers (which somehow never made it into my 2013 budget binder), our city would actually lose only $150,000. Given that our budget exceeds sixty million dollars, that hardly seems worthy of battening down the hatches or running for the cellar.

Recently, the Republicans changed the legislation directing how local governments would receive reimbursement in exchange for curbing the personal property tax. The key change would reinstate the PPT to its current form if local governments did not receive reimbursement for revenues lost as a direct result of the reduction in the tax. The new legislation requires the state to cover the payment for all bonded indebtedness starting in 2013, three years earlier than originally proposed. Nofs made certain to include the full replacement of voter-approved dedicated millages, including for police and fire. Both the Michigan Municipal League and Michigan Association of Counties have switched from opposing the bill to one of neutrality.

Whether “business” or “government”, all agree that taxes have an impact on economic development, even if there is disagreement on “how much” and “when.” Of course, this also begs the question, “Does business exist to support government? Or does government exist to support business?”

If what we, as a State, have practiced for the past one hundred and nineteen years is no longer working, it would seem that what government leaders thought was a great idea in 1893 may not make sense today. Put another way, “change, change, change” is now more essential than “location, location, location.” Only those who adapt will survive and thrive. Michigan needs to be on that list.

Patricia Randall is a twice elected member of the Portage City Council. With a background in Finance and Banking, she is an advocate for change, better government, and fair property taxes.

Run girl, Run.

khopdome — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:12:17 +0000

Departments

Winning The Day

Run girl, Run.

May 18, 2012

Q. As I look at the field of candidates for office in upcoming primary and general elections, I see a gender gap. Where are the women? How can we get more women to run for office?

A. There is no easy answer, but it comes down to two things: recruiting and training.

A recent Newsweek article states that research shows that even women with all the right credentials lack the confidence to put themselves forward as a candidate. Men seem to have no such hesitation, even men with far fewer qualifications. Research by The White House Project indicates that women wait to be asked to run – hence the need to recruit them.

“Any woman can learn to lead,” says Charlotte Beers, Undersecretary of State under Colin Powell and author of “I’d Rather Be in Charge”. “It’s just a matter of preparing them” – hence the need to train them.

Here are three great resources:

One training program is right here in Michigan. The Grand Valley State University Women’s Center, with funding provided by Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, hosts a “Ready to Run” conference. The conference is a bi-partisan campaign training program to encourage and train women to run for office. The conference includes the following topics: fundraising, media training, developing a campaign plan and launching a campaign, and internet strategies. Go to www.gvsu.edu.

The White House Project is a national bi-partisan program to enhance women’s leadership abilities and give them the skills to run for office. Go to www.thewhitehouseproject.org.

Another national program, Emerge America, trains Democratic women to run for office. It claims it is changing the face of American politics by identifying, training and encouraging women to run for office, get elected and seek higher office. A photo of former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is on its home page. Go to www.emergeamerica.org.

Run, girl, run!

Paula Blanchard Stone and Patty McCarthy are partners in McCarthy Blanchard, an executive training firm specializing in key message development, presentation skills training, media interview training and executive presence. Copyright © 2008 McCarthy Blanchard. | Website

Joe Schwarz: “To Run or Not to Run?”

khopdome — Fri, 11 May 2012 03:56:11 +0000

Columns

Jack Lessenberry

Joe Schwarz: “To Run or Not to Run?”

May 11, 2012

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — You might say Joe Schwarz’s decision not to run provides a perfect example of what’s wrong with the way we elect Congressmen today. It would be hard to imagine someone better qualified. He served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam conflict and then went back as a member of the CIA, where he treated villagers and delivered babies in a remote region of Laos.

That’s because he is also a physician who, throughout his long political career, has maintained a practice as an ear, nose and throat specialist in his hometown of Battle Creek. Over the years he served on the City Council as well as Battle Creek’s mayor. He served four terms in the Michigan State Senate, where he became known as the legislature’s top expert on higher education funding.

Then, in 2004, he was finally elected to Congress from Michigan‘s seventh district, which stretches along much of the state‘s southeastern border, from Jackson to Monroe. Within his first two years he had been rated one of Congress’s Outstanding Freshman. When confronted with a primary challenge, he was endorsed for re-election by both then-President George W. Bush and his onetime rival, John McCain.

But in a shocker, Dr. Schwarz lost the GOP primary to a fundamentalist conservative, Tim Walberg, after the Manhattan-based Club for Growth poured money into the district to defeat him. Why? Though a fiscal conservative and a military hawk, Schwarz refused to categorically rule out all tax increases. Worse, the Roman Catholic widower believed that abortion should be, “safe, legal and rare.” So, he was tossed out in a low-turnout primary. Walberg went on to win narrowly that fall.

Two years later, Walberg was himself tossed out during the Obama landslide. But he managed to get back to Congress in the GOP landslide of 2010. Schwarz has never made any secret of his disdain for the man who beat him. This year, Democrats came to him with a stunning suggestion: Switch parties and run for his old seat as a Democrat. Schwarz was intrigued. He was, he confided, “itching to get back in the game.” For some time, he had felt not that he had left the Republican Party, but that it had left him. He was very close to announcing. He wanted to take on Walberg again. Local Democrats were excited. But at the last moment, Schwarz said no.

Why? Frankly, he told me afterwards, it was a case of forcing common sense to stifle his ego. For one thing, he no longer lives in the district; the legislature removed Calhoun County, where Schwarz lives, and added Monroe County instead. That’s not a legal barrier. In fact, this year three Michigan incumbent congressmen — Hansen Clarke, John Conyers and Gary Peters — are running in districts in which they don’t live, thanks to redistricting.

Schwarz does spend considerable time in the district. He toyed with the idea of establishing a legal residence there. But, he concluded, “My primary job [practicing medicine] is not in the district. I‘d be fooling no one by renting something … and using that as an address. Virtually everyone knows I live in Battle Creek.”

However, that wasn’t the main reason he decided against running. Schwarz thinks he could have won this year, though it would have been a close, tough, and expensive battle. But, he notes candidly, “In 2014, a non-presidential year, it will be a dogfight,” with lower turnout and, as he notes, “Republicans historically win those races.” Additionally, the good doctor candidly admits, “I am not a good fundraiser. Right or wrong, I find it demeaning to cold-call someone and ask for a campaign contribution.” If he wants to be in Congress, he knows that means raising millions every two years.

There were other factors, too. The physician-politician will turn 75 this fall. That‘s not too old to serve effectively; there are many Congressmen chairing key committees who are older. But it is too old to acquire any effective seniority.
“A second term member of Congress has approximately zero public policy impact,” he wrote to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when he decided not to run. “It’s great fun, but other than constituent service, a second termer is pretty much along for the ride,” he added.

Perhaps saddest of all, “I don’t candidly know if there is a place for someone like myself in today’s Congressional milieu. I’m a pragmatist, not an ideologue. ‘Party’ means far less to me than achieving satisfactory results,” he said. That wasn’t an easy decision, though it made sense.
Contrast that with Newt Gingrich, who continued his presidential campaign — at a cost of $40,000 a day to the taxpayers for Secret Service protection — long after he clearly had no chance.

It may be legitimate to ask what sort of person the founding fathers had in mind when they invented Congress. Would they have preferred an accomplished man, successful in multiple areas, who wanted to represent his neighbors for a few terms? Or would they want a political apparatchik who sees the House of Representatives as merely his next logical career move?

It isn’t hard to imagine that they might have thought Joe Schwarz’ s decision not to run showed that he is exactly the sort of man who should be in Congress. Or, that they would fear that the twin effects of ideology and money are threatening democracy for us all.

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.

Green Acres in the Motor City

khopdome — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:55:23 +0000

Columns

Stephen A. Jones

Green Acres in the Motor City

May 4, 2012

Some days it is really hard to pay attention to the news, especially when you live in Detroit. And by hard, I don’t mean inconvenient or difficult to obtain access; I mean painful.

The latest plans for dealing with the city’s budget crisis call for the elimination of 2,566 jobs – nearly a quarter of the city’s workforce – and a 10 percent pay cut for the workers who remain on the payroll. That includes police and fire fighters, who will be stretched thinner, worked harder and be paid less for the privilege.

Every area of public service will be reduced. Bus service, libraries, water and sewerage, street lighting and public works all will take significant hits, and the lives of the citizens who rely on those services will be diminished and made more difficult.

It is tempting to rail about the rotten politics of it all – from the venality of crooks like Kwame Kilpatrick who betrayed the citizens who entrusted them with the reins of government, to the arrogance and cynicism (and sometimes worse) of political leaders outside the city who have refused to recognize and acknowledge the state’s contribution to this mess.

(You can appoint all the emergency financial managers you want but until you deal with a half century of state policies that have subsidized suburban growth at the expense of core cities you are not going to restore our cities to real economic health. Even Pontiac’s former emergency manager has said the law is destined to fail, that it does not ensure that cities taken over by EFMs will be out of trouble after the managers have slashed budgets and left.)

But rather than relitigate the history of frayed city-state relations whose continuing fallout makes attending to the daily news such a painful experience, I’d like to talk about a small bright spot from a recent news report.

In mid-April, Michigan State University’s Greening Michigan Institute sparked a flurry of news reports by announcing a proposal to create an urban-agriculture research center in the city, a project that could eventually cover 100 acres and involve an investment of $100 million. Researchers at the center would explore the possibilities of “vertical agriculture,” growing crops in multi-story buildings, as well as new approaches to food cultivation that could conserve water and even produce energy.

The idea is intriguing, and not just for the conventional reasons. Of course, $100 million in investment would pump some money into the local economy, create a few jobs and maybe help attract other businesses and investors. All of that is good, but it’s not the most beneficial part of the idea.

The real benefit of the proposal is that, if we take it as seriously as we should, it forces us all – inside and outside the city – to think differently, not just about Detroit but about what a city is and can be.

A couple of years ago, I spoke with Jerry Herron, dean of the Honors College at Wayne State University. He said that when most people consider southeastern Michigan they look at the suburbs and see success and then look at Detroit and see failure.

What they don’t see, he said, is that Detroit was the engine that produced the wealth that made the growth and success of the suburbs possible. In that longer view, the decay we see in the inner city is actually the residue of success. To put it that way doesn’t remove the decay, but it does give us a different perspective on the process.

Some people simply discard a car when it gets old and worn. Other people are able to see the beauty and value of a classic automobile and take the time and effort to restore and refurbish the vehicle, to rebuild the engine. It is that sort of vision and imagination that has made the Woodward Dream Cruise one of the most popular events in southeastern Michigan for the last 18 years.

So how do we restore Detroit? How do we rebuild that engine?

Maybe urban agriculture is the way – or at least part of the way.

Over the last century, the city of Detroit has provided much of the human and economic capital that was needed to develop the vast suburbs of southeastern Michigan. A century ago, the farms of Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw and western Wayne counties fed the urban center, but many of those farms have disappeared, replaced by houses, factories and strip malls.

Maybe now it is Detroit’s turn to feed those suburbs. There is a lot of open land in the city and there is rapidly increasing interest in local production of food for ecological reasons.

A number of interested groups have been eagerly promoting the idea of city farming for several years but Detroit officials have been slow to embrace the idea. I don’t fully understand why, but I suspect a significant part of the reluctance is simply the conceptual issue: It is difficult to imagine farms as anything but the antithesis of cities.

Farmland is what we’ve always cleared to build cities. To reverse the process can feel like we’re giving up on cities altogether.

That’s why we have to change the way we think. Detroiters – particularly the city’s elected leaders – need to embrace innovative and imaginative opportunities for growth and restoration, even when those opportunities run counter to our assumptions of what a city is.

And officials in Lansing need to look for ways to encourage and support those kinds of innovation. Urban agriculture may not solve all of the city’s woes, but if it helps make Detroit productive again and provides food that benefits people outside the city as well, who knows, we might all start thinking and behaving more compassionately toward one another and begin developing a more healthy relationship across the whole region.

Anyway, it’s food for thought.

Stephen A. Jones is a Detroit resident and assistant professor of History at Central Michigan University. He is co-editor with Eric Freedman of African Americans in Congress: A Documentary History (Congressional Quarterly Press).

Budget Battle Redux: Business or Education?

khopdome — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:13:49 +0000

Columns

Jack Lessenberry

Budget Battle Redux: Business or Education?

May 4, 2012

LANSING — Few may have noticed, but there was a skirmish in the Michigan Senate this week that was likely the opening volley in what promises to be a long war over the state’s future.

And just maybe, the next campaign for governor.

The battle lines are drawn, and the issue clear: Do we spend money to make sure high school students get the higher education they will need for the jobs of the future — or do we give a business property tax cut to men whose ideas were formed in the past?

Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing) who has suddenly found her voice as the main Democratic leader of the opposition, thinks it essential that we have a workforce trained for the jobs of the future. Yesterday, she told members of the state senate finance committee, “Now, more than ever, we need an action plan. Studies have shown that by 2025, Michigan will need an additional 1 million (college graduates.)”

As a result, her minority Democrats are pushing what they call their “Michigan 2020 Plan” to offer every state high school graduate free college tuition. They would do that, they say, by closing various tax loopholes, a move that would provide an extra $1.8 billion a year.

Surprisingly, majority Republicans don’t quarrel with that figure — and themselves aren’t opposed to closing the loopholes. But though they slashed the state’s business tax rate by two-thirds last year, they are insisting on yet another business tax cut, this time on the so-called personal property tax for businesses.

“I don’t think we can afford both,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Jack Brandenburg told the Gongwer News Service, making it clear that for him, tax cuts were more important than education.

Testifying on the other side, however, was Lou Glazer, president of the non-partisan think tank, Michigan Future. “Today, education has surpassed other resources as the engine of economic growth,” he said. “The folks that have income in this economy, increasingly, are college-educated folks.”

Nobody seriously disputes that Michigan badly needs a better educated workforce. A smaller percentage of its young adults have college degrees than is the case in surrounding states.

That’s a legacy of the state’s old brawn-based, assembly-line era economy, where for many years kids could come out of high school and land a boring, but high-paying, auto assembly line job.

Those days are gone now, forever. The knowledge that Michigan needs a better educated workforce isn’t new. Eight years ago, then-Lt. Gov. John Cherry presided over a special commission looking into Michigan’s higher education needs.

That group produced a comprehensive report that concluded that if Michigan were to remain economically competitive, it would have to double the number of students earning bachelor’s degrees within a decade. But then Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Legislature proceeded to repeatedly cut higher education budgets.

That sent tuition spiraling, and made it harder for some students to stay in school. Next, with revenue dropping during the Great Recession, the politicians broke their promise to the state’s young people and canceled the Michigan Promise scholarships.

Needless to say, the number of students with degrees is unlikely to come anywhere close to the Cherry Commission targets. That’s what’s behind the Democrats’ push to fund higher education. Michigan, once one of the nation’s richer states, is now a sad 39th in per capita income — and 36th in proportion of adults without college degrees. If the state is ever to regain prosperity, it will have to do so by attracting high-tech, new-economy jobs.

You can’t do that, experts agree, without a highly educated workforce. But 60-year-old Jack Brandenburg doesn’t see that. Though he did earn a business degree from Ohio’s small Ashland University, he essentially built an industrial supply company from scratch, at first selling inventory out of the trunk of his car.

The senator said Wednesday he thought giving business the break was more important. “Myself, I think that what we have to do here in Michigan is create an economy and get this economy working. And (then) our kids will stay here.”

But what the former industrial supply salesman may not realize is how much the economy is radically changing. And though he has complained about how much it cost to send his four kids to Michigan colleges, Brandenburg doesn’t seem to realize that many other kids are having grave difficulty affording college at all.

Democrats have no chance of winning this battle this year. They have less than a third of the seats in the Michigan Senate; not enough to even stop any bill from taking immediate effect

Yet the Senate Minority Leader made it clear that she is focused on the future, while Republicans seem wedded to making those in the present richer by following the policies of the past.

What played out in the Senate Finance Committee this week just might have been the opening round of the next campaign for governor, a race in which Gretchen Whitmer is the early favorite to be the Democratic nominee. But in any event, the argument over education funding vs. business tax cuts was likely just the opening skirmish in what promises to be a very long and very important war.

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.

Reform and Shenanigans

khopdome — Thu, 03 May 2012 17:14:19 +0000

Columns

Rich Robinson

Reform and Shenanigans

May 4, 2012

The Senate-passed version of Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s Safe and Fair Elections (SAFE) Initiative was taken up by the House Committee on Redistricting and Elections recently. Sen. David Robertson (R-Grand Blanc) spoke about his desire to bring transparency and accountability to Michigan’s electoral processes as he provided an overview of the bill package.

Sen. Robertson noted that there may not be evidence today of all the problems the SAFE initiative seeks to address but, “Where human beings are involved, shenanigans can occur.”

He touted the SAFE package as a preemptive measure to prevent shenanigans. But a close look at the bills suggests something different – a decidedly mixed bag.

Senate Bill 750 takes a tough stance against committees that have a cash balance of $20,000 and fail to file required campaign finance reports for a period of two years. It provides for felony penalties of up to three years imprisonment for the candidate or committee treasurer, a fine up to $5,000 and, after a prescribed process, forfeiture and seizure of the committee’s funds.

It is unclear how widely spread this problem is, but those are stiff disincentives for anyone thinking about holding a lot of money in a political committee and not reporting on it.

Score one for accountability.

SB 750 also would eliminate the October campaign finance report for the state’s 1,200 PACs during even-numbered election years. That means PACs would not report from three months before the general election until three months after. The unanimous vote of the Michigan Senate appears to be saying that what Michigan citizens need is much less timely disclosure of political spending. Or, as has been suggested, maybe that provision was a “copy and paste” error and the senators didn’t know what their votes meant.

Either way, score one for shenanigans.

Senate Bill 824 would require quarterly campaign finance reports for ballot question committees in addition to pre-election and post-election reports. It would establish a fixed schedule for resolving campaign finance complaints and require web-publishing of documents related to complaints and conciliation agreements. It would impose fines of up to $1,000 for knowingly filing incomplete or inaccurate campaign finance reports.

Score a couple for accountability.

SB 824 would take away local prosecutors’ authority to enforce criminal penalties of the Campaign Finance Act. All such matters would be enforced only by the attorney general and only upon referral of the secretary of state.

Whether you see that as enhanced accountability, or shenanigans, probably depends on whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. And your opinion may change in the future, depending on the identity of our next attorney general and secretary of state.

Perhaps the prickliest element of SB 824 is its new treatment of late contributions – those donations that come to a political committee after the pre-election reports have been filed, up until Election Day. Currently, committees must report every new contribution of $200, or more, within 48 hours.

Under the new paradigm, late donations to candidate committees aren’t subject to 48-hour reporting unless they aggregate to $500 from a donor. Donations to PACs, parties or ballot committees don’t have to be reported in 48 hours unless they aggregate to $2,500 from a donor.

That is much less accountability, not more.

In addition, SB 824 says that any committee that was fined after January 1, 2010 for failure to file a late contribution report on time will be given a refund of the fine it paid. That is utterly self-serving: by the politicians, for the politicians. That measure allows for living above the law by retroactively removing the penalties prescribed by law.

Score a whole basket full for shenanigans.

Gongwer News Service reports the tab for late filing fee amnesty would be $117,000. That would include a $1,325 rebate for Secretary Johnson and, her staff is quick to point out, refunds for Jocelyn Benson, Virg Bernero and David Leyton, among many others.

Nice: Shenanigans for the benefit of Republicans and Democrats.

Finally, SB 824 says that committees that are not directly involved in supporting or opposing candidates or ballot questions shouldn’t have to report late contributions at all. This reasonable-sounding provision is what I call The Money Launderers’ Friend.

One can easily imagine a scenario where the Committee for God & Country, which is engaged in defeating candidates, would report receiving a late contribution of $2 million from the Puppet-Masters Club. The Puppet-Masters Club would not be required to report whose late contributions it aggregated to give $2 million to C4G&C, because it is not directly engaged in defeating candidates. It just passes money to those who are.

With that provision in place, citizens would have to wait until months after an election to learn whose money had been talking. That means much less accountability, not more.

The House will deliberate more on the Senate’s version of the SAFE Initiative. Perhaps the Senate will take up the House’s version. Maybe somewhere along the way transparency and accountability will be served and some legislative shenanigans will be discarded.

Rich Robinson is the executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network. The opinions expressed here are his own, not necessarily those of his employer.