Cover Story

Bill Milliken @ 90

February 21, 2012

William G. Milliken turns 90 on March 26. While getting out the cake and candles, it’s a good time to swap a few stories and reflect on what the state’s longest serving governor means to Michigan.

Dome asked a variety of Michigan opinion leaders, many who have known the former governor (Michigan’s Passionate Moderate, as biographer Dave Dempsey titled his book) well over the past several decades, to evaluate the importance of the governor’s career. Or at least tell a few good tales about him.

The columnists and links to their commentaries are below.

Happy 90th Birthday, Governor, from all of Michigan.

More than a Nice Guy – Tough on the Tough Issues |by Lana Pollack
Despite his nice guy image, the governor was a tough politician and skilled deal maker who engaged in bruising political battles. | more

Milliken and Young – America’s Political ‘Odd Couple’ |by Bob Berg
Two men from far different worlds formed the most productive bipartisan political partnership in Michigan history. | more

Establishing the Modern Era of Ethics Reform |by Craig Ruff
Gov. Milliken transformed how public officials conduct the public’s business. | more

The Future Governor and LBJ – There’s the Rub |by Jack Lessenberry
A birthday is a good time for offbeat stories, including the Air Force One ride with President Lyndon Johnson. | more

Ushering in a New Season of Environmental Protections |by Dave Dempsey
Bill Milliken was the right man in the right state at the right time to help lead a green revolution. | more

Lessons Still Worth Learning – Even for Conservatives |by Paul Welday
While the Michigan GOP of 2012 is a long way from the Republican Party built by Gov. Milliken, there are some lessons to be learned. | more

Cover Story

Lessons Still Worth Learning – Even for Conservatives

by Paul Welday
February 21, 2012

Politics are generally a reflection of society at any given point in time, and the evolution of the Republican Party in Michigan follows suit. As times have changed so have Michigan Republicans, becoming a much more conservative bunch than they were 30 years ago.

However, while some argue the state GOP has come full circle since the end of the Bill Milliken era with the election of the so-called “moderate” Governor Rick Snyder, the ideological epicenter of the Michigan Republican Party is light-years from where it was in 1982. Nevertheless, there are similarities.

The history of the Republican Party has been dominated by a leading school of thought that has shifted dramatically since the end of the Milliken era. From the 1930s to the 1970s, America as a whole was largely Democratic and the centrist wing of the GOP held the most sway. These elements within the party were known as “Rockefeller Republicans,” after Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York. Gov. Milliken was a product of that era and a vocal proponent of the philosophical underpinnings of a middle-of-the-road approach to politics.

The Milliken brand of Republican politics was standard operating procedure in Michigan until the ascent of Ronald Reagan, beginning first in 1976 and culminating with his election as the first true conservative president of the modern era in 1980. During the final two years of the Milliken Administration, the middle-of-the-road philosophy in the state GOP came to a crashing halt with the nomination of conservative Richard Headlee for governor in 1982, much to the chagrin of Milliken and his hand-picked successor, Lt. Gov. Jim Brickley.

Like other GOP leaders in the pre-Reagan era, Gov. Milliken combined the traditional Chamber of Commerce friendliness to business with the championing of an activist government as an instrument of economic planning, race relations and environmental management. Nevertheless, as Reagan-style conservatism swept the nation it also took root in Michigan during the final days of the Milliken Administration. And Michigan Republicans have not looked back since.

Conservatives long chafed under the yoke of the Milliken-led GOP during his tenure in office. Along with his wife, Helen, Milliken had little use for social conservatives who felt passionately about issues like abortion and welfare reform. Milliken’s approach to economic policy was decidedly Keynesian, placing an emphasis on regulatory interventionism and public sector investments. Then, as now, Milliken was a committed and dedicated political moderate who took pride in his progressive state government and his personal battles with those to his political right, regardless of party.

Unlike the mainstream of Milliken’s Michigan Republican Party, today’s GOP comes from an altogether different perspective. Milliken often advocated the restrain of economic market forces through the power of government and used his considerable political skills to advance that approach to his policy objectives. Some 30 years later, a central tenet of today’s GOP is the reverse. Now, restraint of government – not the private sector – is widely accepted Republican orthodoxy, and for a GOP leader to suggest otherwise would quickly brand that politician as a RINO (Republican In Name Only).

In today’s Michigan GOP there are few, if any, true “Milliken Moderates” remaining. To be labeled as such would be a one-way ticket to political obscurity, as the term is synonymous with a pro-spending, pro-regulation, pro-choice politician who would just as easily support a Democrat as a Republican.

It is difficult to imagine Bill Milliken being any more supportive now of lower taxes, drastic curbs in state spending or a reversal of the policies of feminization than he was during the days when John Engler, Dick Posthumus or Dick DeVos were the Republican gubernatorial standard bearers. The fact is that today’s Republican Party in Michigan is much more aligned with the Ronald Reagan/John Engler brand of conservative politics than the middle-of-the-road approach practiced by Gerald Ford and William G. Milliken.

However, with the election of Gov. Rick Snyder, the citizens of Michigan may be witnessing the coming together of two important aspects of the approach to politics – style and substance.

Generally speaking, the Snyder Administration has put forth a decidedly conservative policy agenda, particularly in the area of economics. Taxes have been cut. Spending has been curtailed. Regulations have come under scrutiny and review.

But conservatives haven’t gotten everything they’ve wanted. Right-to-work, the Detroit River international bridge crossing and adolescent body-mass index (BMI) reporting are issues where the right is less than satisfied with this administration. Regardless, Gov. Snyder is committed to advancing a pragmatic approach to governing and “relentless positive action” focused more on solving problems than in advancing any sort of political ideology, be it from the left, right or center.

In addition to a non-ideological approach to governing that is neither “mushy moderate” nor “crazy conservative,” Gov. Snyder is impacting the Republican Party by the tenor and tone of his style of leadership. Much like Bill Milliken, and to his credit, Gov. Snyder does not feel the need to score political points to move his agenda forward. When Gov. Snyder says it doesn’t matter who gets the credit for success, he means it. And that’s good politics.

Gov. Snyder is changing the way Lansing works through a Millikenesqe style and approach to personal politics not seen in the Michigan Republican Party in recent years. This method of leadership is consistent with private sector management styles practiced by the most effective business gurus – and Michigan has always appreciated great CEOs.

While the Michigan GOP of 2012 is a long way from the Republican Party built by Gov. William Milliken, there are some lessons to be learned.

If we are willing to look past the very real policy differences that separate Republicans then from Republicans now, we might just find some very real human elements to the art of politics at which Bill Milliken could show us a thing or two. Rick Snyder has learned that lesson, and all Michigan Republicans as well could benefit by emulating Bill Milliken in that regard.

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Paul F. Welday of Farmington Hills is president of Superior Capitol Consulting, LLC, a Lansing-based government affairs firm. He has been a business executive and served as a staff member and political consultant for federal, state and local officials and candidates, including chief of staff for former Congressman Joe Knollenberg of Michigan.

Cover Story

The Future Governor & LBJ – There’s the Rub

by Jack Lessenberry
February 21, 2012

Once, a few years ago, I asked Bill Milliken what the oddest thing was that ever happened to him as governor.

“Well, actually, it was when I was lieutenant governor,” he began. A series of tornadoes and floods struck the Midwest, and President Lyndon Johnson was making an inspection tour.

For whatever reason, Gov. George Romney sent Milliken to go as his surrogate on Air Force One. The plane was in flight and various politicians were sitting around and talking, when suddenly a pair of huge and powerful hands clamped down on Milliken’s shoulders from behind. Lyndon B. Johnson, the most powerful man in the world, began giving him an impromptu and unrequested massage.

“I didn’t know what to make of it, or what to do,” Milliken said. “He just went on rubbing for quite a while, and then he stopped.” LBJ was, by all accounts, a big man who was quite found of putting the touch on other politicians, physical and otherwise.

“I guess I should have been grateful that even though I was a Republican, he didn’t strangle me,” the former governor laughed.

Neither man said a word about it. Lyndon Johnson, a master at massaging egos, legislation and votes, never said why he felt compelled to turn his attentions to the younger man’s shoulders.

And Bill Milliken wasn’t about to ask.

What’s not clear is whether LBJ was even fully sure who he was. Milliken, who had outmaneuvered Alison Green to win the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor not long before, was in his early 40s then, but looked much younger. He spent his four years in the state Senate dealing with Capitol staff who were forever sternly telling him, “you can’t go in there, Sonny. That’s only for senators.”

Later, he spent a fair amount of time with politicians who socially and otherwise were, well, not like the people he grew up with. Take Gov. James Rhodes of Ohio, for example.

Officially, both men were Republicans. Unofficially, they had so little in common that they could have been from other planets. Milliken was a gentleman by birth, an introvert who had graduated from Yale. Rhodes was a coarser sort who flunked out of college after a single semester, and who was fond of bellowing “jobs and progress” while shaking a turkey leg at crowds at county fairs.

Milliken was so restrained that when he once said that something was “a pain in the ass,” it made front-page news. (He was shocked because he thought his remark was off the record.)

Rhodes was a man who wouldn’t hesitate to tell reporters that he thought George Romney was such an inept campaigner that “he couldn’t sell (an indelicate term for women) on a troop ship.”

One year, the two couples, Bill and Helen Milliken and Jim and Helen Rhodes, went to an Ohio State-University of Michigan football game together. The Millikens looked preppy. Rhodes, well, looked like Jim Rhodes, talking and gesturing genially with his mouth full of chewing tobacco. Eventually he leaned over and spat between his legs…spattering Gov. Milliken’s shoes.

“He did that all through the game,” interjected Helen Milliken, with a hint of an icy stare three decades old crossing her face.

This columnist, who also occasionally covered Rhodes, is certain he was totally oblivious to where his tobacco juice was flying. Rhodes is now long dead, but he shares one distinction with Milliken: Each was the longest-serving governor in his state’s history.

Any implication that this may say something about the respective political cultures of Ohio and Michigan is…up to the reader.

Rhodes wasn’t the only leader Milliken saw expectorate, however. Years later, he attended a meeting in China with the legendary Deng Xiaoping. “They had a brass spittoon there, and throughout the session he would occasionally spit into it,” he remembered. Fortunately, this time none of it went in his general direction, as Monty Python would say.

Some of Milliken’s trickiest encounters, however, were with his fellow Republicans.

George Romney treated him very much as a junior partner, and occasionally would give Milliken a dressing-down if he did something Romney disapproved of. Once, however, he was summoned to the governor’s home for a one-on-one meeting on a cold winter’s day.

Romney greeted him warmly, took Milliken’s coat, and came back and began trying to talk his lieutenant governor into running for the Senate against incumbent Pat McNamara, who later died.

Milliken, who never wanted anything except to be governor of Michigan someday, politely declined. Romney flew into a rage. He bellowed at him, called him selfish, and eventually stalked out.

That left Milliken alone, in the governor’s house – without the faintest idea where his coat was. “So I started looking around, without success. Eventually, Romney reappeared,” a little red-faced, but his normal self.

“I think he was embarrassed. He acted like nothing had happened.” More importantly, he gave him back his coat.

There were even a few zany moments during his gubernatorial years, not all of which he may have appreciated at the time. For example, his first day at the 1980 Republican convention, the only one ever held in Detroit. The governor got to the Hilton Airport Inn without difficulty, but had a little trouble getting away.

That’s because his limousine was stolen. Gov. Milliken had been more active than usual in that spring’s primary campaign, working hard on behalf of his old Yale classmate, George H.W. Bush. Thanks in large part to his efforts, Bush swamped Ronald Reagan in Michigan by almost two to one.

Reagan won the nomination easily anyway, but turned to Bush as his running mate, in part because of the belief that Bush’s solid Michigan win showed he had appeal in big industrial states.

Years later, musing over lunch in Traverse City, Bill Milliken agreed that his efforts may have helped Bush win the second spot on the ticket. If that hadn’t happened, he also agreed, there’s no way the future president’s son would have ever reached the White House.

Milliken made no secret that he thought the younger Bush a disaster; he angered some fellow Republicans by openly endorsing John Kerry for President in 2004.

Reminded of the ancestral role he had played in the rise of both the elder and junior Bush, Michigan’s longest-serving governor offered a wan grin.

“I know,” he said. “It is all my fault.”

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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.

Cover Story

Establishing the Modern Era
of Ethics Reform

by Craig Ruff
February 21, 2012

Governor William Milliken transformed how public officials conduct the public’s business.

At the time Mr. Milliken moved up to the governorship in 1969, there was no

• Reporting of campaign money received or spent
• Lid on corporate gifts to campaigns
• Limit on how much a group or individual could give to a politician
• Limit on lobbyists’ personal gifts to politicians
• Requirement that meetings of public bodies be held openly
• Reporting of lobbying activity
• Conflict of interest disclosure by public officials
• Easy access to public records.

When he left office at the end of 1982, all were embodied in law.

A great swath of the public may not have craved ethics reform (“inside baseball” stuff), but the news media did, and so did Mr. Milliken and an enthusiastic band of reform-minded state legislators.

In 1973 and 1974, the exposure of crimes by the Nixon administration appalled the public and politicians alike. Public trust in government plummeted. While there were laws on the books that Nixon and aides violated, and for which some were convicted and punished, the Watergate crisis prompted people, like Mr. Milliken, to look at the potential for misbehavior in other areas. More than simply look, they set in law prohibitions on such activity, and through transparency gave people a look at the inside operations of campaign funding and spending as well as public policy making.

He used the crisis in confidence to restore the public’s trust in government through broad ethics reforms.

Mr. Milliken relayed to me, a policy assistant, his conversations with John Gardner, founder and president of Common Cause and President Lyndon Johnson’s secretary for Health, Education and Welfare. Mr. Milliken asked me to work with Gardner, key legislators, and others to craft and pass laws to restore the public’s trust in government. “Yes, sir,” I said.

We had a relatively small but very effective band of reformers in the state legislature. They were brazen. Young Democrats like Dave Hollister, Perry Bullard, and Lynn Jondahl (they and others were assigned the moniker the “kiddie caucus”) and young Republicans like Michael Dively pushed the state House of Representatives. In the state Senate, big reforms appealed to Republican Bill Ballenger and Democrat Pat McCollough, who jointly headed up a special committee on ethics.

Mr. Milliken stayed on message from 1973-75. He prodded. The pushback from legislators accustomed to things as they were ran the gamut from disinterest to apoplexy. Minor frets became major things. One senator assured me of his vote only if we exempted from public disclosure contributors to his wiener roasts: “That’s where I get my money.” (Man, is he underfunded, I thought.)

We decided to run an omnibus ethics bill. We’d tackle limits on political contributions and expenditures, disclosure of all campaign money, conflicts of interests, lobbying reporting, and public financing of gubernatorial campaigns in a single bill. It was as Churchill described Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, “a brilliant strategy marred only by failure.” Our bill did not make it through the process.

It was tough to stand against ethics reforms, and Mr. Milliken wore down the opposition. Re-elected in 1974, he brought to bear new political capital. This time the state legislature adopted the big ethics bill.

In 1976 the Michigan Supreme Court overturned the public act on the basis that we tackled too many topics in one bill. The same year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a state could not limit candidates’ and independent committees’ spending, killing one element of the legislation.

Mr. Milliken did not give up. He told his legal counsel, Peter Ellsworth, to work with legislators to separate the ethics legislation into multiple bills. They did so. The legislature re-enacted the ethics bills, and Mr. Milliken signed them into law.

A couple of years later, Mr. Milliken and Ellsworth worked with legislators on two other matters. Mr. Milliken supported the opening of meetings of public bodies to the public and the freedom of people to inspect public files. Democratic House members, notably Perry Bullard and Dave Hollister, led the charge. Together, these legislators and Mr. Milliken won enactment of today’s Open Meetings and Freedom of Information acts.

Let me commend George Weeks. He had been a pillar in political reporting before becoming Mr. Milliken’s press secretary. He then became our chief of staff. To George, nothing was as crucial to a democracy as openness. He pressed for the broadest public access to information and records. I was and remain immensely proud of George for pushing us every day toward ever greater disclosure.

Over three years, Michigan enacted the most dramatic and ambitious political reforms since the Progressive Era.

Mr. Milliken was and remains zero-tolerant of violations of the public’s trust. You arm the media (dwindling but not yet impotent) and public with information and you narrow the range and risk of corruption and abuse of office.

To some, laws and moral codes are suggestions. Principle-free people, sadly, will ignore rules. In private or public lives. All that we can hope for is that through shining a bright light on behavior we can dissuade some people from abusing the public trust, and through disclosure we can catch and prosecute culprits.

Throughout its history, Michigan has been very fortunate to be led by governors and state legislators with high scruples. They surely all didn’t go to Heaven, but few saw jail time. The Milliken commitment to ethics was and is a natural extension of his love of history and the state.

Nobody among my life’s connections has ever exhibited a more scrupulous personal behavior than Mr. Milliken. Legendary, as he should be, for his championship of the environment, cities, and other things, he remains for me an exemplar of the highest political ethics.

He was a steely, get-the-job-done governor. Using keen knowledge of the legislative process and ever ready to use his bully pulpit, he dragged a less-than-enthusiastic legislature to accept certain poisons in exchange for a restoration of public trust in government. Having a heart and mind in the right place is necessary, but not sufficient.

Michiganians should be deeply grateful that the right person was in the right place at a dreadful time and built a body of laws to let the sun shine in.

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Craig Ruff is, among many things, a senior policy fellow and former president of Lansing-based Public Sector Consultants. He served as a policy advisor to Gov. Milliken and later as chief of staff to Lt. Gov. William Brickley.

Cover Story

Milliken and Young – America’s
Political ‘Odd Couple’

by Bob Berg
February 21, 2012

There are, of course, many aspects of the career of Governor William G. Milliken that deserve celebration. One of the most unique is the strong partnership he formed with Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young.

These two men from two different worlds formed the most productive bipartisan political partnership in Michigan history in the 1970s and 80s when their tenures as governor of Michigan and mayor of Detroit overlapped. And they formed a strong personal friendship that continued after both had left office, right up to the day Mayor Young passed away.

It’s easy to understand why from a distance people might not see any common ground between the two men.

Milliken, a white Republican from Traverse City, did not have a single black voter in his district when he served in the state Senate. He came from a well-to-do family and was the third consecutive generation of the Milliken family to serve in the Senate. He is known to this day as the ultimate nice guy, with never a harsh word for anyone.

Young, a black Democrat and a product of Detroit’s lower east side, never got beyond high school. In the 1940s and ’50s he was a tenacious union and civil rights activist at a time when that put him far out of the mainstream. He was a defiant witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950s – lecturing the committee counsel on the proper pronunciation of the word “Negro” – and was blacklisted for years after as a result. He was known to be combative and, on occasion, profane.

And yet, the two developed a strong working relationship and friendship in which both placed great value.

In his autobiography, Young called Milliken “the finest and fairest [governor] the state has had.”

In 1995, when the Detroit NAACP decided to present Young with a lifetime achievement award at the annual Freedom Fund Dinner, he was asked who he wanted to introduce him to the 10,000 people in attendance. He asked that Milliken do the honors. In his introduction, Milliken talked about how the two had developed “an effective working relationship built on respect and a level of trust that is rare in the world of politics.”

How and why did that happen? How did these two, so different in background and temperament, become the “Odd Couple” of Michigan politics?

As someone who had the unique privilege of working closely with both, I often tell people that once you got to know them, their relationship made a great deal of sense because, in fact, they had a great deal in common.

Both men were highly intelligent. Milliken is a Yale graduate. When Young took an aptitude test while applying for a job with the League Life Insurance Co. in the late 1950s, he scored the second highest score ever.

Both men had a great sense of humor. They took their jobs seriously, but never took themselves too seriously.

Most importantly, at the core of their public careers was a deep commitment to people and to public service. They weren’t after the title or the attention or the paycheck or the house that came with the chief executive job. They sought public office to bring about change – to improve people’s lives.

When Gov. Milliken left office at the end of 1982, a collection was published of key speeches and special messages from his 14 years as governor. If you look at those speeches and messages, you see how consistent his vision was from his first day in office to his last day. Education, the environment, urban problems and improving race relations were constant themes through all 14 years. He sought and, more importantly, achieved major unequaled successes in each of those areas.

Coleman Young took office with an equally clear vision. He campaigned in 1973 on a platform that included assuring black people an equitable place at the table in Detroit after centuries of denial, bringing desperately needed jobs to Detroit and rebuilding the riverfront, starting from bridge (Belle Isle) to bridge (Ambassador). He sought and achieved major unequaled successes in all those areas throughout his 20 years as mayor.

Milliken championed Detroit and urban issues when much of his party didn’t share his vision or views. Critics on the right labeled him the “ghetto governor,” and he used to tell about a letter he received from an unhappy constituent urging him to run for mayor of Detroit. The writer suggested he wouldn’t do much for the city, but the state would be better off with him out of office.

Their relationship was well known and deeply appreciated in Detroit. On Election Day 1978, the governor was doing some last minute campaigning in front of Hudson’s. A predominantly African American crowd quickly converged on him, wishing him well and telling him they had voted for him. At the edge of the crowd I heard one elderly resident tell another, “That’s Coleman’s friend.”

It was in their shared vision of the importance of urban issues and of improved race relations that they did their best work together. There are many examples.

In 1975 the two led a delegation that included Henry Ford II and Max Fisher on a trip to Washington to lobby the Ford Administration on behalf of Detroit. They came home with a $600 million commitment – real money back in 1975 – for a regional light rail system. Tragically, southeast Michigan’s racial divisions kept that from becoming a reality.

At a time in the 1970s when Detroit was in dire financial straits, they developed a Detroit equity package that brought $35 million a year in state funds to the city to underwrite city institutions, like the Zoo, the DIA and the Public Library, that serve the entire state.

Milliken, for the first time in state history, assigned State Police units to patrol Detroit’s freeways, on the theory that if they were patrolling all the other freeways in the state, Detroit’s should be treated equally.

Milliken appointed more African American judges than all the previous governors in Michigan history combined.

When Young came to Lansing to meet with the governor, they often would meet privately, without aides in the room to take notes or lawyers to go over fine print. Each was secure in the knowledge they could trust each other and a handshake was all that was needed to seal a deal.

At a 1978 meeting at the Manoogian Mansion, Mayor Young assured the governor he was “not going to lift a finger” to help Democratic nominee Bill Fitzgerald in the race for governor that year. It was the only time in the last half of the 20th Century a Republican candidate for governor carried Wayne County.

When the Michigan United Conservation Clubs raised environmental issues that threatened to derail the mayor’s plans to build the Riverfront Apartments next to Cobo Hall, Milliken brokered a deal between the city and the MUCC that paved the way for construction.

In 1981, when Detroit was facing another fiscal crisis, they worked together to secure legislative approval of an increase in the Detroit income tax.

It was in the midst of that effort that perhaps their most famous dust-up occurred, which demonstrated that both had a sense of humor and neither took themselves too seriously.

As the bills were moving slowly through the legislature, Young said in his autobiography, “I mistakenly thought at one point that he [Milliken] might be proceeding a little too deliberately.”

In talking with some reporters in the Capitol, the mayor expressed his frustration with what he saw as a glacial pace, pointed to the governor’s office and said, “That m—–f—-r needs to get moving.” The media had a field day. The governor was not pleased.

The next day the mayor called him to explain that m—–f—-r is one of those words that have many meanings, depending on how you say it. It can, he continued, be a term of endearment and friendship, depending on how you say it.

The governor referred to this incident and the mayor’s explanation when he spoke at the mayor’s funeral. He concluded, with a grin, “I took his word on that.”

It was at that funeral that Detroit’s appreciation for the unique partnership formed between the two men was recognized in a very moving way. When the governor stepped to the pulpit of a packed Greater Grace Cathedral to pay tribute to his friend, before he could begin speaking the 4,000 people in attendance rose as one with a spontaneous and lengthy standing ovation.

As the congregation paid their poignant tribute to Milliken, it occurred to me that Coleman Young, looking on from above, was joining in the applause.

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Bob Berg is partner and vice president of Berg Muirhead and Associates, a Detroit-based public relations firm. A former reporter and Capitol bureau chief, he served as executive assistant for public affairs to Gov. Milliken and then as press secretary to Mayor Young.

Cover Story

More than a Nice Guy –
Tough on the Tough Issues

by Lana Pollack
February 21, 2012

“Who’d you vote for?”

“What do you mean? Ed Pierce, of course.”

“No, not for state senator! For governor. Who’d you vote for, for governor?”

Beers in hand, a half dozen of us were standing near the temporary bar set up in the poorly lit basement of a campus hotel in Ann Arbor. It was November 1978 and the polls had just closed. We’d finished our get-out-the-vote slog through the student apartments and were among the first to assemble at the Democrats’ victory party.

The question hung momentarily in the air. I was with hardcore Democratic activists; why would anyone even ask what lever we’d pulled at the top of our ticket?

“Bill Milliken,” I half mumbled, just a little uncertain how the other party stalwarts would take my endorsement of the Republican governor. There was a pause. Then in quick succession I heard a “Me too,” followed by similar, more confident confessions around the circle. We’d all voted for Bill Milliken.

“Anyway,” I added as we drifted toward the hanging sheets of butcher paper being marked up with phoned-in precinct results, “half my vote was for Helen.”

Granted, Bill Milliken was helped to his third full-term victory that night by an inept Democratic opponent, but he might well have had our crossover votes against a better man. We Democrats liked his easy relationship with Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, at that time a rough-edged but still respected advocate for Michigan’s black population and our largest city. And as women, we knew he’d not throw us under any of the busses that Right-to-Life organizers rolled into the state capital almost every session.

Actually, there were plenty of other reasons I felt comfortable giving Bill Milliken another term.

Although his administration was too slow to pick up on the accidental mix of a fire retardant into the feed stock of Michigan’s cattle herds, we generally felt we could count on Milliken to press the envelope for effective environmental protections. And besides his leadership on civil rights, women’s issues, urban affairs and environmental protections, I couldn’t see a better guy than Milliken. He was even initiating steps to end the abuses in the back wards of our massive mental health facilities. And he’d shown himself to be genuinely committed to good public education and great universities.

Most of all, I just thought he was a nice guy; perhaps, I thought, maybe he was even a little too nice to handle the rising voices of the hard right wing of his own party and an economy that was edging toward bleaker times. But I was wrong. Bill Milliken was nice, but not too nice. In fact, he was just the right fit and an effective moderate leader of a state with a rich mix of public opinions and social values.

With the perspective of time and the insights born of my own long association with political deal making, I recognize now that Milliken was much more than a nice guy. As governor, he was a tough politician and skilled deal maker. He engaged in lots of bruising political battles – especially over civil rights and taxes.

He was an equal opportunity battler; he fought with members of his own party and he fought with the Democrats. Remarkably, he was unafraid to spend his own political capital as needed to secure the last few votes and seal an important deal. He struggled to maintain some semblance of a balanced budget when Michigan went through a terrible contraction of the auto industry, and by the end of his term was suffering an unemployment rate that topped out at 17 percent.

And he made some mistakes along the way. Sit with Helen and the governor in the quiet beauty of their backyard overlooking the magnificent west arm of Grand Traverse Bay and he’ll tell you about some of his mistakes.

He’ll say he helped overpopulate Michigan’s prisons when he signed poorly thought-out drug laws. He’ll say he should have not been so sparing in using the governors’ powers of clemency. And he’ll modestly tell you about his continuing efforts to right what he regards as his own wrongs. His stories are vivid and often in the present tense, because 30 years after leaving the state’s highest office, he’s still engaged in the business of making Michigan a better place to live. I have a couple of favorite stories.

I like the one about his trip to testify at a parole hearing a few years ago. “You know,” he told me, “I’d never been to a parole hearing and I hadn’t realized what it must feel like for the applicants until I saw the woman I’d come to testify for. She was small. She sat alone in a thin nylon jacket facing a bank of well-dressed authorities on the parole board. I sat in the back of the room with a few others. Years ago she’d had her husband killed after she found him raping their four-year-old. She didn’t make parole that day.” Thanks in part to Milliken’s appeal, I understand, she eventually did make parole.

Not all his stories are sad. Hardly. There’s the one where he and Helen accused each other of setting the automatic sprinkler by their front gate to go off not at the usual 3 a.m. but rather at 3 p.m. – soaking a visiting political candidate whom they did not particularly care for. Probably neither of them had intentionally switched the sprinkler, but each one was sort of wishing they had.

I have a small picture of Gov. Milliken on a side table in my dining room. In the photo he’s off to the side, looking at me as I introduced him the night Dave Dempsey’s biography of the governor was featured at the Michigan Historical Museum. Bill is anticipating how he’ll respond to the book – grinning like the kid that in some important way he still is.

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Lana Pollack is U.S. chair of the International Joint Commission, appointed by President Obama. She is also a former president of the Michigan Environmental Council, a three-term Michigan state senator and a magazine co-founder.

Columns

Jack Lessenberry

Pressing the Governor
for Clemency

November 24, 2010

TRAVERSE CITY — Bill Milliken, who served as Michigan’s governor longer than anyone in history, these days doesn’t usually give his successors advice unless they ask for it.

Except on one issue. There are dozens of women in Michigan prisons who, he is convinced, don’t belong behind bars.

They are women who are of no threat to society, mostly battered and abused women who were either unjustly convicted or got sentences far harsher than deserved. He has joined the members of the Michigan Women’s Justice and Clemency Project in asking Governor Jennifer Granholm to commute these women’s sentences.

“There are really some very sad situations here, women who certainly don’t belong in jail,” Milliken said.

Barbara Hernandez, for example, was a runaway teenager, an incest victim who was living with an abusive boyfriend when he killed a man. Though she wasn’t involved in the killing, she was convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison in 1992.

Delores Kapuscinski did kill her husband, after years of traumatic physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. She’s been behind bars since 1988, as has Melissa Chapman, whose jealous boyfriend killed another man in her presence. Her crime? Helping hide the body out of fear of what her boyfriend would do to her otherwise.

Carol Jacobsen, the director of the Michigan Women’s Justice and Clemency Project, says there are hundreds of women like this in Michigan prisons. Nearly a third of the women sentenced for murder did not actually kill anyone themselves. Others killed in self-defense, or to protect their children from abusers.

“Too many of these women were convicted by juries and sentenced by judges who really didn’t understand the battered women syndrome,” she said. For two decades, she and a small group of volunteers have been about the only friend most of these women have. They’ve pored over case files, read trial transcripts, interviewed these women in prison. Many cases they reject.

But they are now pressing Granholm to grant clemency or commutation and early paroles to 28 women whose cases are compelling and who clearly deserve freedom.

All of them, Jacobsen told the governor, “acted in self-defense against abusers, but received neither equal treatment by law enforcement or effective trials that considered their abuse.”

The governor leaves office New Year’s Day, and has the power to commute any sentences before then. But so far, the Clemency Project has heard nothing. This writer also contacted the governor’s office and asked for comment on what the governor might do.

But there was no response by press time. The governor has been, Carol Jacobsen said, a real disappointment.

When she first took office eight years ago, they had hoped she would be more empathetic to the plight of women less fortunate than she. Jennifer Granholm was the state’s first woman governor, and they thought she might have been naturally sympathetic to women less fortunate than themselves.

They reasoned that she had seen plenty of gender-based injustice, especially when she was the state’s attorney general.

But so far, all they have gotten from her are a few token commutations — “a drop in the ocean,” Jacobsen said. “We have succeeded in gaining clemency [from the governor] for four women lifers in the past few years, plus a dozen or more paroles.”

For Carol Jacobsen, this was an accidental calling. Her “normal” career is at the University of Michigan, where she is a professor of art. Twenty years ago, she was doing a documentary film in a women’s prison and became aware of their plight.

That motivated her to get involved. Since then, she and her volunteers have devoted thousands of unpaid hours to the cause.

Michigan’s world of justice is still one of sharp contrasts, she says. “I have attended more than a dozen public hearings for women lifers in the past few years, and have testified for them. The public hearings are racist, sexist exercises in public flogging.”

She thinks the “ignorance by the assistant attorney general and the parole board about domestic violence, incest, and the relationship of abuse to women’s lawbreaking is astonishing.”

She has other concerns, too; she thinks that many women in Michigan’s Huron Valley Prison are being treated inhumanely, and says she has evidence that suicides and suicide attempts are common. Her letters of complaint about this have also gone unanswered.

But she intends to keep trying, because that’s all she knows how to do. She, as well as Gov. Milliken, keep hoping that Gov. Granholm does the right thing at the last moment.

She notes that three years ago, Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a conservative Republican, granted early paroles and clemencies to 21 battered women prisoners as he was leaving office, saying, “our legal system is the best in the world, but it’s not perfect.”

If a Kentucky Republican can do the right thing, she wants to know, why can’t a Michigan Democrat?

Update posted approximately 9:30 p.m., November 27
Liz Boyd, a spokesman for the governor’s office, sent a response after this column’s deadline that said three of the women listed as the most urgent cases by the Michigan Women’s Clemency Project had not filed applications for a commutation of their sentence.

The governor’s spokesman added that “in at least three of the Project’s cases (Linda Hamilton, Kinnari Sutariya and Sharleen Wabindato) the Project’s advocacy was somewhat of a disservice to the inmates and its own credibility because the Project either falsely asserted that the inmate was a victim of domestic violence in direct contradiction to the inmate’s own sworn testimony, or the Project was less than forthcoming on critical components of the inmate’s real motivation for murder (i.e. information that the inmate was pregnant with another man’s child at the time she murdered her husband).”

But Carol Jacobsen, director of the Women’s Clemency Project, says none of that is true. She responded that “claims that we misrepresented any prisoner are false, in bad faith, or a misunderstanding of the facts.”

“Assistant Attorney General (Charles) Schettler and the members of the parole board (with the exception of the chair) are astonishingly ignorant about domestic violence, incest and abuse.”

Jacobsen also said that Boyd’s assertions about the three women mentioned are also false in all aspects. She said that the women indeed suffered domestic violence, and acted in self-defense, but that their attempts to tell the truth were “met with contempt and discounted” during the hearing process.

That process, she says, is designed for a “white middle class privileged male point of view,” and is “entirely constructed for violent male prisoners and is unfair and unreasonable for female prisoners.”

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.

Desperate for Diversification

A brief history of Michigan’s economic development strategies

by Rick Haglund
January 16, 2010

Michigan was in big trouble as the decade of the 1980s dawned. Detroit’s automakers, collectively known then as the muscular Big Three, were beginning to see their dominance challenged by imports from upstart Japanese automakers. They were unprepared, and so was their home state.

Many iconic Michigan companies besides the automakers were struggling. Hudson’s downtown Detroit department store, once one of the world’s largest, would soon close. So would historic manufacturing operations of the Stroh Brewery Co. and Vernor’s Ginger Ale. Decline and decay of Michigan’s urban centers accelerated. Workers lost their jobs in record numbers and looked to sun-belt states for new ones.

State government had been engaged in some form of proactive economic development since the 1940s. But the growing threat to the state’s economy, accelerated by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, drove then-Gov. William Milliken to expand business attraction efforts to an unprecedented level. Job training, tax incentives for companies investing in the state, aid to cities and a variety of technical economic development tools were launched by Milliken. It marked the beginning of the modern age of Michigan’s economic development strategy.

“The original intent was instant gratification,” said Keith Molin, who served stints as director of the Labor and Commerce departments under Milliken. “It was a learning experience. The 1970s and 1980s were the initial period in the transition to a global economy.”

Molin said state government’s economic development goal then was remarkably similar to its objective today: diversifying the state’s auto-driven economy while trying to hang on to as many high-paying auto manufacturing jobs as possible.

“Most of the issues we were wrestling with in the late 1970s and early 1980s are still in existence today,” said Molin, who prefers full-time work to retirement and returned to state government last year as executive director of the Michigan State Housing Development Authority.

Results mixed
The results of the state’s decades of diversification efforts have been decidedly mixed. Debate still rages over whether the billions of dollars spent over the years in tax breaks, job training and other handouts made any difference to the state’s economy.

Conservatives and free-market think-tank types say the money spent on economic development programs largely has been wasted. They say Michigan would have been much better off by cutting taxes across the board for all businesses, rather than offering targeted tax breaks.

“If these programs actually worked, we’d be fully diversified by now,” Michael LaFaive, director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, wrote in 2005. “Instead, we continue to lose the race for jobs while politicians concoct new economic chimeras.”

But an increasingly costly war among the states for jobs demands that Michigan offer tax breaks and other incentives to keep and attract jobs. Virtually no company will make a significant investment without state and local tax incentives. And corporations considering expansions or new headquarters won’t hesitate to bolt from their home state when another state dangles a tasty financial carrot in front of them.

“Politically, we’re in the either-or position of lower taxes and a better business climate, or using incentive programs,” said Greg Main, president of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. “You need both.”

Michigan found that out the hard way when General Motors closed its Willow Run assembly plant in 1992, eliminating 4,300 jobs, at a time when the state had scaled back its incentive programs. (More about that later.)

From an employment pie-chart standpoint, Michigan’s economy is far more diverse than it was in 1980, when manufacturing was Michigan’s largest employment sector. Manufacturing, including autos, now employs just 12 percent of the state’s nonfarm work force, down sharply from 25.2 percent in 1980. Services, retail trade and government each employs a bigger share of today’s work force than manufacturing.

But that diversification has come about more by shedding auto-related jobs than by adding new, well-paying, non-auto jobs to the formerly strong base. That type of diversification, therefore, couldn’t insulate the state from the pain caused by the domestic auto industry’s rapid decline over the past decade.

Michigan lost jobs every year in the last decade in a pattern that eerily paralleled the decline in sales by the Detroit Three automakers during that period.

“This suggests that a stable auto base is needed in the current structural environment to support a growing [state] economy overall,” University of Michigan economist George Fulton said in his annual November economic forecast. “Thus, either the industry must be stabilized or the environment must be changed.”

And while state economic developers have attracted high-wage jobs in life sciences, advanced manufacturing, information technology and other areas, those efforts have not done nearly enough to offset the loss of high-wage manufacturing jobs.

The result is that the state overall is getting progressively poorer. Michigan has fallen from a ranking of 20th among the states in per capita income in 2001 to 37th in 2008. Fulton said he expects Michigan to drop to 40th when the federal government releases 2009 per capita income figures later this year.

New efforts
To their credit, state policymakers saw trouble ahead for the auto industry decades ago, although no one could have predicted back then that General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC would fall into bankruptcy, as they did last summer. (Although Chrysler came close as 1980 began before being rescued by a federal loan guarantee package pushed by charismatic CEO Lee Iacocca and a young congressman named Jim Blanchard).

Milliken launched a multipronged economic development effort to boost the state economy as a deep recession was about to take hold in 1980. The state stepped up its use of tax incentives to try to lure new businesses to Michigan. Milliken also created a High-Tech Task Force to make recommendations on how Michigan could capture jobs in emerging sectors, such as factory automation and computer technologies.

And the Milliken administration tried to save some troubled iconic businesses, such as the Sander’s candy company, by making direct loans to them from the state treasury and pension funds.

“We were the lenders of last resort,” Molin said.

New era
Gov. James Blanchard’s election in 1982 ushered in a new era of economic development strategy, part of a broad and often innovative jobs agenda. It included trying to create the next Microsoft in Michigan by using state pension money for venture capital, a little-known investment tool in a state where conventional bank financing was the norm.

The state rebounded more quickly and strongly than much of the rest of the nation and there were even a few modest successes in the venture capital arena, such as Perceptron Inc., a Plymouth manufacturer of sophisticated factory measuring and inspection equipment. But there also were some well-publicized failures, including the Vixen Motor Co., a manufacturer of fuel-efficient recreational vehicles.

Blanchard also created several other state-backed financing efforts that attempted to leverage private investment to help young, technology-based businesses grow in the state.

“It was the first attempt to think about something beyond the typical economic development strategies other states were using,” said Main, who was a deputy director in Blanchard’s Commerce Department.

MEDC chief Greg Main. Photo by David Trumpie.

Michigan Economic Development Corporation President Greg Main says he’ll continue hunting far and wide this year to bag jobs and business investment for the state.

But he also plans to do more gardening — cultivating the soil to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

“The most vibrant economies in the world are those with strong entrepreneurial bases,” Main said. “It becomes part of the bread and butter of your economic development policy.”

Main, who became president of the MEDC in April, said he wants to find ways of increasing the availability of venture capital for growing companies and to help them solve business problems they inevitably encounter along the way.

A soft-spoken man with a penchant for bow ties, Main said he’s planning to propose changes in the state’s angel investor tax credit to make it more effective.

Angel investors are high-net-worth individuals who invest in young, growing companies. Main said the little-used credit could encourage more angel investing by providing a larger upfront benefit to investors.

“We did this in Oklahoma and got a 10-to-1 return” on investment in new companies compared to tax credits.

A former economic development official in Gov. James Blanchard’s administration, Main also led the Oklahoma Department of Commerce and served as president of an Oklahoma organization that linked entrepreneurs to venture capital.

Efforts in the past to attract venture capital to Michigan had mixed success, in part, because there wasn’t a lot research coming out of the state’s universities to commercialize until a few years ago, Main said.

“Just doing seed capital [to fund start-up companies] wasn’t going to work,” he said. “It takes a lot of time to put these things together.”

Main said he’s also “toying” with the possibility of offering the Kauffman Foundation’s Fast Track entrepreneurial assistance service statewide.

Fast Track programs, which offer educational materials and networking opportunities to entrepreneurs, are offered at several locations in the state, including Grand Valley State University and Wayne State University’s Tech Town.

Main said the MEDC will continue to rely heavily on traditional tax incentives to attract new business this year. But he acknowledged that, this being an election year, criticism about the effectiveness of such incentives will grow louder.

Several Republican candidates for governor, including former MEDC executive committee chairman Rick Snyder, have been critical of the MEDC’s incentive programs and said they need to be reviewed to determine their effectiveness.

The free-market Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland has been a persistent critic of the MEDC’s main tax-incentive program, the Michigan Economic Growth Authority.

MEGA offers business tax credits to companies that make investments that keep and add jobs in Michigan. Last year, MEGA approved tax credits to retain 125,984 jobs and create 139,067 new ones on $2.56 billion of private investment.

But the Mackinac Center says that thousands of new jobs approved by MEGA are never actually created, either because the projects don’t materialize or produce fewer jobs than are promised.

Main said companies that don’t produce the jobs don’t get the MEGA tax credits. He defended tax incentive programs, saying every state has a financial incentive program to try to attract new businesses.

The Mackinac Center and many Republicans argue that lower across-the-board taxes would reduce the need for costly business attraction incentives.

But Main said Michigan must have both a competitive tax climate and a financial incentive program to attract business.

Low-tax states, such as Mississippi and Alabama, often offer the biggest incentives to try to lure new auto plants and other major projects, he said.

“Even in places where taxes are the lowest, the incentives are the strongest.”

Tax incentives are so ingrained in every state’s economic development strategy, Main said there’s little chance that they’ll be eliminated.

“It’s something we’re going to have to live with,” he said. “Companies want to know they’re loved and wanted.”

— Rick Haglund

Availability of venture capital to finance promising start-up companies remains a challenge today. But the venture capital industry in the state has grown from just one company (EDF Ventures in Ann Arbor) during the early Blanchard years to nearly 30 operating in the state.

Blanchard’s administration figured that universities also could play a critical role in modernizing the state’s economy. His initial effort in drawing universities into economic development was in the establishment of three so-called “Centers of Excellence,” created by 1981 legislation passed at Milliken’s urging.

The Industrial Technology Institute worked with faculty at the University of Michigan on developing advanced manufacturing processes. The Michigan Biotechnology Institute joined forces with Michigan State University to grow the budding biotech industry. And the Metropolitan Center for High Technology, housed at Wayne State University, dealt with issues related to creating technology-based industries in urban cores.

Today, only the Michigan Biotechnology Institute, now known as MBI International, remains. But Blanchard was correct in believing that the vast resources inside Michigan’s top-notch research universities could be unlocked to enrich the state’s economy.

It’s an idea that the universities themselves were slow to embrace. Many professors felt their only jobs were to teach students and conduct basic research. The idea of commercializing research into products that could earn a profit was abhorrent to them.

But as Michigan’s economy began to seriously falter at the turn of the millennium, university presidents saw it was in their best interest to play a larger role in economic development. Appropriations from a cash-strapped state government were being cut, making it more difficult for universities to hire top-notch faculty, attract the best students and maintain critical research.

U-M, Michigan State and Wayne State formed the University Research Corridor to broaden economic development efforts — and to lobby for more state funding.

“We came together as the URC because we believe in the unlimited potential of our state to expand upon a rich heritage of invention and to establish itself as a world leader in innovation and creativity,” U-M President Mary Sue Coleman told the state Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education in May.

Last year the URC hired Jeff Mason, a long-time official of the MEDC, as its first executive director, demonstrating the emphasis the URC is placing on economic development.

“These (URC) institutions are producing both innovation and new company spinoffs that rival other major research regions of the nation and returning $16 for every dollar the state invests,” Mason said recently.

Every one of the state’s 15 universities, not just the big three in the URC, now touts efforts to boost the economies of their local communities and regions.

In his eight years as governor, Blanchard also tried to craft an image of Michigan as a state that was moving beyond basic manufacturing into an economy that would reward brains far more than brawn.

He even held a hokey funeral ceremony at the Henry Ford Museum (now called The Henry Ford) that drew dozens of top corporate executives and well-known trend-spotter Faith Popcorn to “bury the Rust Belt.”

Different direction
John Engler, who unexpectedly defeated Blanchard for governor in 1990, regarded Blanchard’s economic development apparatus as little more than a public-relations scheme to ensure his political future.

To the astonishment of many local economic developers in the state, the former Senate leader quickly abolished the Commerce Department and took Michigan out of the business of luring companies with tax incentives.

“We’re going to find out what causes businesses to invest,” Art Ellis, a long-time Engler pal chosen to shut down Commerce, said at the time.

Engler strongly believed that what businesses really wanted was lower across-the-board tax rates, a top-notch education system and less regulation. He followed through on all three, cutting taxes, shrinking the state’s business regulatory structure and getting voters to approve an overhaul of public school financing.

But Engler’s belief that an improved business climate would negate the need for targeted tax incentives was betrayed by GM in its decision to close the Willow Run assembly plant in 1992.

GM pitted the Michigan plant against an assembly plant in Arlington, Texas, as part of a plan to eliminate 74,000 jobs. Although GM said its decision of which plant to close would be based on internal business factors and didn’t ask for incentives, Texas Gov. Ann Richards offered a rich package that included $2 million in tax breaks and $1 million in job training to keep the Arlington plant open.

Michigan didn’t offer a specific incentive proposal, but Engler said the state would match anything Texas offered. In an appearance on the Today show, Engler said he was confident that GM’s decision wouldn’t be based on incentives and that the automaker would choose Willow Run to survive.

But in a crushing blow to the state’s recession-wracked economy and Engler’s political calculation, GM decided to shutter Willow Run, destroying 4,300 jobs.

Engler responded by creating an economic development operation that rivaled — and in many ways mimicked — what Blanchard had built. He replaced Blanchard’s Commerce Department with the Jobs Commission, which housed economic development and job training functions. Engler also put the state back into the financial incentives game, and quietly reinstituted some of the venture capital and business financing programs that Blanchard had pioneered.

But Engler’s most enduring business development achievement was the MEDC, which he established in 1999 to replace the Jobs Commission. Established as a public-private partnership that operated largely outside the strictures of state government, the MEDC was — and remains — governed by an executive committee made up largely of business leaders and local economic developers.

The idea behind the MEDC was to establish an organization that would be insulated from politics and provide Michigan with economic development continuity, regardless of which political party controlled the governor’s office.

That goal has largely been met, although the MEDC has not been immune from political controversy.

In the early years, the MEDC and its hard-charging president, Doug Rothwell, were regularly criticized by lawmakers for running roughshod over the legislature, which provided most of the MEDC’s funding.

And although the MEDC’s executive committee is charged with hiring the corporation’s president, the reality is that the governor plays a major role the selection process. Rothwell, for instance, was recruited to Michigan from the East Coast by Engler. Rothwell’s wife, Sharon, served as Engler’s chief of staff.

Engler, with approval from the legislature, also armed Michigan with one of the nation’s most powerful business attraction weapons — the Michigan Economic Growth Authority.

MEGA has offered companies billions of dollars in tax credits for investing in the state since the authority was started in 1995. Ironically, its creation was vehemently opposed as a costly give-away program by many of Engler’s fellow Republicans, including then-Senate Majority Leader Dick Posthumus, who later became Engler’s lieutenant governor.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free market think tank in Midland, was an early and continuing critic of MEGA, saying that the state would be far better off by lowering taxes for all businesses instead of offering targeted tax breaks.

But Engler, as he often did as governor, shrugged off the criticism and plowed ahead.

“The Engler years were marked by taking programs and, through the sheer force of his political will, putting them into practice,” said Molin.

To his credit, the MEDC and MEGA program are considered to be models of economic development that other states, including Indiana, have emulated.

While Republicans generally oppose government efforts to pick “winners and losers,” Engler made several large bets on industries he thought would help diversify the economy.

He established the Life Sciences Corridor and pledged to spend $1 billion of the state’s share of federal tobacco litigation settlement money on research and commercialization in the health, medicine and biotech fields.

Engler also gave millions of dollars to U-M to help a company owned by recently deceased Detroit Pistons’ owner William Davidson develop flat-panel computer and television screens in an attempt to create a new industry for the state. But the effort ultimately was unsuccessful.

And Engler’s administration also failed to capture any of the Japanese auto plants that popped up in the United States during his tenure as governor. The success of those operations has resulted in Michigan’s automakers cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Like many governors before him, Engler presided over a state economy that rebounded from recession and grew tens of thousands of new jobs, only to begin shedding them as the economy reversed toward the end of his stewardship.

Alternative energy
Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat who succeeded Engler in 2003, maintained many of the Engler initiatives and expanded on some of them.

She turned the Life Sciences Corridor into the Technology Tri-Corridor, which split tobacco settlement funds among life sciences, homeland security and advanced automotive technologies.

The move was sharply criticized by leaders of the life sciences sector, who believed the state didn’t have the resources to adequately fund three major business sectors. They proved to be correct as budget problems grew and Granholm cut back on Engler’s financing commitment to the life sciences.

Granholm later merged the Technology Tri-Corridor into an “emerging sectors” strategy that added alternative energy to the mix. The development of an alternative energy industry, including advanced auto batteries, biofuels, and wind and solar power, has become the central focus of Granholm’s economic development efforts.

Greg Main, the current MEDC chief, said Michigan will see groundbreakings involving $6 billion of previously announced alternative energy projects this year, all aided by MEGA tax credits. That will make Michigan one of the nation’s leaders in that sector, according to Main, who said that six of the eight new lithium-ion battery plants opening in the United States this year will be in Michigan.

“We’re going to be the epicenter of it,” he said.

But Granholm has been criticized for wavering in her economic development strategy and for failing to secure funding for what she claims are her top priorities.

In 2004 Granholm said she wanted to improve the quality of the state’s workforce by doubling the number of college graduates in the state, including two-year associate’s degrees, over the next 10 years. But she has consistently approved steep budget cuts for higher education as state revenues have plummeted.

Improving Detroit and other cities to maintain and attract smart young professionals, who experts say want to live in vibrant urban settings, was an early aim of Granholm’s administration.

Her “Cool Cities” initiative was launched in 2003 and provided cities with annual neighborhood revitalization grants. But the grant program has been suspended and Granholm rarely speaks publicly about “cool cities.”

To her defense, severe state budget problems have prevented Granholm from funding an urban revitalization strategy, college scholarships and other programs that could have benefitted the state economically.

In many respects, as Gov. Granholm prepares to leave office and voters prepare to elect a new governor in November, Michigan’s economic challenges are similar to those of the 1980s. The state faces severe joblessness while trying to recover from a disastrous recession.

Michigan’s unemployment rate in November was 14.7 percent, nearly matching the 14.6 percent annual unemployment rate in 1983 as the state was emerging from a steep economic downturn.

Economic developers are touting their diversification efforts, while simultaneously trying to ensure an automotive future by aiding automakers’ electric- and hybrid-vehicle initiatives. But Molin, the former state Commerce Department director, said Michigan must finally shake its stubborn belief that the auto industry and manufacturing will again restore the state’s fortunes.

Economic development efforts must be more focused, he said, on creating a post-auto-industry future.

“We haven’t [as a state] begun to explore what the new economy is going to look like,” he said. “There has to be the ability to see the old is passing away.”

Rick Haglund is a former business writer and columnist for Booth Newspapers who has covered state economic development policy for three decades.

Blown Away

by Tim Skubick
November 20, 2009

Out of the blue, the governor was asked what title she would use if she wrote a book about her tenure in Lansing.

How about Blown Away?

You’ll recall that was the line she used in one of her State of the State speeches as she gushed about how her economic recovery plans would eventually blossom.

“In five years you’ll be blown away,” she confidently reassured everyone.

Sitting at the anchor desk that night, one recalls thinking, “That line is going to be used against her by somebody down the line.”

And true to form, it was and still is — and in retrospect even the governor concedes the line was a mistake.

But those two words capture the essence of this governor, which will be part of her legacy.

You can almost hear her and Team Granholm behind closed doors brainstorming about the lousy state of Michigan’s economy and wanting desperately to say something positive. Being positive is in her DNA, and her troops, eager to please her, know it.

Everyone in the room believed that the seeds the governor was planting would result in a diversified economy long after she was gone. So wanting to strike that positive note, you could see them nodding in agreement that in five years, folks would be blown away.

Here was the rub, and this is what has plagued this governor from the get-go. There was no hard-nosed realist in the room to shake everyone to their senses, someone to stomp on the rose-colored glasses and urge everyone to get real. Far as we can tell, very few of her inner circle advisors have regularly challenged her, taken her on and pointed out the consequences of some of her decisions.

It is not healthy for any governor to have group-think, with everyone on the same page all the time.

Somebody should have said, “Governor, I understand your desire to say something nice, but this line is a ticking time bomb. You may feel good about using it, but it’s going to come back to haunt you. Some opponent is going to say, why do we have to wait five years? Why didn’t you do something before this so we don’t have to wait? Take the line out, now.”

If somebody in the room did say that, apologies to that person, but it’s highly unlikely that happened.

It is widely believed in this town that the governor does not like confrontation, although she has certainly had to confront it and deal with it successfully. But in the political sandbox, sometimes you have to throw sand in the other guy’s eye just to get your toy back and establish who is in charge.

Not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings is an admirable human trait, as is wanting to be uplifting and optimistic, but sometimes that desire gets in the way of reality, which in this case produced the blown-away line.

As for what her book title would be, the governor confesses she has none, but she says the content would focus on leadership in a crisis.

And for the first time, she concludes that her “biggest flaw, my biggest liability” was the lack of legislative experience before she became chief executive to cope with this never ending economic mess.

As for a chapter in her book on another political career, she promises: “I have no intention of running for anything again.” With the exception, she laughs, of a post on the PTA.

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.

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

Farm Turf War
As long as everybody stays in his or her own lane, life in this town can be tranquil. Alas, when somebody wanders onto someone else’s hallowed ground, you get a turf war.

And we’ve got a dandy one unfolding right now.

In this corner, Gov. Jennifer Granholm. And in that one, the state’s farming community led by the Michigan Farm Bureau.

Seems she wants the power to pick the director of the state Agriculture Department, and the other guys want the status quo, which allows the Agriculture Commission to do the picking.

Granholm has at least one supporter, former Gov. Bill Milliken. Back in the ’70s when his administration was up to its eyeballs in the PBB controversy — cattle eating feed laced with that chemical and then humans eating that meat — Milliken locked horns with B. Dale Ball.

Ball was anointed by the ag commission. Milliken wanted to fire him but couldn’t. Milliken lost.

This governor is not in the middle of any such controversy, but she’s created another one by encroaching on Farm Bureau turf, and the farmers are winning.

Ms. Granholm figures, as did other governors before her, that it makes sense to give the chief executive the authority over appointments so that the buck stops at the governor’s desk.

One could argue that indirectly she has that power now, in that she appoints the commission. So if she wanted person “X” to run the department, she calls her appointees and tells them what to do.

Governors tend to favor direct power over indirect, but the state Senate last week undid what the governor hopes to do.

Now the game comes down to Democrats in the House. Will they side with their governor or the farmers?

Since she may lose this battle, the governor’s folks are making noises about finding a compromise to end this little turf scrimmage. And it is simple: she picks the director with the advice and consent of the board.

Done.

Bouchard the Dancer
Mike Bouchard is no wimp. He proudly packs heat and is not afraid to use his hefty size to his advantage, so you would think he’d be the last guy to be an accomplished dancer.

Ah, but he is.

Watch how he dances around a very sticky wicket unfolding in the GOP primary for governor, namely what to say about Mike Cox, a fellow candidate for gov.

Cox is soaking up lots of free media, but not the kind you would necessarily want, over his role in investigating an alleged party at former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s pad. Cox concluded, “What party?” and tagged it an “urban legend.” But apparently not everyone agrees, although there is no proof to the contrary.

So the issue on the campaign trail is the credibility of Mr. Cox.

Your comments Sheriff Bouchard?

“I’m just focused on my message,” he laces up his dancing shoes.

“So you are not going there?”

“I’m not going there,” he heads for the dance floor.

“Why don’t you want to go there?”

“I’m focused on my issues,” he taps away.

He is pressed further and notes that if other candidates or voters want to comment on Mr. Cox, they are free to do so, as he stands up for free speech just as long as he doesn’t have to participate.

“I’m not worrying about somebody else. That isn’t where my focus is,” he goes on.

Well, if that is the case, then Mr. Bouchard should be willing to promise that he will resist the temptation to exploit the story for his own benefit.

He waltzed away from the pledge, dredging up a line we never heard before, “I’m focused on exactly where I’m focused,” he repeated redundantly.

Points for staying on message, but one final attempt: “Why not make the promise?”

Here’s why not: “Because I’m bigger than you,” he smiles.

Nuf said.