Trapped from Moving Forward

by John Lindstrom
Gongwer News Service
March 12, 2010

It is March, of course, but close enough to spring to quote T.S. Eliot, particularly when his lines have so much meaning: “April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain.”

These weeks have been strange times. There is real hope, bits of good news bobbing among the flotsam of misery the state has endured for so long now, the lilacs coming to bud out of the dead land. But that news is nearly drowned under by the continuing sense of directionless conflict that overwhelms government. And therein is the cruelty: misery inflicted with hope in sight.

In January Michigan gained jobs. The state gained jobs! This truly is honey for the starving. The unemployment rate declined honestly, because more people found work, not because the labor market shrank. More people found work and the labor force grew. In 2009 the state’s labor force fell by 93,000 jobs, but in January it grew by 4,000. So far, then, for 2010 Michigan is in the black in job growth.

Car sales were up in February, especially for the Big Three (or the U.S. Three or the Michigan Three, whichever they are now called). Part of that may be due in part to the troubles Toyota is now enduring, but car sales are up overall and that is good news for Michigan. For as much as the state must diversify its economy, must add new legs to the stool that was held up too long by autos, the truth remains that for Michigan to come out of its slump anytime soon the auto industry must rebound.

These are the signs of hope. They are not enough by themselves, of course. And these signs must take root in the dead soil of other economic muck, such as a disastrous drop in February revenues for Michigan.

Still, here is hopeful light the state has waited so long to see, and can pray grows brighter.

But if it grows brighter what will the light shine on in terms of the state’s government? People going sideways? Backwards? In circles? Blindfolded? Certainly it doesn’t seem like any forward progress is being made.

There are some deceptive signs of progress. After all, the legislative subcommittees have started moving budget bills. Since Governor Jennifer Granholm called for the budget to be finished by July 1, that might seem to be progress.

But she also warned she would not sign a budget that cut education, and she called for the legislature to act on expanding the sales tax to services. So far, lawmakers are producing budgets that cut education. In terms of taxes, if there is any discussion about them at all it is in the context of throwing that back to the voters, not having the voters’ leaders make the decision.

All this is plowing up the ground for another budget standoff going late into the year.

Yet while this occurs, lawmakers, even those opposed to tax increases, are again pointing out areas that the state needs to spend more money on to make things work. The latest example came, again, from Senate Majority Floor Leader Alan Cropsey (R-DeWitt), who angrily and eloquently argued that it was disgraceful the state had 12,000 unprocessed rape kits going back to the 1990s in its possession. They are the sad legacy of the failed, and now closed, Detroit crime lab.

The National Organization for Women is demanding the state find the funding to process these kits and seek out the perpetrators of these crimes, and Mr. Cropsey said NOW is right to make that demand. Mr. Cropsey is right to express outrage. It is morally criminal that these crimes have not been solved and prosecuted. But in expressing his outrage he dealt only at the edges of how to pay for the processing of these kits, which then extends to how to pay for the cops to bring in the criminals, how to pay for the prosecutors and judges and jail space to prosecute and hold them.

The state is struggling with how to come to agreement with itself on the fact that there are some things it really needs to spend more money on – things that protect the state today and help build its economy tomorrow – even as it musters the courage to cut back spending on other areas.

State government seems trapped from moving forward even on those things it agrees on. To wit: the Pure Michigan ad campaign. The odd naysayer aside, Democrats and Republicans alike want this ad program funded and broadcast nationwide. It has helped bring people to the state and helped the tourism economy. But nobody can agree on how to pay for it, as a somewhat determined anti-tax attitude holds off a proposed rental car tax, which means something else will be tapped for the ads to take the air if an agreement can be reached on that.

For a long time now, state politicians have put the fun in dysfunctional, but frankly it isn’t fun. Disagreements and debate have always been part of the legislative process, but in tandem with a sense of reaching agreement. What is distinctly lacking now is that sense of eventual agreement, of reaching accommodation and propelling forward. The stampede and standoff style of government remains the operative method, creating a real fear that nothing substantive can and will be accomplished at a time when accomplishing something substantive is vital to nurturing the hopeful signs the state is seeing.

This standoff, this governing roadblock, this frustrating sense of helpless furious inaction brings another set of lines from Eliot’s “The Waste Land” to mind: “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME/ HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME.”

John Lindstrom is publisher of Gongwer News Service. For nearly 50 years in Michigan, Gongwer News Service has provided independent, comprehensive, accurate and timely coverage of issues in and around Michigan’s government and political systems. For subscription information, including a free trial, visit Gongwer online.