Free Press lays it out...the status quo is unacceptable

Same old, same old in Lansing
November 4, 2007

BY RON DZWONKOWSKI

FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

For all the political angst and sleepless nights of the past month, Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Legislature produced a budget that is pretty much status quo with higher taxes.

Status quo? Incredible -- the equivalent of a business telling its customers prices are going up so we can do things the way we've always done them. What business, indeed what anything, can stand on the status quo in Michigan these days?

For that matter, is the quo in your household going to be status for the next year? Of course not. Your taxes will go up, as will any school fees or college tuition you pay, and probably gas prices. If your paycheck goes up, it won't be enough to offset everything else.

But in Lansing, for all the talk of reductions and reform, the general fund budget approved on Halloween is $9.8 billion, up $760 million from the previous year. After passing $1.3 billion worth of higher taxes, your elected officials simply could not hold the line on spending. The $435 million you may hear about in spending "cuts" came out of the budget Granholm recommended earlier this year, not from actual spending levels of last year.

Yes, the state is coping with inflation, same as the rest of us, and higher health care costs, ditto. And it is true that when times are tough, as they are or soon will be for many families, more people turn to government for assistance, which makes it hard, if not cruel, to cut some kinds of spending. Having met with and listened to a lot of those people, I don't begrudge the income tax increase. The services tax was badly done and I expect it will be repaired or replaced with something sensible.

But in what bill of this new state budget is the legislation that says in bold letters to the taxpayers, "We get it. No more business as usual. We're going to run leaner and stop doing things we don't need to do and start doing things that promise a payoff"? Who has not had that presentation from management? Surely a hundred CEOs out there could handle the Power Point commentary from memory, too, because they've delivered the message several times in just the past few years.

But in Lansing? Nothing that could remotely be viewed as wholesale change or restructuring. State employees will get their raises. No significant reductions in the state work force are planned. An effort to cut 19- and 20-year-olds off Medicaid, the health care system for the poor, was killed. Two state prisons will close, but so will two state police crime labs. Education gets about a 1% increase, which is better than a cut, but hardly what you'd call priority spending.

The Legislature even boosted its own budget by 2.9%. While the money won't go to the lawmakers themselves but to their employees and programs, the boost is sure to stoke the fires for reducing the Legislature to a part-time body.

It seems as if Granholm and the Legislature wore themselves out on the tax increase and just didn't have a whole lot of energy left for any radical ideas about changing the way the state spends money.

So, a lot of status quo.

Remember that next year when a lot of these folks will come around running for re-election. Sending them back to Lansing would be the status quo thing to do.

How's your status quo these days?

RON DZWONKOWSKI is editor of the Free Press editorial page. Contact him at dzwonk@freepress.com or 313-222-6635.

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