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If you can afford the $30 bucks to pour into the gas tank, it's definitely time to head north to celebrate the glory of the Michigan summer.
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown is a Michigan tourism junkie who's been shooting the state's magnificent Pure Michigan campaign directly into his veins...
"You're driving to work in the morning while listening to the radio, or you've just plopped into your favorite chair to catch some TV at night, and, before you know it, you've been sucked into the Michigan trap," Brown wrote this month. "It starts with the gentle tinkle of piano music, strings playing softly underneath. Then the voice starts, soothing and friendly, familiar too, but you can't quite place it. By now, you don't even have to listen to the words to know what the commercial is saying. Come to Michigan, it purrs. The music and voice alone have triggered the desired Pavlovian response. Your eyes roll back in your head, visions of blue lakes, sandy beaches and sunsets overtake your thoughts as the full orchestra joins in."
Columns like that have rushed forth from the keyboards of travel writers across the land in the past couple years as Pure Michigan has captured the imaginations of the work-weary.
Funding for the Pure Michigan campaign is set to run out soon. A package of bills moving through the state House attempts to set a wise course of a more sustainable funding source, with a small portion of the sale tax collected by tourism businesses being directly reinvested in the state’s taxpayer-funded promotion campaigns.
Economic studies have shown that the state gets big returns in additional sales tax revenue for every dollar invested in tourism promotion.
So, if you head north, send a postcard to your legislator, urging a long-term, sustainable solution for funding the promotion of Michigan’s distinctive and competitive natural resources and tourism industry.
A couple images to get you in the mood. Click here for the latest Pure Michigan videos. And, finally, check out this monster brown trout caught this month on the Manistee River by Lance Weyeneth, a Gaylord-based real estate agent and angling consultant at Gates Au Sable Lodge in Grayling…
Most of us working stiffs didn't have time to head to downtown Motown for this months National Summit on the economy. But there's still time for us to catch up on the big-picture thinking. Go to PBS to watch quick prescriptions for economic growth from a couple dozen leading corporate execs.
Speaking of big-picture thinking, Chris Rizik, one of Michigan's most experienced venture capitalists, is guest blogger on Metromode this week. Among his conclusions...
Over 10% of the jobs and 18% of the GDP in the United States today are in companies with venture capital origins, and an entire generation of technology companies, from Intel to Google, are trophies of the venture capital community. At a time when states are throwing literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives for each job created in manufacturing, statistics show that significantly smaller investments in venture capital yield more and higher paying jobs and companies that pay more taxes to states than their “old economy” counterparts, all while delivering returns to venture capital investors that materially outperform the stock market... In the venture capital business it means creating a generation of trained entrepreneurial managers (CEOs, CFOs, marketing people, etc.), professional service providers (i.e., lawyers, HR professionals and accountants), university technology transfer specialists and investment and banking professionals, all of whom have the relevant experience in creating and quickly growing technology-based companies in a changing world. But most of all, it means transforming a low-risk culture – a culture that has resulted from two generations of insulation by the unparalleled success of our large, institutional businesses, where innovation and daring decisions are often suppressed or bogged down by bureaucracy. This is all a major challenge that will test our region’s real desire for and commitment to change."
Finally, how 'bout a big cheer for the next step toward a major, jobs-and-wealth-producing Aerotropolis for Metro Detroit. Nine governments finally and formally signed on this month....
"The next step in the process is help pass legislation setting up incentives to bring businesses to the area, most notably setting up Renaissance Zones eliminating most state and local business taxes," the Detroit News reported. "Ficano said the state still stands to gain from income taxes, estimated to be about $67 million a year for over 64,000 jobs. The nine local governments involved are Romulus, Taylor, Belleville, Van Buren Township, Huron Township, Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti Township, Wayne County and Washtenaw County."
The size of the State's government is too large for the state's current resources/tax base and Michigan needs to think about taking costs out throughout the system. Those are two key summary conclusions of the Legislative Commission on Government Efficiency, a bipartisan commission of business and government experts who've toiled away for more than a year to come up with ways to carve a $1 billion or more from the state budget.
The commission prepares to soon hit the road on a statewide listening tour to gather citizen reaction. Click here for a full outline of the reformers' proposals. Here's a quick summary of a few of their ideas:
1. Save $300 million in the state general fund by zeroing out community college funding and then re-funding the community colleges with the same amount taken from resources previously spent on K-12 schools. To achieve the schools savings, the commission recommends a retirement buyout for 10,000 schools employees, school district consolidation, and consideration of a state-run health care plan.
2. Eliminate or restructure the Promise Grant scholarship for college kids. (A recommendation the Senate is already seeking to enact.
3. A wide range of tightened eligibility, efficiencies, and program cuts to Medicaid.
4. Reductions in prison spending through "more nuanced approaches to sentencing, parole, and incarceration," cutting prison guard overtime in half, from $100 million to $50 million, and saving $250 million per year on prisoner health care (which may be very difficult given stringent federal oversight of prison health programs).
5. Provide revenue sharing to local governments only for specific services, rather than blind per capita allocations. But the commission would also grant local governments wider taxing authority.
6. A wide range of management suggestions to improve efficiency in purchasing, staffing levels, and contracting.
To keep tabs on the upcoming schedule of public meetings, go to http://council.legislature.mi.gov/lcge.html
The August primary for Detroit City Council is an absolute free-for-all, with dozens of candidates vying for a handful of seats at the table. How does a voter make sense of it all? By going, to MiVote.org! Beginning Monday, MiVote will air five-minute video interviews with more than 100 of the City Council candidates. It's a Hurculean task for which project partners Detroit Public Television, UM-Dearborn, and Arise Detroit deserve loads of community thanks.
There's no shortage of need for smart and brave political leaders in Michigan. And politically ambitious women, especially, have a great opportunity to get involved at all levels through The White House Project and its July 10-12 political leadership training boot camp in Saginaw.
"Michigan Go Run 2009 is a nonpartisan political leadership training for women throughout Michigan," White House Project Michigan coordinator Shannon Garrett wrote to us this week. " Go Run will inspire you to step into leadership. Go Run will inform you about campaign work and demystify the political process. Go Run will equip you with the skills it takes to run for elected office and win. Michigan Go Run 2009 is for women at every stage of political involvement – whether you plan to run this year, next year, in ten years or if you just want to get more civically involved, you’re invited to join the 2009 class of Michigan Go Run!"
The application deadline is July 6, so don't wait! Apply online at thewhitehouseproject.org.
In the Center for Michigan's ongoing statewide Community Conversations, participants have routinely recognzied pre-Kindergarten learning as one of their top education strategies for Michigan's future. Brand-new polling says the same thing.
So, it is sad to report that ongoing budget negotiations in Lansing are way out of step with the pre-K priorities so many citizens have expressed.
Judy Samuelson, CEO of the Early Childhood Investment Corporation, reported in a widely distributed email this week that a Senate proposal would result in "wiping out pre-K in Michigan for 30,471 4-year-olds."
"We understand that the state must have priorities and we understand that budget cuts are inescapable, but to balance the budget on the backs of children when most programs are taking 10 percent reductions, is just unacceptable," Samuelson wrote.
"Unacceptable" is a word rolling of the tongues of many individual interest group advocates in Lansing this spring as every budget ox gets gored.
The unrest is only going to intensify on all sides unless and until Michigan has a Governor, House Speaker, and Senate Majority Leader who can negotiate cooperatively and clearly outline not just the budget numbers, but the underlying strategy to the state budget. Right now, there is no clear strategy -- no clear priorities, other than to distribute cuts across all budget areas with the least possible pain to all interest groups.
Every so often, I like to call somebody and ask them to play King of Michigan for a day. That is, ask them what they’d do if they could do whatever they liked to bail Michigan out of the hole we’re in.
Most recently, I put the crown on the head of my old friend, Doug Roberts. I prefer to play this game with those who are real smart -- and he is. He also has more experience than the average bear. He’s presently the director of MSU’s Institute for Public Policy & Social Research, but he also served two hitches as state treasurer, has a doctorate in economics from Michigan State, and is a senior member of what passes for Michigan’s policy elite.
So what if he were our monarch?
“First thing I’d do,” Roberts said, “is think like a tough businessman. Look at our durable, distinctive comparative advantages – things that we’ve got that others don’t. Use them as the core of our competitive strategy and invest in them … and not in things not particularly to our advantage.”
Roberts then ticked off a whole list of comparative advantages we have in Michigan:
- Shoreline. “We have enormous amounts of lakes and streams and the water that is in them. Sure, there are other great lakes states. But we’re right at the center and should exploit that.”
- Tourism. “We’ve got all these wonderful natural resources. They’re unique. People will come a long, long way and pay lots of money to see them."
- Agriculture. “We’ve got a powerful, profitable and very diverse agriculture here. Soybeans, cherries, wine, sugar beets.” Best of all, you can’t move the land they grow on to other states.”
- Higher education. “We’ve got great universities, some among the best in the world. We cannot afford to let this asset deteriorate through lack of public support.
But Roberts agreed that it’s hard for the state to invest in our distinctive assets while Michigan is facing a $2 billion deficit.
“First thing we’ve got to do is get our financial house in order. There’s no silver bullet. You can’t do it entirely by cutting spending and you can’t do it entirely by raising taxes. You have to get somewhere in the middle,” he said.
So, sooner or later, quoth our King-for-a-Day, you have to talk about taxes. What about a graduated income tax? Roberts doesn’t like the idea, if only because rich people are more mobile than poor people and they can move out of state if they get socked too hard.
Roberts, who also has been acting director of Michigan’s Department of Management and Budget, cites a Wall Street Journal piece that reported Maryland jacked up the top rate to 6.25 percent (Michigan’s flat tax rate is 4.35 percent). That resulted on a thousand Maryland millionaires establishing legal residence elsewhere the next year, paying a total of $100 million less in taxes than the year before.
Turning to the sales tax? Not a bad idea, he said. We could broaden the base by including services (excluding business-to- business transactions, to avoid pyramiding of tax bills, and maybe health care.) And we could cut the rate from 6 percent to, say, 5 percent.
“That puts our tax structure in line with where the economy is going, that is, to services,” says Roberts.
He adds a warning: “But we’ve got to be rational about what we tax. We can’t tax bronzing baby shoes,” and at the same time not tax other, more widely used services.
What I like about talking with Roberts is the way he cuts to the chase, plus his vast array of experience. For example: Despite a reported $36 billion on the books in “tax expenditures” (i.e. tax cuts, exemptions or credits put in place for specific purposes), he doesn’t think there is much juice in mining them to see which are obsolete.
“I’ve been through them all, and I don’t think the amount of money to be raised isn’t worth the political fight.”
Bottom line: He believes in thinking like a businessman. That means, in short: Identify key, distinctive, competitive assets, invest in them -- and get your financial house in order.
Of course, it’s not easy -- politically or otherwise. But if it were, our leaders in Lansing would have done it all long ago.
***
Editor’s Note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics, and a former chairman of the Michigan chapter of the Nature Conservancy. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a centrist think-and-do tank which publishes the Michigan Scorecard. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net
As interest groups far and wide continued to find good reasons to protest deep state budget cuts, news out of a federal courtroom struck a bitter chord...
"Metro Detroit was at the center of a $50 million Medicare fraud case unveiled Wednesday that netted arrests as far away as Miami and Denver," The Detroit News reported. "In all, 53 defendants, including four doctors, either appeared Wednesday in federal court in Detroit or are expected to do so in the coming days. Six other defendants are fugitives believed to have fled the country, officials said. The huge case is really a collection of eight cases involving physical therapy and injection or infusion therapy clinics. A common thread is that patients received kickbacks for use of their Medicare numbers; the federal health care program for the aged and disabled was billed for services that were never provided; and the hefty spoils were shared among a group of clinic owners, doctors, recruiters and other co-conspirators, according to grand jury indictments unsealed Wednesday."
Medicaid health care for those in poverty accounts for more than a quarter of the state's general fund budget. State funds match federal funds to total some $9 billion a year to cover the health care for some 1.5 million Michigan residents. The Medicaid portion of the general fund is more than three times larger than it was in 1980.
This week's story of Medicaid fraud reminds us of another scandal last summer in which the Michigan Auditor General found more than $200 million in improper and fraudulent child care payments for Michigan families on social assistance.
Gov. Granholm has made it her top priority to take care of Michigan's vulnerable populations during this deep recession. Budget hawks and reformers in Lansing are proposing significant, controversial and complex cuts to social programs, including tightened eligibility and tightened coverage options for Medicare.
The budget fights over social program cuts will be bitter. But so, too, is the reality that many other strategic priorities for Michigan's future -- like K-12 funding, higher education funding, and natural resources protection -- suffer as the Medicaid budget continues to grow.
When every budget penny counts, there is simply zero room for any tolerance of Medicaid and social program fraud. Imagine the other productive uses for the $50 million in Medicaid fraud alleged by the feds this week. Imagine the real needs of the poor that are going unmet today. Here's just one example... that wasted $50 million is enough to restore one-third of the proposed state Senate cuts to college scholarships, including scholarships for low income students.
Medicaid scammers rob more than the taxpayers. They rob the many low income residents working against long odds to rise out of poverty.
Ongoing budget negotiations include proposed cuts to the Auditor General. That's penny-wise and pound-foolish. Doubling the Auditor General's budget to $25 million is a better solution. More auditors could help assure that more of Michigan's precious state budget resources are used properly and efficiently.
More than two-thirds of inmates in Michigan prisons are high school dropouts, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Before they go to prison, before they drop out, many of them begin their downward spirals with school suspensions. And school suspensions in Michigan are disproportionately dispensed to African-American students, according an ACLU report this week called "Reclaiming Michigan's Throwaway Kids: Students Trapped in the School-to-Prison-Pipeline."
In Ann Arbor, for example, 18 percent of public school students are African-American, but they receive 58 percent of the suspensions. In Clintondale, African-Americans account for 45 percent of the students and 80 percent of the suspensions.
A key solution, the ACLU argues, is to reinvent alternative education programs so they are not "dumping grounds" for troubled students.
Another solution to the prison problem is to assure parolees have at least a fighting chance to lead productive lives once their sentences are complete. Researchers at Michigan State University are working to help companies understand how best to employ ex-prisoners and limit potential liability in doing so.
MSU assistant professor Stacy Hickox explains...
Employers are often reluctant to hire applicants with a criminal record because of potential liability for negligent hiring and performance issues. But through Michigan Works! and other agencies associated with the Michigan Prisoner Reentry Initiative (MPRI), some employers are willing to hire ex-offenders. Why do they do it? How do they address liability and performance concerns? The Michigan State University School of Labor & Industrial Relations (SLIR) is conducting research to find out.
Faculty at SLIR are collecting data from employment agencies and employers in Michigan to assess the factors that employers consider in deciding to hire ex-offenders. This information will then be distributed to agencies which assist ex-offenders as well as employers in Michigan.
Numerous studies have shown that employment after release from prison greatly reduces the chances that an ex-offender will commit another crime. This SLIR study will help employers and work placement agencies make better informed, more justifiable hiring decisions regarding ex-offenders, and is expected to promote the hiring of ex-offenders in Michigan. The study may also provide valuable information to Michigan Department of Corrections and the MPRI programs on how to better prepare inmates for employment upon release.
The study will also discuss legislation passed in other states which limits the reliance of employers on criminal convictions when making hiring decisions. Several states, including Wisconsin and New York, prohibit the consideration of a criminal conviction in a hiring decision unless that conviction is related to the applicant’s qualification for the position being filled. Just recently, Minnesota passed “ban the box” legislation which prohibits a question about criminal convictions on public employers’ applications. The study will also discuss the ways in which employers can avoid potential liability for hiring employees who then cause harm to coworkers or others, under the doctrine of negligent hiring. For a short discussion about potential liability for negligent hiring, visit the SLIR web site at http://www.lir.msu.edu/hretc/hrlr/documents/Avoiding_Liability_for_Hiring_Dangerous_ Employees.pdf.
Employers should benefit from the information produced by this study because it will identify ways for employers to hire ex-offenders while still minimizing the potential risks of doing so. This work is important given the potential adverse impact on people of color resulting from employer policies that totally screen out ex-offenders who apply. Because of this impact, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is currently creating new guidelines on this topic.
If you would like to participate in SLIR’s research or receive the results of the study, please contact Assistant Professor Stacy Hickox at hickoxs@msu.edu.
This is strawberry season, that shimmering time for shortcake and jam. So my wife, Kathy, and I were at the farmers’ market bright and early Saturday, eager to get a flat of delicious Michigan berries.
As I handed over the money, Katherine said, “Thought you should know that this is the last time you’ll see me.”
“The last time? Never again at the market? How very sad!”
“Well, the time has come to pack it up.”
We shook hands.
We’ve been getting great produce from Katherine for years and years. She always had the best asparagus in May, the best strawberries – dark, dark red and perfectly ripe – in June, and the best corn in early September. In between, there were Bush Basil plants, smoldering in their sharp smell, and occasionally big dark red Hungarian peppers. Her husband used to join her, a big, white-haired guy, with a magnificent mustache, waxed and swirling upward.
He quit coming to the market several years ago; I only learned later he had kidney problems and was in dialysis.
Recently, her daughter joined her, and sometimes her granddaughter, working her way through the math of making change in real time in front of a bunch of strangers.
That’s a tough early learning curve!
Katherine is tall and handsome, with high cheekbones and a full head of iron-gray hair. Her hands look as though they’d done it all, which they have: Sowed, weeded, picked, packed. And she always had a warm smile, welcoming and direct over the years.
On the way home, I started musing about Katherine and how she typifies Michigan today. Her husband used to have a pretty good white-collar job. But that went away, and he started helping out with the produce until he couldn’t do it any more. Katherine told me that it got tougher and tougher to handle all the stoop labor, especially with the strawberries. “I used to get local kids to do it, but it’s too much work for them these days.”
So day in, day out, she’s been at the market, Saturdays and Wednesdays, regular as clockwork. Always friendly, but in a dignified way. Always interested in what people did with her wonderful produce. Occasionally, she would bring a recipe to market.
Plainly, she knew her way around the kitchen, which probably explains why she was so fanatical about quality. Great cooking begins and ends with the quality of the ingredients.
In short, what Katherine and her family did for years is work out ways to survive. But survive in a way that mixed dignity with great pride in what she did. Her prices were a little higher than most of the other folks at the market. When I asked about it, she had a little smile: “Well, I’ve always thought you get what you pay for.”
That shut me up, and most of the other customers too.
Katherine strikes me as an icon for what Michigan people are doing in this time of troubles. Doing what’s necessary to survive, with dignity and pride. No griping about how you can’t possibly get by on only $500,000 a year, the way the Wall Street bankers are whining.
No sense of entitlement, that the world owes them a living. No dependency on the grindings of government.
Just straight-out hard work and fair dealing.
Katherine will continue farming, of course, even though she won’t be coming to market any more. That’s work she knows how to do, and she does it well. Her place is on US-12 on the way to Clinton. “The drive is just by the big ‘U-Pick’ sign,” she told me.
In the forward to the great book he did with photographer Walter Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee wrote back in 1941:
“The effort (here) is to recognize the stature of a portion of unimagined existence, and to contrive techniques proper to its recording, communication, analysis and defense. More essentially, this is an independent inquiry into certain normal predicaments of human divinity.”
Katherine, and countless others like her, can be found all throughout our sad, damaged, troubled but magnificent state.
They are, indeed, monuments of human divinity. They all deserve our defense and our admiration.
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Editor’s Note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics, and a former chairman of the Michigan chapter of the Nature Conservancy. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a centrist think-and-do tank which publishes the Michigan Scorecard. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net.
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