That rewritten and still-maligned state business tax (and accompanying surcharge) have temporarily filled state coffers. But the black ink (and relative calm in this year's legislative budgeting process) won't last.

The state is on pace to begin running a deficit again in 2009, according to a just-released report by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan. Over the next decade, that deficit is projected to widen to several billion dollars (and average more than half a billion per year) as the costs of government (including employee wages, health care, and retirement, housing a growing prison population, and Medicaid health care for the poor) rise faster than tax revenues in Michigan's economy.

That looming financial mess is among the most pointed reasons that participants in the Michigan's Defining Moment Public Engagement Campaign are meeting this summer and fall with candidates for 45 open state House seats. Over the next few years, new legislators will have a shrinking margin for error in dealing with financial issues.

There remains "inattention to fundamental reform in state government," MDM Co-Chair and former House Speaker and moderate Republican Paul Hillegonds told an overflow crowd in the opening session at this week's Mackinac Policy Conference. (Hillegonds also was among the Governor's Emergency Financial Advisory Panel members who last year recommended many pragmatic, bipartisan reforms that have not yet received traction in the Granholm Administration or the Legislature.)

Hillegonds continues to push for a balance between spending pressures and the need for reforms.

"Higher education is a lower priority right now than prisons or tax cuts," Hillegonds said at Mackinac. "We cannot tax cut our path to prosperity."