The Lansing State Journal recently quoted me on budget reform… “I thought (budget reform) was crucial for the past four years. Every year, I think this has to be the year, and every year I’m wrong. It’s like being a Lions fan.”
Remember the governor’s commission’s of veteran bipartisan budget experts who recommended everything from cuts in corrections spending to rewriting the state tax code to consolidation of local government services, to scrutiny of public sector benefits costs? That was three years ago. Very few, if any, of that commission’s recommendations have been implemented, despite multi-billion-dollar budget deficits that were unimaginable even to those wise counselors who gathered in late 2006 and early 2007.
But there are baby steps that could grow stronger and wider this year. Spurred by House Speaker Andy Dillon’s complex and controversial benefits pooling plan, numerous moves are afoot in the Legislature to benchmark public sector benefits costs in all localities and possibly cap the amount local governments can spend on employee health care. Bills to address regional collaboration reforms also have been drafted, if not passed.
Will real efficiency reforms get passed, along with a tax code rewrite this year? During an increasingly odd but extremely important election year? It’s very hard to envision how, given the two near-shutdowns in state government due to partisan budget gridlock in the past three year.
But here we go again… here’s the Lions fan in me… It’s equally hard to see how Governor Granholm and legislative leaders will have any choice but to finally enact a new tax code along with the many bipartisan reform and efficiency approaches recommended for years by the Center, the citizens who participate in our Community Conversations, and a wide range of business and pubic policy groups. Otherwise, it’s hard to see how the state will much of anything left to invest in the kinds of priorities citizens have told us time and again they value most, including… high-quality, livable communities, and globally competitive/accessible/afforidable education from pre-school through college.
Legislators returned to Lansing this week after the Christmas break and are now waiting several weeks more for Granholm’s state of the state address and her last budget as governor.
The hill to climb this year is very steep.
How steep? Here are the numbers… $1.2 billion in the state general fund, an amount equal to 12 percent of available revenues.
“The major question that will be facing the Governor and the Legislature… will likely involve the debate between additional significant reductions in appropriations to balance the budget or a lessening of these appropriation reductions to be offset by increases in State tax revenue,” the Senate Fiscal Agency wrote this week in what might become the understatement of the year. “In many respects this was the same debate between the Governor and the Legislature regarding the FY 2009-10 State budget. The outcome of this debate almost certainly will be the key policy decision made regarding the FY 2010-11 State budget.”
Here we go again. But there’s no gift of federal stimulus this year. It’s late in the fourth quarter for businesses and citizens who never know what their impending tax liabilities will be and for the millions of Michigan residents who rely on it to educate kids, care for the poor, imprison dangerous criminals, protect our natural resources, etc., etc., etc.
Unlike Lions fans, the people of Michigan can’t wait ’til next year.
