Dressed in elaborate costumes, faces hidden behind stylized masks, the actors in the famous Japanese theatre art form known as Kabuki engage in complex and ritualized dramas of conflict.
The term, “Kabuki dance,” has come to mean a set of stylized, posturing maneuvers in which the performers act as if they will be hostile toward each other — even though everybody understands perfectly well that things will have to be worked out in the end. Everybody’s benefit depends on it.
We observed last week two classical Kabuki dances performed, in our own unique form of theatre, the political arena of the state capital. In Lansing, both Democrats and Republicans declared each other’s proposals for resolving the state’s $940 million budget deficit Dead on Arrival. Governor Granholm announced she would veto the $630 million in spending cuts and accounting changes passed the by the Republican-controlled state Senate. The Senate contemptuously rejected the governor’s proposed two cent sales tax on services.
Then they all repeated the play’s classic and expected lines.
Republicans called the governor’s tax plan a further blow to the state’s fragile economy and mocked her “the sky is falling” portrait of the state’s deep financial troubles. The governor said the GOP cuts would hurt kids and local government services and criticized the “cut taxes at any cost” ideology of the Republican base.
One highlight of the GOP plan: The senators would cut state funding for the public schools by $34 per pupil from the current minimum appropriation of $7,085. Most, but not all districts, have enough fund balance to survive – barely – the cut. Schools, however, fix their costs early on, commit to spending decisions, and would find it terrifically hard to make cuts this far into the school year.
Local governments would also take a $40 million hit in revenue sharing payments, which already have been slashed by around $500 million since the state’s economy began to soften in 2000.
And so it is back to the drawing board. Meanwhile in Detroit on Friday, the Detroit School Board voted 6-5 to reject a plan to close more than two dozen schools, after a chaotic and contentious meeting that left no one happy.
Interim Superintendent Lamont Satchel told the board that failing to close schools would result in 1,800 employees being laid off. Worse, it could put the system in the grips of a state-required deficit-elimination plan that would require shutting up to 50 schools by 2010.
But not only did they did not listen, board members declined to hear a presentation on the district’s financial condition.
Opponents of the closure plan said it would hurt children forced to move to different schools. They also argued that the Detroit Federation of Teachers and members of the community should have been involved in preparing the closure plan.
They argued that any final decisions should wait until the arrival of new Superintendent, Connie Calloway. And board President Jimmy Womack said some board members were playing politics with their votes with an eye on their re-election campaigns.
None of this was calculated to reassure anyone about the quality of leadership. In both the legislature and the state’s largest city, the drama overwhelmed the financial realities.
The cold hard facts are that the state faces an enormous deficit in this fiscal year’s budget, which must be solved before September 30. The Detroit schools, already facing massive enrollment drops and reductions in state per-pupil aid have stark but clear choices: Cut costs, lay off staff — or do some of both.
Most political insiders, whether in Lansing or in Detroit, see these Kabuki dances for what they are: Posturing for popularity before highly motivated constituency groups, whether rabid anti-taxers or angry parents. And most political insiders understand full well that at the end of the dance-drama, consequences will have to be faced and some accommodation to reality will have to happen.
But you cannot blame ordinary folks for failing to understand what all this saber-rattling is all about. Looking on from the outside, dimly aware that we have major problems, the average person has to be wondering why their leaders can’t find common ground.
Worse, repeated charades of this sort contribute to cynicism about our governments. They increase Joe and Josephine Average’s suspicions that all this is just more political posturing.
All this came home to me last Friday morning when I spoke at a session at the Southeastern Council of Governments, the main local government association for the Detroit metro area.
Most participants were throwing up their hands in frustration at yet another cut in their already stretched budgets. But most also said they would soldier on, trying to make do with ever-thinning resources, doing their best to be good and responsible public servants.
Suddenly I wondered whether being responsible was the responsible thing to do. Or whether declaring that, yes, this is a crisis wasn’t exactly the appropriate remedy to legislative irresponsibility and repeated budgetary Kabuki dances.
If cities have already slashed their recreation departments in the face of repeated budget cuts, why not just shut down all recreation programs and say that’s it — until those who get voted into office are willing to make the hard decisions and ask the voters to pay. If cities have had to slash their police force beyond anything reasonable thanks to budget cuts, announce that fine, there will be no more day-time policing on the streets. And so forth.
Certainly, the profound instinct of serious, professional government officials is to try to make do, to carry on in the face of financial difficulties. It’s the responsible, diligent thing to do.
But it also enables elected officials to be irresponsible and continue to refuse to come to grips with the financial realities. Budget cuts have consequences. And if they are layoffs, school closures and elimination of public services, so be it.
Doing that just might push the political actors on our stage to take off their costumes and their masks and get down to business in the first act rather than waiting for the final curtain. That’s a curtain, by the way, that Michigan very much needs to avoid.
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Phil Power is a longtime observer of politics, economics and education issues in Michigan. He would be pleased to hear from readers at ppower@hcnnet.com. Phil Power is president of the Center for Michigan. However, these opinions and others expressed in Phil Power’s columns are individual opinions and do not in any way represent official policy positions of the Center for Michigan.
