| Good and Mad (guest) |
| 02/09/2007 11:15 AM |
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Sorry for the tenor of what I’m going to say-but after 50 years of running a family owned business – and if you knew how our market (residential real estate) has been destroyed – you might understand.-Let me just say this– before you or any of your peers ( from whatever side ) suggest taxing or shifting tax on the private sector – start by slashing the benefits and wages of all government (state and local) employees down to the level that the Michigan private sector has had to do to survive. You folks in the think tanks, universities, unions and other protected environs are in for a rude awakening when all the working folks have left this state that we dearly love and gone elsewhere to find work. I can tell by your list of 8, that you too do not understand the severity of the situation.
May God help us all. |
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| Fred Woodruff (guest) |
| 02/09/2007 11:15 AM |
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| Good article. Attached is a copy of my letter. I guess it is up to he elected officials and I doubt if there is the political will to make the tough changes. What happened to the much ballyhooed (and expensive – 700,000?) training that the Governor and Chamber pushed on “reinventing government”?Fred Woodruff
I read in the Detroit News this morning that you have been appointed to the new panel that will make recommendations to the Governor on how to address the budget deficit. Are “congratulations” or “sympathy” in order?
I have listened to many discussions and read many opinion pieces about what to do with Michigan’s structural deficit and the deficiencies with our tax structure and the need to “transform” it to reflect the 21str Century. I have read or heard very little discussion about “transforming” the Michigan government structure. We have an awful lot of layers of municipal government (with townships, villages, cities, counties and special purpose service districts) and school government (with K-12 school districts, county school districts, charter school districts, community colleges, 4-year colleges and universities and a myriad of specials training entities). All of these levels require revenue and there is really only one source for that (other than federal programs) and that is the taxpayers of the state, both individual and businesses.
So I would urge your panel to not only look at how to better fund government, but also how to better structure government and perhaps recommend ways that the levels and number of tax supported entities can be reorganized and streamlined to better serve our public needs. Perhaps your panel should consider a sort of “pay as you go” approach – for every dollar of new revenue that is raised, a dollar of cost should be removed, not necessarily by cutting programs or reducing services, but by funding better (and perhaps fewer) delivery structures.
Good Luck! |
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| Dennis T. (guest) |
| 02/09/2007 11:16 AM |
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| Privatize the correction systemCut 10% of the state staff in every functional department
Make the legislators part-time
Eliminate the townships
Reduce the Intermediate school districts by 50%
Reduce the school districts by 50% |
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| Dan Brown (guest) |
| 02/09/2007 11:16 AM |
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Where is your “big-time structural reform within government itself”?Earlier you stated that state government is broke and I don’t think you meant financially. The only reform you have suggested (that I have seen) is to eliminate term limits. Is that it? What about:
Proportional representation?
Instant run-off voting?
Unicameral legislature?
Fewer districts?
More districts?
Capital punishment for lobbying?
Public financing of elections?
Come on! |
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| Don Wheatley (guest) |
| 02/09/2007 11:16 AM |
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| Taxes are like Chemo Therapy; they can only shrink or kill what they are aimed at. Like chemo therapy they kill or injure unintended adjacent “tissue”. For example when they put a luxury tax on big boats they put a lot of boat builders and their employees out of work. The industry never quite recovered; but the “wealthy” (the target) were not punished they just didn’t buy boats.The increased taxes on new houses versus keep your old Headlee tax base makes it dumb to move up to a new house. Taxes kill house sales.
Government spending is the other end of the equation. If you pay unemployment, which sounds good, you end with more unemployed because you remove the incentive to work until the “rocking chair money” runs out.
Michigan has had the luxury of having a large oligopoly, the auto industry, paying large sums into the state coffers. Now the auto industry is sick and the state has not come to terms with the lack of income. They are frantically shifting tax payments forward; recently they directed that number of dependents for Michigan income tax be reset automatically to zero for 2007. Made property taxes payable sooner.
Michigan government doesn’t quite get it. The party is over and now it is time to go on a diet. Even it Michigan goes on a diet, which it must, this will not bring back the halcyon days of manufacturing. The US government is at a disadvantage to our trading partners since they have Value Added Taxes which are basically Chemo Therapy towards imports.
We have both a state problem of living in the past and a national problem that the states cannot fix no matter how they fight amongst themselves for the shrinking manufacturing base.
That’s my take |
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| Tim Bartik (guest) |
| 02/09/2007 11:17 AM |
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| To: The Center for MichiganFrom: Tim Bartik, Senior Economist at the Upjohn Institute and Board Trustee, Kalamazoo Public Schools (Note: the opinions expressed here are my own and should not be construed as official views of the Upjohn Institute or KPS)
Overall, the Center’s policy memo outlined some significant ideas that need to be seriously considered for Michigan to have a sound budget structure. I have three quick comments on ways that the Center’s policy package could be improved. I have focused my comments on areas in which I have some research background.
1. The Center’s package mentions measuring the performance of public schools, among other public entities. Measuring the performance of public organizations is a great idea that can do a lot of good, but only if we can accurately measure true performance. Purported “performance measures” that in fact do not measure true performance can do more harm them good, as we may end up punishing the truly good performers and rewarding the bad performers. In the case of public schools, good performance measures will have to squarely face up to the thorny issue of how to adjust for the characteristics of students that affect such educationally relevant factors as how much students know when they enter school and how much learning they lose during the summer. Michigan has been unwilling to face this issue as of yet in evaluating the performance of public schools.
2. The Center’s package mentions broadening the business tax base and lowering the rate. A more efficient business tax reform, rather than lowering the overall rate, would focus lower business tax rates on businesses that make new investments in Michigan and create new jobs in Michigan. This can be done through careful design of investment tax credits and job creation tax credits. Such a business tax reform focuses business tax relief on maximizing new business investment and job creation in Michigan.
3. The Center’s package only briefly mentions developing proposals to improve the economic future of Michigan citizens. It seems to me this must be a central focus of any budget reform package. If Michigan citizens are going to go through the sacrifices implied by a budget package that significantly increases some taxes and significantly reduces some services, this package should be designed so that it is sufficient to provide significant financing for a redevelopment of the state’s economy. How can we improve Michigan’s future economic development? A budget package that lowered tax rates on new business investment and job creation, while investing in the long-run job skills of the state’s citizens (human capital investments) and the quality of the state’s infrastructure would help improve the long-run health of the state’s economy. I already mentioned above how we could keep the current level of state business tax revenues, yet lower tax rates on new investment, by closing various tax loopholes and broadening the business tax base. There also are a variety of alternative policies that might significantly improve the state’s human capital, include some statewide variant of the Kalamazoo Promise, statewide high school pull-out programs for math and science, universal high-quality preschool education, and customized job training. |
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| Jim (guest) |
| 02/09/2007 11:17 AM |
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| Good job; as you know, I have a son in prison… and the unfortunate part is the lack of programs in the prisons; the minimal staffing, and the high recidivism rates of offenders, perhaps because hiring a convicted felon in tough economic times is unlikely…. just letting people out is part of an answer, yet programs to train offenders… and including reinstituting ” good time behavior” as part of a package that includes not only a good record by the felons but the desire to take some video training and volunteer led programs would help. Not to mention that the prisoners could be utilized , as they approach work release dates, in cleaning up Michigan’s roadsides, State park maintenance, and cleaning up the abandoned homes in the cities that cannot afford to do anything about these situations due to lack of funding… prisoners could be encouraged by some payment…currently .50 /hour is a princely sum for prison labor… and it would allow them some money to have on release, currently a problem…. |
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| Arnold Weinfeld (guest) |
| 02/09/2007 11:17 AM |
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| A first read of your report leads me to say that the statement regarding the funding of local governments is far too simplistic. To state that “For decades, most sales tax revenues have flowed to local schools and governments essentially automatically” is misleading and provides the reader with no historical context. As you know, the distribution of sales tax revenues to local governments, otherwise known as revenue sharing, has evolved over the last 75 years as a method to return tax dollars to the local level to assist with the delivery of essential services. The key is that this has not happened automatically but rather through a deliberate process whereby the levy of local taxes for services has been pre-empted by the state in return for the promise that a portion of revenues raised from state collected taxes would be returned to locals. Providing such a historical context is important as policymakers proceed with decision making. |
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| Richard Thibodeau (guest) |
| 02/09/2007 11:18 AM |
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| To address Michigan’s deficit problem, seems that the answer has to be both cutting expenses and the State generating more income:Cutting costs: There’s got to be a way to reduce cost of corrections/prison system. Can’t we put more prisoners to work in CCC camp type operations to do clean-up work in places like Detroit and clean-up, preservation/planting in our parks, also removal of diseased trees, preparing much of the vacant, unused land in Detroit for urban garden enterprises.
Generating more revenue: Go after the tourist dollar, esp. from places like Florida, Southern States this summer. When are we going to start getting serious about attracting people from Toronto, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, D.C, and yes, from Japan, to “give Detroit and Michigan a try”? Virtually nothing is being done to package Detroit’s music (gospel, jazz, Motown, Blues, techno, etc.) Yes, we have a couple of big events each year, but where’s the effort to package tours all the time? |
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| Tom Watkins (guest) |
| 02/09/2007 12:25 PM |
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| Michigan needs an extreme makeover, not just a faceliftMichigan has been ostrich-like, with its head in the sand, for too long. Here are some ideas to address the chronic structural spending and revenue problems and prepare our citizens and children for the future.
A six-pack of ideas:
Stop pretending. Michigan’s leaders have to level with residents. The only way to honestly balance a budget is to cut expenses, raise revenue, or a combination of both.
Our “fiscal crisis” exists because Michigan’s leaders have not made the structural changes necessary to align income and expenditures. You cannot cut taxes while maintaining and increasing funding and services simultaneously. Pretending is not a solution.
Ask yourself — if you found this great peninsula, with 10 million people and 1.7 million K-12 school age students confronting this disruptive, technologically driven, transformational global economy, would you create 83 counties, establish 500 cities, constitute more than 1,200 townships, spawn nearly 800 traditional and charter school districts, spend more to lock up people in jails and prisons than to educate them, have school funding increases go toward pension and health care insurance for current and retired school personnel?
If your answers to the above are “no,” you may wonder how we change. Lansing must stop funding a system of governance that is outmoded, expensive, ineffective and inefficient. Schools and local units of governments cannot and will not reform themselves without the push from Lansing.
Let the sunshine in. Peel back the cost of government, make it immediately available to the public and let them see where the money is spent. Ask the residents ofMichigan,”Is this what we are willing to pay for?” For example — should school districts provide pensions to part-time substitute teachers?
Should school districts provide lifetime health benefits for employees who work for a distinct for only five years?
Could we reduce overhead costs through consolidation and joint operating agreements, redirecting the savings to the classroom?
(See www.michigan.gov/documents/michiganschoolfunding_110803_7.pdf for a report I wrote while state superintendent
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