Nolan Finley
Lansing lets good ideas gather dust
Tom Watkins has another good idea: Rename the state Department of Education the Department of Health Care and Pensions, because meeting the soaring benefit costs of active and retired teachers is its major preoccupation.
“As it stands now, any new money that goes into education really just goes to cover rising health care and pension costs,” says Watkins, who runs a consulting firm focused on relations with China. “That’s where the education ‘investment’ has gone and will be going unless serious efforts of reform are addressed.”
Watkins was dumped by Gov. Jennifer Granholm as state school superintendent in 2005, but not before penning a report that warned of the coming catastrophe unless Michigan changed the way schools are funded and attacked the runaway cost of teacher benefits.
It did neither.
And now Watkins’ report stands as one more glaring example of how Michigan’s political leaders fiddled while the state burned to the ground.
The collapse of the domestic automobile industry and its impact on Michigan’s tax base would have challenged even the boldest, most courageous politicians. But as this state came apart, its leaders ignored repeated pleas to confront the crisis with reforms that might have lessened the blow.
John Rakolta Jr., chairman of the Walbridge construction company, carries around a folded-up page torn from Crain’s Detroit Business that details 10 major studies of Michigan’s structural deficit since 2005. The reports were mostly commissioned by private groups such as the Detroit regional and state chambers and Detroit Renaissance. A few were requested by the Legislature and governor.
They have three things in common: They identified waste and inefficiency in state government; they recommended real structural change; and they were largely ignored.
Almost none of the ideas in the 10 reports have been implemented.
Had the reports been taken seriously, Michigan could have turned its seven-year head start on the national recession into an advantage. It could have found in the crisis the opportunity to restructure, right-size and reform government so the state today would be best positioned to exploit an economic rebound.
Instead, the hard work of reform remains ahead.
Granholm came into office complaining about the fiscal mess bequeathed her by former Gov. John Engler. Her successor will inherit a budget shortfall that will be many times larger than the one Engler left, and the bleakest balance sheet in the state’s history.
And still, our leaders are doing nothing of any real substance to change the way Michigan operates.
The groups that paid for past studies have given up on change until 2011, when a new governor and Legislature are in place. But Michigan can’t afford to spend another 18 months in limbo. By the time 2011 dawns, the deficit hurricane will be blowing full-force.
Schools will see their annual foundation grant plunge $500 or more in two years, unless policymakers act now. A cut that large will push many districts into insolvency.
It will be too late then to heed the alarms sounded by folks like Watkins, who looked into the future and saw this nightmare, but couldn’t get Michigan’s leaders to wake up.
Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The Detroit News. His column runs on Sunday and Thursday. (313) 222-2064 ornfinley@detnews.com.
