Essay: Voting for Taxes - 11.4.09

A funny thing happened in yesterday’s elections. Voters in Detroit and elsewhere actually voted for higher taxes. Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks he knows why…

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Here’ s something interesting you may have overlooked about yesterday’s elections. In Detroit, where unemployment is at Great Depression-era levels, the voters were asked to approve a half a billion dollar bond proposal for building new schools.

The city’s largest newspaper, the Detroit Free Press editorialized against the school bond proposal, saying there was no guarantee the money would be spent wisely.

You might have thought that was the end of that. After all, the one thing everybody seems to accept as a given is that raising taxes is the one thing you cannot ask voters to do.

That certainly is how the governor and the legislature think. For the last year, we have watched as Lansing made major cuts in important programs rather than ask us to pay for them.

And our lawmakers would clearly rather do anything rather than make the decision to raise taxes on their own.

But guess what. The voters of Detroit approved the half a billion for their schools, by almost a two to one margin. They willingly agreed to tax themselves until the year 2039 for this.

Even in their current, wretched state, Detroiters were willing to make sacrifices to take a chance on building a future. Now let me tell you about my little city, which is called Huntington Woods.

Huntington Woods is far better off than Detroit, but we have foreclosed houses all over the place, and people who have lost their jobs. Additionally, some of our roads need resurfacing.

We don’t have many giant potholes, but we have some rough surfaces and crumbling curbs. Our leaders asked us to tax ourselves by an extra seven and a half million dollars to fix the roads.

That’s a fair chunk of change, given that we have fewer than six thousand people. Guess what. Eighty-five percent of us voted for higher taxes. Now, if they had just put something on the ballot saying, “Would you like your taxes to be raised?” My guess is that ninety-five percent of us would have voted either no, or, “Hell, no.”

But when it was clear what the money was going to be spent for, we were willing to pony up. Maybe the politicians in Lansing ought to look at these results, and reconsider eliminating the Michigan Promise tuition scholarships. They are designed to help mostly middle-class Michigan kids aim at a brighter future.

Maybe the politicians in Lansing ought to consider giving us an alternative, before imposing crippling cuts on the public schools. They cut little Harper Woods by nearly $600 a student.

Thanks to the school funding system called Proposal A, Harper Woods voters aren’t allowed to tax themselves to make up that money, even if they want to. It seems to me that’s wrong.

If Detroiters can tax themselves to build schools, we should let people tax themselves to pay teachers. Detroiters are betting that if they build it, meaning better schools, students will come.

I am betting that if voters can see what their dollars are going for, and the expense is for something they want, they will be more than willing to pay more taxes.

That’s what we saw happening yesterday. I wonder if those in charge of our statewide interests, especially Dr. No himself, Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, are paying attention.

Comments

[Thrasher]

The truth about the election results in Detroit are revealing and tragic..If one includes the 74% of the electorate that did not vote with the 10-12% of voters who did not vote for the winners over 85% of the voters in the city do not approve of it's elected officals...This is the real election story not the usual fiction of pundits in the MSN ..

The passage of Proposal 'S" is also a adverse outcome when one considers that dumping money into DPS or any district does not mean students will become educated...It is a crude myth that spending more moneyon educational infrastruture augments educational outcomes and quality ..

The tragic aspect of the sucker proposals like 'S' is that to many Black families are now relying on money instead of hard core fundamental efforts to increase educational outcomes...It is sad observing how gullible and impotent Black families have allowed themselves to become when education is in the mix..

This time Black families and city residents deserved to indicted for being suckers for state designated mercenaries like Robert Bobb..

[Dorothy]

Thrasher:

What "hard core fundamental efforts" do you advocate? Please-be specific.