Last fall, at the end of Lansing's annual budget battle, the otherwise stingy legislature added in $7.1 million for the Michigan State Fair. But when she received the final budget, Governor Jennifer Granholm immediately used her line-item veto to kill the fair. She said only, Given current revenue constraints, tax dollars can no longer subsidize state fair operations.
Why she felt so strongly the need to do that isn't clear. The event wouldn't have actually cost the state $7 million, but more like $500,000. The fair would have generated most of its operating cost itself, through ticket revenue and other sales.
Perhaps the governor wanted to use canceling the fair as a dramatic way of getting Michigan's attention, of making us all realize that the world has changed forever, and that this isn't the old economy any more. And I also understand that spending any money on the fair might indeed be hard to justify these days. After all, the budget the governor submitted this month cuts off health care for thousands of poor adults, many of whom have dependent children.
Yet the Michigan State Fair is a state tradition which has been going on since Zachary Taylor was in the White House. For many urban kids, the fair was probably the only chance in their lives they had to see farm animals alive and on the hoof.
Kids in Detroit looked forward every year to two traditions that linked them with their parents generation. The fair, which occurred just before everyone had to go back to school in the fall, and the Shrine Circus, which was also held at the fairgrounds in late winter.
Governor Granholm didn't grow up in Michigan, and may not have realized the importance of those traditions as part of the fabric of life hereabouts. For Detroit, they ranked right up there with Opening Day at Tiger Stadium, and the week in the fall when the new car models were introduced every year.
This winter, circus organizers asked if they could continue to perform at the now-shuttered fairgrounds. To the circus managers? surprise, the state's answer was a terse no. This was baffling, since the circus was not subsidized, and actually made the state an annual profit of forty thousand a year or so.
The circus isn't as old as the fair, but has been around for more than a century. A spokesman for the governor said they were looking to use the fairgrounds for an unspecified job creating project.
Well, I drove by the fairgrounds yesterday, and didn't see any jobs, or people for that matter. Eventually, the circus found a temporary home at the Hazel Park Raceway.
And now, there is a glimmer of hope for the Michigan State Fair. The Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority is going to meet next week to consider leasing the fairgrounds, developing them into a year-round park, and continuing the country's oldest state fair.
This is far from certain, but I hope it works out somehow. One of the reasons the Michigan State Fair started being held in Detroit was because the folks running the state way back when thought it was important that urban and rural Michigan not completely lose touch with each other. That was a good idea then.
I think it might be an even more important one now.
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