Essay: Getting It Backwards - 5.7.10

Michigan is, once again, gearing up to try and get some of the federal Race to the Top money. But Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks the legislature may be sabotaging that…

Hear Audio Story   

Every night before I go to bed I read a detailed, fifteen-page report of what went on that day in the Michigan Legislature. Yeah, I know. I’m just a real party animal. But I have to confess that I don’t get a lot of belly laughs out of the Gongwer news service report, especially this year. Not that the legislature doesn’t arouse emotion. Exasperation, anger, frustration, despair, yes. Humor, not so much. Last night, however, I did laugh out loud. I will get to why, in a bit. But first, yesterday’s report began with an account of how the legislature continues to fail to enact a school retirement plan. Several months ago, Governor Jennifer Granholm proposed to try to speed up teacher retirements. The idea was to help reduce the state’s budget deficit by getting senior, higher-paid teachers off the books, and replacing them with newer, cheaper ones.

To get them to go, the governor proposed sweetening the pot with a better pension deal. But nobody can agree what that should look like. To make it work for this year, the governor said it needed to be enacted into law by April 1. They still haven’t gotten it done. The lawmakers not only can’t do the right thing, they can’t do anything.

They can’t make a decision, and they can’t stop trying. They are as collectively dysfunctional as you could imagine.

I talked about this on this station three days ago, and since then, the situation has only gotten worse. You don’t have to agree with the Michigan Education Association’s position to recognize the truth in what a MEA spokesman said about the deadlock yesterday:

“At this point it is completely disrupting the lives of thousands of school employees across this state.”

People, he added, need the legislature to make a decision. That was echoed by someone often is on the opposite side of the table, the spokesman for the Michigan Association of School Administrators. At this point, Brad Biladeau said, no decision would be better than just continuing to let schools twist in the wind.

“They are really not recognizing the time constraints of school districts, We either can’t hire the staff in time, or won’t know until the school year has already started who’s retiring.’

That means a potential human resources nightmare. But while the legislature can’t get that done, they can and did pass a bill yesterday to alter the high school requirements for algebra. As if they know anything about what math kids should learn in school.

However, that’s not what made me laugh.

What cracked me up was this. After I read a long account of the school retirement fiasco, I turned to a headline that said “State Optimistic on Second Round of Race to the Top Funding.”

You may remember that several months ago, Michigan applied to get as much as $400 million in new federal education money.

But Washington turned us down, saying that we didn’t have it together. Now, Mike Flanagan, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, is thinking he can get all the parties to sign various letters of understanding, so we can try to persuade Washington we know what we are doing here. That would be nice.

Our schools could sure use the cash. But given what’s happening in our legislature, my advice would be: Don‘t count on it.