Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Teacher Retirement - 5.14.10

The Michigan Legislature has reached an agreement on incentives to get veteran teachers to retire. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry wonders if anyone really understands what this bill will actually do…

Hear Audio Story   

When it comes to anything concerning politics and government in Michigan, it’s a good idea to remember the words of one of the world’s great philosophers, Yogi Berra.

The former New York Yankee catcher used to say “it ain’t over till it’s over.” That sounds simplistic, but is really pretty profound. Especially when you add that “it is almost never really, truly and completely over.“ Once you understand that, making sense of most things is much easier. For example, the teacher retirement issue, which the legislature fought over for months.

This all started because the state budget has a two billion dollar deficit and legally has to be balanced by September 30th. Nobody is willing to even talk about raising taxes, so the hole has to be filled entirely by budget cuts.

Governor Jennifer Granholm decided to try to get more teachers to retire this year. That would allow the schools to replace them with new teachers who would be paid a lot less.

The idea was to offer teachers over a certain age and who had put in a certain number of years a “sweetener,“ in the form of a slightly higher pension. And since every carrot has to have a stick, teachers who are eligible to retire and don’t would be punished by having to pay into a retirement fund.

When this was first proposed, back in February, the governor said the legislature needed to get this done by April 1st . That would give teachers time to decide what they wanted to do, and the school districts time to look for their replacements.

But the legislators fought bitterly over the bill. As usual, the Democrats who control the house couldn’t agree with the Republicans, who control the senate. Two days ago, it looked like there would be no bill at all. Then, in the wee hours of this morning, there was a breakthrough. The Senate passed a retirement bill, and after a long struggle, the House followed

As I understand it, Republicans agreed to give those retiring now a little more money. Democrats agreed to some other concessions, including language that prevents districts from bringing retirees back to work on contract.

They wouldn't be allowed to do that even if it saved the schools money, and the retiree was the best person for the job.

The teachers’ union hates this agreement, and fought hard to get the house to reject it. But in the end, the lawmakers passed it and voted to put it into effect immediately. Speaker of the House Andy Dillon and Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop said this is a great victory. They think it could save as much as three billion over the next decade, though nobody really knows.

Nobody knows how many teachers will take the offer. What this won’t do, however, is improve the quality of education. Sure, there are some older teachers who are burned out. But many good teachers just keep getting better. Now, districts will be replacing seasoned, award-winning pros with new teachers just out of college.

This may save money, and will be great for some newly minted teachers. But it may not be the best thing for our kids, who need the best training possible to cope with the economy of the future.

Strangely, nobody in Lansing seems very concerned about that.

Essay - They're Off and Running - 5/12/10

Yesterday was the deadline for candidates to file the papers needed to run for state office in the August primary. Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry looks at who's in, and who's out.

Hear Audio Story   

Well, we still don't know who is going to be our next governor. Nor do we know who is going to represent us in Congress or the state legislature next year. We don't know who will be in charge of license plates or preside over the senate or prosecute the bad guys.

What we do know, however, is who is not running. That's because yesterday was the deadline to file the necessary papers to run for nomination to any office in the August third primary election.

Now, it is still possible to run as a third party candidate, or as an independent. Joe Schwarz may still do that, in fact. The former Republican congressman and state senator might well launch an independent bid for governor, if he can raise enough money.

We'll know by July. But in the meantime, here's what we do know. Geoffrey Fieger is indeed not running for governor. Nor is U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, despite persistent rumors that she was going to give up what could be a lifetime job in Washington to come back and make a run at four trouble-filled years in Lansing.

I guess the senator turned out to be sane. Ted Nugent isn't running either, nor is Dennis Archer. Nor am I, as a matter of fact; despite the astonishing suggestions of a few of you.

Being governor takes talent and administrative ability, so I took a pass. However, there are people who are running, and this year, we've been left with a curious field. Normally, Democratic primaries in races where there isn't an incumbent look like an open phone book.

Everybody and her brother gets in. This year, however, there are only two choices in he Democratic primary for governor, and they are two very different men with have two things in common.

Most voters say they haven't heard of either Speaker of House Andy Dillon or Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero. And most of the so-called experts say that neither of them is likely to win.

Well, we're about to hear a lot more about both of them. And as for their certain defeat, nothing was ever so certain in Michigan politics as that John Engler had absolutely no chance to be elected governor when he was the Republican nominee twenty years ago.  Guess what happened.

There are five Republican candidates for governor, Mike Bouchard, Mike Cox, Tom George, Pete Hoekstra and Rick Snyder, the man who spent a million dollars to tell us that he is a nerd, something I would have told you about myself for free.

We have no idea who the nominee is going to be here either, though we can tell that the campaign is now seriously under way. That's because Mike Cox is now running a TV commercial attacking Pete Hoekstra, who is leading in the polls.

Experts expect Hoekstra to start firing back shortly. Of course, the best story yesterday concerned a former state house member named Mary Waters, who is facing a federal corruption trial involving allegations of bribery. Monday, she was told to surrender a Rolex watch that was allegedly part of her ill-gotten gains.

Tuesday, she filed to run for the state senate this fall. Of course, saying, as she did so, "You know, life doesn't stop."

I think there's a moral in this story.

I'm just not sure what it is.

Essay: Alma Wheeler Smith Departs - 5.11.10

Alma Wheeler Smith dropped out of the Democratic race for governor yesterday. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry notes that she had one thing none of her rivals did: A plan.

Hear Audio Story   

Alma Wheeler Smith dropped out of the Democratic race for governor yesterday, after repeatedly vowing that she was in it to stay. This was hardly a surprising development.

There are those who think she dropped out because she was black, female, or too liberal. Smith, who’s been a popular state representative and state senator from Washtenaw County, said that had nothing to do with it, that she pulled the ripcord because she was afraid of, “splitting the progressive vote and ending up with a candidate that does not represent core Democratic values.”

Translated, that’s a slap at Speaker of the House Andy Dillon, whose anti-abortion and anti-embryonic stem cell research views have turned off many Democrats.

Dillon’s attempt to consolidate all state and municipal workers under a common health care plan also angered many who feared losing some benefits.

You can safely assume, then, that Smith would now prefer the nominee be Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing who is sounding vaguely populist themes. Who Smith prefers is pretty easy to figure out, since Dillon and Bernero are now the only candidates left.

However, the real reason Alma Wheeler Smith got off the bus was almost certainly money.

My guess is that she was finding it hard to get the 15,000 petition signatures necessary to get on the August primary ballot. She couldn’t afford either a large campaign staff, nor could she pay professionals to collect them.

She had failed to raise much money, so people didn’t take her seriously. And since they didn’t take her seriously, she couldn’t raise any money. If that sounds like a vicious circle, welcome to politics.

This happens in virtually every election cycle. And yet, I am profoundly sorry to see Smith drop out of the governor’s race, for one big reason. She‘s been alone among all the contenders in presenting a comprehensive plan to eliminate budget deficits, make the state more business-friendly and, at the same time, adequately fund essential programs and services, especially education.

She would do that by reforming the tax structure in a logical and rational way that is easy to understand. It included extending the sales tax to services, something Governor Granholm wants to do.

But the centerpiece of Alma Wheeler Smith’s plan would require amending our state constitution to allow a graduated income tax. Currently, a billionaire and a minimum wage worker are taxed by Michigan at exactly the same rate - 4.35 percent.

Smith thought that wasn’t fair, and said so. Under her plan, everybody who earns less than $45,000 a year would pay less than they do now; those who make more, would pay more.

That would enable Michigan to keep the quality of education up, and also to drop the business-killing surcharge the politicians slapped on the Michigan Business Tax three years ago.

Her plan may not have been perfect, but it deserved discussion, and a hearing, and it got neither. So now we face a choice in both August and November between candidates in both parties who have yet to offer any serious budget solutions.

Alma Wheeler Smith, like it or not, had a plan. She also knew that you get what you pay for, that actions have consequences, and that real-life solutions often offer some pain and sacrifice.

Sadly, that’s evidently not what many were ready to hear.

Essay: Roads to Ruin - 5.10.10

The state is eligible for nearly half a billion dollars in badly needed federal road repair funds. But Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says there’s a real threat that we’ll needlessly lose them.

Hear Audio Story   

If you’ve driven very much lately, you know that a lot of our state’s roads are in bad shape. Here are three other things you should know that may curl your hair -- even if you are bald.

No. 1: Michigan pays a lot more in federal gas tax than it gets back from Washington. Every time we send Uncle Sam a dollar, we get back about ninety-two cents.

That’s been the case for a long time. According to a group called the Coalition for Donor State Equity, we’ve contributed $1.7 billion dollars to improve roads in other states since the 1950s.

Did you know we were that generous?

Fact No. 2: We now have a chance to get a big chunk of that money back to fix our roads. If our lawmakers come up with an additional $84 million dollars, Washington will throw in another $475 million. That means we would get more than four bucks back for every dollar we tax ourselves.

For Michigan, that’s a very good deal. But here’s fact No. 3. Unless things change before Sept. 30, we are going to lose all that money, thanks to our dysfunctional legislature and a crazy mentality that says that raising any tax at all is death, no matter how great the need. Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop appears to oppose raising any revenue, even if it means we get far more back than we pay in.

In this case, here’s all we’d have to do: Raise the gas and diesel tax a little bit. And there are sensible bills in the legislature that would do this. For example, State Representatives Richard Ball, a Republican from Shiawassee County, and Pam Byrnes, a Democrat from Washtenaw, have introduced a bill to boost the gas tax by four cents a gallon and the diesel fuel tax by six cents.

Neither of those taxes have been raised in a long while. The diesel tax has stayed the same since 1984.

If their bill became law we would be able to get the money we need. Kirk Steudle, director of MDOT, the Michigan Department of Transportation, says there’s no choice. If we don’t get these funds, Michigan won’t have money forsnow removal and salt, let alone road and bridge repair.

Yet right now, things don’t look good. This is an election year, and some lawmakers are afraid to do anything that looks like raising taxes. State Representative Wayne Schmidt of Traverse City said “we just can’t place any more burden on the citizens of Michigan.“

From my perspective, having your car destroyed by bad roads might be a bigger burden than paying four cents a gallon.

By the way, unless we start behaving rationally, it’s going to be even worse than I’ve told you. MDOT estimates Michigan will lose more than two billion in the next four years.

And that is exactly what’s going to happen, unless the public demands the bills to get us the money are blasted out of committee. Some people are starting to figure this out.

Last week, hundreds went to Lansing to protest this shortsightedness. The senate majority leader was quoted as saying sorry, folks, but “there are not sufficient votes for that now.” Well, senator, you are your party’s leader.

For the good of us all, find them. *** Please note: the initial essay made reference to Wayne Kuipers. It was actually Wayne Schmidt that Mr. Lessenberry was referencing. We apologize for the error.

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.

Essay: Money, Money - 5.6.10

Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has discovered something remarkable from reading his emails… People in Michigan want money...

Hear Audio Story   

What’s the first sound you hear in the morning? The birds chirping? The traffic? Or do you instead hear the sweet syllables I first hear, after I throw on my clothes and assume the position:

You’ve got mail.

E-mail, that is. The flood of overnight e-mail, much of which should have been caught by the filter to catch spam, by which I mean the electronic equivalent of junk mail, not canned mystery meat. But the filter doesn’t always work.

Which isn’t all bad, actually, from a sociological perspective. It is mildly fascinating how the content of spam changes.

Especially Michigan-based spam. Once upon a time, spam messages were all about naughtiness. Then came endless of solicitations on behalf of various billionaire widows who wanted to share their wealth with me, if I would only show good faith by trusting them with my credit card. Sadly, I am a man of little faith.

These days, however, I have noticed a refreshing new trend in unsolicited e-mail: Honesty. Yes, it’s friendly and warm, but gets right down to the point: Give me money. I had three such this morning.

The first was from a nice woman whose husband I know slightly. Her name is Pam Bouchard.

She wished me a Happy Mother’s Day, which was a trifle odd, but didn’t offend me.

After telling me about her daughter’s year at MSU, she got down to the point.

The year had been a little bit of a challenge, she told me, because Mike is running for governor! That’s Mike Bouchard, the Oakland County sheriff. Then she took me into her confidence.

“Sadly,” she confided, “campaigns are very expensive.” She invited me to donate online, or, quote “send us a check.”

“Every dollar counts,” she said. You don’t say. Actually, reminding perfect strangers of that fact might not be such a great idea if you want them to give up their cash.

The next one was even better. It directed me to the new website of somebody I actually do know, a man who modestly describes himself as a “very active community leader and a visionary.” He isn’t running for anything just now, but wants to stay in touch with friends, and invited me to be his Facebook pal.

And yes, now that you mention it, his family is in a bit of a jam, and if I wanted to make a donation to help them out, why I could do so via MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover or PayPal.

This fellow’s name, by the way, is Kwame Kilpatrick.

Finally I had an e-mail from Andy Goodman. Andy, as I am sure you know, works for Revolution, the newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party in America.

He faces an exciting challenge: “To be blunt: our current web site is not acceptable for the challenges we face in putting the next stage of the world communist revolution on the map.”

So he asked me for a mere five thousand dollars to hire the techies to help speed the next stage of the revolution. I have to tell you, this had a certain appeal to my sense of the absurd.

But unfortunately, I don’t have that much ready cash. If I did, however, I have to confess something. After Kwame, Pam and the commies, those billionaire Nigerian widows look better all the time.

Essay: Ernie Harwell - 5.5.10

Famed Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell died last night. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry reminds us that Harwell’s life went far beyond baseball.

Hear Audio Story   

If you are new to Michigan, you may be bewildered by the enormous reaction to the passing of Ernie Harwell.

He was, after all, a retired baseball announcer whose death last night at the age of ninety-two, had long been anticipated.

He had announced last fall that he had terminal bile duct cancer.

The doctors said then that he was unlikely to make it past Christmas; in fact, he lived to see the start of a new season.

But nobody who grew up in Michigan ever thought of Ernie Harwell as merely an announcer. His was the voice of spring, and summer; he was the chords of memory, and childhood.

The constant in a too-rapidly-changing world. His rich and distinctive Georgia accent was always in the background on summer days; at picnics, floating across the water on Michigan lakes. He was furtively listened to by little boys, who put transistor radios under their pillows when they were supposed to be sleeping.

Adult men did the same thing at the office, in those years when the Tigers were winning and the games meant something.

Harwell told me once that he knew people could sometimes listed for just a minute or two, and so he tried to slip in the score whenever he could. His was a comforting voice, a voice of continuity which held Michigan together throughout an era of change.

He had arrived in Detroit at the beginning of 1960, when the city had more than twice as many people as it does now.

General Motors was the largest corporation in the world. Nobody had a Japanese car, and baseball was still America’s favorite sport. Tiger Stadium was a vast, dark-green fortress at Michigan and Trumbull. Between innings, Ernie did commercials for Stroh’s, Detroit’s distinctive brand of beer. Life was easier to figure out.

Detroiters went to school; then got a job in an auto plant, or went to college and became an engineer.

Then things started to change, slowly at first, then ever-faster. There was a game in July 1967 when Ernie was told not to mention that a major riot had broken out, though those watching on television could see smoke in the distance.

There came Vietnam and the counter-culture; wars between parents and children. The city lost population; the auto industry began to slip, and life became uncertain.

Stroh’s was sold and left the city; Vernors and Hudson’s vanished too. Yet there was always Ernie, whose voice every April symbolized renewal, a new chance, and hope.

Through the year, he gave us reasons to listen even when the team was dreadful.

Nobody realized how much of an icon he had become until Bo Schembechler became president of the Tigers and decided not to renew his contract after the 1991 season.

The outpouring of shock and anger was unprecedented. Soon, the Tigers had a new owner, who understood tradition and baseball. Mike Ilitch brought Ernie back and placed a statue of the announcer at the entrance to his new stadium, Comerica Park.

Ernie’s body will lie in state there tomorrow. For years, whenever a player hit a home run, he would shout, “That ball is long gone.” Ernie Harwell is dead now, true. But his memory is anything but gone. As long as many of us live, we’ll just think of him as somewhere in the middle innings.

Essay: Frustration for our Schools - 5.4.10

A plan to entice veteran teachers to retire has been bogged down in the state legislature for weeks. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks that says something about our state government…

Hear Audio Story   

Want proof as to how dysfunctional state government in Michigan has become? You need look no further than the ongoing fiasco over teacher retirement benefits.

As you might have heard, the state is running a deficit of close to two billion, and the budget has to be balanced by September 30, or state government might once again shut down.

Months ago, Governor Jennifer Granholm offered a proposal to save the schools hundreds of millions in the year ahead. Teachers, would be offered sweetened pensions as an incentive to retire now.

Teacher salaries are determined mostly by how many years a teacher has served. The idea was to get highly paid veteran teachers off the books and replace them with new teachers who cost less.

By the way, if you worry that replacing a lot of skilled veteran teachers might weaken the quality of education -- forget about it. Yes, of course that is a legitimate concern. I have talked to more than one school superintendent who thinks that would be a terrible idea. “Teaching isn’t like putting fenders on a car coming down the line,” one told me. “it’s an art that takes years to perfect.”

He was right, of course. But quality education issues have played little part in the debate over teacher retirement. Instead, it has all been about money and politics.

And once again, it appears that has been a lethal combination when it comes to getting anything done. Here‘s what happened:

The governor proposed a plan that would slightly raise the amount teachers retiring now get. Those who elected to stay would lose dental and vision insurance, and they’d have to give three percent of their salaries to the retirement system.

But neither the Democrats, who control the state house, nor the Republicans, who control the senate, liked the governor’s plan.

House Democrats, spurred by the teachers’ unions, came back with a plan that would give the teachers much more. It would also save the state more in the short run-- but cost a lot more in the long run as pensions kick in.

Senate Republicans called this an outrageous and massive giveaway of taxpayer dollars.

They came back with their own plan. It left things basically as they were, but added the governor’s scheme of making teachers who didn’t leave pay three percent into the pension plan. House Democrats called that outrageous.

The result was, once again, deadlock.

Late last week it looked like a compromise was possible. But it seems to have all bogged down over health care costs. That, and the fact that people care only about their own narrow interests.

Plus the fact that neither party wants to make the other look good this year. To allow teachers to figure out what they wanted to do, and to allow school systems to figure out their needs, the governor said the whole thing needed to be done by April 1.

Well, April Fool. Today is May 4th, and there is still no bill.

Yesterday, the governor said it may now be too late to entice teachers to retire this year. If, that is, any bill ever emerges.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, the election is approaching, and the massive deficit is still there. If you can see anyone who looks like a hero in all this, you have better eyes than I.

Essay: Saving Our Future - 5.3.10

The Michigan legislature has been arguing over education budget cuts for months. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry got the perspective from one of Michigan’s largest school districts…

Hear Audio Story   

Christine Johns knows how important education is for our future. She fights that battle every day. She is superintendent of schools in Utica in Macomb County, the second largest district in Michigan, behind only Detroit. Most of her 29,283 students are from blue-collar families. She knows that education is their only hope.

“I feel like it is sort of a ‘Tale of Two Michigans - one that was and which still is, but which is dying. And the other, which is what we want to become," she said.

I met her in Lansing, on a day when she and the other superintendents from her county had gone to talk with the governor and their legislators about what matters.

That experience left her dismayed. She listened to pompous politicians talking about the need to make cuts, as if properly educating our children were something that could be put off.

Superintendent Johns knows how difficult it can be; she was the daughter of a steelworker in Pittsburgh. There was no money for college, so she put herself through, working two jobs.

She says she sometimes had to let her grades slip, but that’s hard to believe. She got an elementary education degree from the University of Pittsburgh and then earned a masters from Johns Hopkins, and then another masters and a doctorate, from Harvard.

She had high-level jobs in Pasadena and Baltimore before coming to Utica four years ago. She has a commuter marriage, and a job that never ends. Now 44, she didn’t finish paying off her school loans till her late thirties. And she knows for today’s kids, it will be harder. She has to fight to make parents understand that.

One of Utica’s current students had unbelievable test scores, and was admitted to MIT. But her parents are hesitant to sign for a loan. Johns knows this decision will likely determine the course of this young woman’s life.

“With blue collar kids - and I was a blue collar kid - if they don’t start college right away, and don’t go full time, the chances of their not finishing is huge,” she said. In the old days, there were at least good-paying jobs for people without degrees, jobs in the plants.

Not anymore.

People think of Utica as one huge white blue-collar suburb. There’s a lot of those folks, but her kids speak 47 different languages at home. Nearly a thousand are still learning English.

Yet, her message seems to be connecting. Utica’s dropout rate is less than five percent - lower than almost anywhere else.

She has talked her teachers and administrators into cuts and givebacks. Yet some say she should have asked for more.

“They don’t understand,” she said. She explained that how for many kids, Utica’s programs are the only exposure they ever get to the arts. For many, it‘s the first time they‘ve ever seen a play.

Eliminating the arts would be devastating. Christine Johns knows that some don’t get it, but hoped for better from those who run the state. She had a chance to talk to the governor, to explain how important it is that someone really thinks through these policies that make budget-cutting more important than anything else.

Jennifer Granholm looked her in the eye and said, “I understand.” Christine Johns can only hope the legislature comes to understand too.