I’m talking about this year’s budget, which was supposedly balanced last Sept. 30, but turned out not to be balanced after all. There‘s a shortfall of something like $300 million dollars. Governor Jennifer Granholm, who still vows no more cuts to education, wants to plug that with money from the School Aid Fund.
If that doesn’t make sense to you, it’s because you are guilty of logical thinking. Bad as that idea is, there are worse. Some knuckleheads want to sell money the state has coming in the future for a fraction of its net worth today. They call this “securitization.”
They are talking about the $280 million dollars the state gets every year as part of a settlement with the big tobacco companies.
Every state gets this money, which was supposed to be used for health-related activities, like anti-smoking programs. All but three states, in fact, use some or all of this money for that purpose.
Michigan, of course, doesn’t use a dime. Three years ago, our lawmakers did something even more despicable. They sold off $900 million dollars of tobacco money we were due to get in the future for barely $400 million right then.
That was so they could plug an earlier deficit hole without having to make hard decisions, like cutting spending or raising taxes.
Now, some wanted to do this again.
To his credit, State Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop called this “probably the worst thing the state could do.” He called on his colleagues to “take this head on, resolve this budget shortfall directly, and not push it into the next administration.’
Bishop is absolutely right, though it is worth noting that he signed on to selling off the tobacco money three years ago.
He may have learned from that. Or, it could be that he has his own best interests at heart. He hopes to be the GOP’s nominee for attorney general, or, perhaps, lieutenant governor.
Since Bishop wants to still be in government he’d probably prefer to have some money to work with, if only to pay his salary.
But if our legislature can’t balance a budget, it did one thing this week: Outlaw some classes of criminal from holding public office.
Well, actually they didn’t do that either. They just put it on the ballot to ask us to do it. We’ll be asked to ban people convicted of a felony, quote, “involving the breach of the public trust,” from serving in government. There were a few objections from idealistic lawmakers who thought that should be up to the voters, and a few sheepish looks from State Rep. Bert Johnson of Highland Park, who did hard time for armed robbery.
But oddly enough, the most sensible comment came from State Representative Coleman Young the second, who said that if we are going to do this, we should ban anyone who has committed any felonies. Aren’t all felonies breaches of the public trust?
Well, never mind. I have no doubt voters will pass this overwhelmingly, after which Adrian, Albion and everywhere else will be protected from any sudden urges to elect Kwame Kilpatrick.
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