Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Negative Campaiging - 8.31.10

There was a time when state Attorney General Mike Cox was originally favored to win the Republican nomination for governor. He ended up finishing third in the G-O-P primary. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry talked to Cox about what went wrong.

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There are many areas where I disagree with Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox.

Nevertheless, there are things about him I admire. Eight years ago, the GOP nominated Cox to run for attorney general, and few thought he had a chance.

Michigan hadn’t elected a Republican attorney general in half a century. Gary Peters, his Democratic opponent, was richer, better educated, and better known. Yet Cox, a hardscrabble Marine Corps veteran and the son of Irish immigrants, worked harder, campaigned smarter, and won one of the closest races in state history.

As attorney general, he went after deadbeat parents who didn’t pay child support. This was a subject he knew a lot about. He courageously admitted that he had fathered a child out of wedlock while in the Marines, and ended up raising his daughter on his own.

He went on to law school at the University of Michigan, and became a Wayne County prosecutor, rising to head of the homicide division. Over the years, I‘ve had many frank on-and-off the record talks with Cox. I’ve found him to be a street-smart guy with good political instincts and a compassionate side. He has a warm spot for Detroit, and understands the city better than almost any Republican.

He also is a relentless - some would say ruthless - campaigner. I originally thought he would win the Republican nomination for governor, partly because he’d work harder than anyone else. When Jennifer Granholm dared him to do something about the Asian carp crisis, Cox gratefully seized the issue and made it his own. But the Cox who ran for governor this year was not the guy I admired. He raised a lot of money, secured some big endorsements, but went negative almost from the start.

He launched a flurry of attack ads against Rick Snyder and, especially, the underfunded Pete Hoekstra, who at first seemed Cox’s main competition. They both yelled foul, and found a sympathetic press. His opponents, in turn, sought to link Cox, who is from the Wayne Country suburbs, to Kwame Kilpatrick.

They said he didn't do enough to prosecute Detroit’s corrupt mayor, though in fact a suit filed by Cox’s office was what finally forced him to resign. There was even an absurd story that Cox was at the legendary, probably mythical Manoogian Mansion party.

In the end, Cox finished a distant third. Last week I had lunch with the attorney general, who is still a bit shell-shocked over his defeat. He really expected to win.

Why hadn’t he stressed more his record of getting things done and his agenda for the future?

Because he believed that negative campaigning was what worked. He did put out a detailed plan for Michigan’s economy, and the media paid no attention. They did pay attention when he attacked the other candidates, but not in a good way.

Snyder actually did some negative campaigning, but more subtly, and managed to come across as a fresh-faced Mr. Clean.

I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Mike Cox, who is still in his forties. Virtually every successful politician, including Barack Obama, once ran a poor campaign, and lost.

I just hope that next time Mike Cox campaigns based more on what he has done and can do for us, rather than on what he can do to do the other guys in.

Essay: A Clear Choice 8.30.10

Both parties completed putting together their slates of candidates at their conventions this weekend. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry sees some good news in this for us all.

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Here’s some good news about politics in Michigan this year. First of all, in the race for governor, the voters are going to have a clear-cut choice between two competing visions of the future.

Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero is offering a well-defined, strongly populist theme, with a potentially powerful slogan: Main Street, not Wall Street. Whether you agree with him or not, he has articulated a fairly comprehensive economic development strategy.

He would tie tax incentives directly to job creation and create international investment zones across the state. Most intriguing, perhaps, is his idea to create a state bank to supply credit to small businesses, a concept that was worked well in North Dakota.

Republican Rick Snyder has been less forthcoming with details about exactly what he would do as governor, except for one thing: He would eliminate the now-hated Michigan Business Tax, and replace it with a flat-rate corporate income tax.

That is, if he can get it through the legislature.

Both campaigns are refreshingly unusual in a number of other ways. When he spoke to the Republican state convention Saturday, Snyder, who was not the choice of the party establishment, talked about protecting our natural resources and investing in rebuilding battered cities like Detroit and presumably, Flint and Saginaw.

The last Republican candidate for governor to talk that way was William G. Milliken, more than thirty years ago.

Interestingly, the Democratic ticket is all about cities. Both Bernero and his running mate, Southfield Mayor Brenda Lawrence, are mayors of economically challenged medium-size cities.

The challenge for both candidates and the news media is to continue to make this a campaign about who has the best vision for the state -- and who has the know-how and ability to carry it out.

Both campaigns are going to be running against the status quo. It is not a coincidence that the only member of either ticket to be currently serving in state government is Brian Calley, Mr. Snyder’s pick for lieutenant governor. And he is a backbencher who hasn’t been in even a minority leadership role.

Everyone now leading the state seems thoroughly discredited. The governor is hugely unpopular. The lieutenant governor had to drop out of the race for his party’s nomination. Speaker of the House Andy Dillon overwhelmingly lost his bid for the Democratic nomination for governor. Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop’s bid to become attorney general was rejected by his party’s convention.

The voters seem to want a new approach. Over the next nine weeks, we need the candidates to explain to us what theirs would be and how it would work. Virg Bernero needs to tell us why he thinks his pro-union agenda would help the state attract new businesses.

Rick Snyder needs to demonstrate some understanding of how state government works, and show that he is ready to work with the legislature. Unlike in corporate America, he won’t be able to just fire lawmakers he doesn’t like.

Sorting all this out is now up to us. By the way, this weekend’s conventions did something else notable. By and large, each party nominated their best possible candidates for secretary state, attorney general, the school boards and the Michigan Supreme Court.

They’ve started their engines, and it time to pay attention. Hold on to your reasoning power, your sanity, and your seats.

Essay: Order and the Court - 8.27.10

Justice Elizabeth Weaver unexpectedly resigned from the Michigan Supreme Court yesterday. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at what went on behind the scenes.

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For years, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver has criticized the way we choose the judges who sit on Michigan’s highest court. She wants, among other things, to end the governor’s “unchecked appointment process” in the case of vacancies.

She also wants to stop the system whereby the justices are nominated by the major political parties, something that she and many others think has made for excessive partisanship on the court.

So Weaver worked out a deal whereby she resigned yesterday and Gov. Jennifer Granholm appointed a Democratic judge from Grayling. “Now you understand how it works,” she told a reporter.

The governor denied that any deal had been made.

But Betty Weaver said she wouldn’t have stepped down if she wasn’t sure that the governor wouldn’t have appointed Alton Davis, who has been on the Michigan Court of Appeals, to the high court.

“You can call it what you want,“ Justice Weaver said.

What is clear is that “it” gave Democrats a four to three majority on the court, and left Republicans screaming mad.

They denounced the newest justice as a “partisan hack” and a “politician in a robe.“ That’s because they were hoping to replace Justice Weaver with one of their own robed politicians.

And that just got a lot harder. That’s because tomorrow, the Michigan Democratic Party will nominate Justice Davis for election to a full eight-year term in November. And he will be listed on the ballot as “Justice of the Supreme Court,“ something that everyone agrees will give him a big advantage over whomever the GOP nominates.

Prior to yesterday, it looked like Justice Weaver was going to nominate herself to run as an independent, something she would have done with quiet Democratic support.

But she decided she’d had enough. Her departure comes, in a sense, as a blessing. The court has been at war with itself for years.

Weaver, ironically, was elected twice as a Republican. But she turned against her GOP colleagues nine years ago when they voted to deny her a second two-year term as chief justice.

Actually, all the justices voted against her; her administrative skills were thought to be lacking. But she blamed the Republicans, and began openly feuding with them.

And she began voting more and more with the Democrats, as when she crossed party lines last year to help elect Marilyn Kelly chief justice. Angered, some of her colleagues started making their disputes personal. Justice Weaver can be rambling and inarticulate when she speaks. Her style of dress is eccentric.

Yet her legal opinions have been coherent and thoughtful, and so are her criticisms of Michigan’s Supreme Court.

Here’s some of what she said when she resigned yesterday: “The present system by which we elect and appoint Supreme Court justices is deeply flawed and in need of an overhaul.

“Specifically, we need to promptly reform the process of how we select justices, and we need transparency and accountability … we need justices and judges who are dedicated to the rule of law, who are independent, impartial, exercise judicial restraint, apply common sense, and who are wise, honest, orderly, competent, fair, civil and professional, open, not secretive, and nonpartisan.”

What’s she is saying is that the present system is clearly broken. And we need to change Michigan’s constitution and fix it.

Essay: Work Ethic - 8.26.10

You may have thought balancing the budget was the state legislature’s job -- but Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says, it’s about vacations -- and the state carrot committee.

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For the last two days, much of the political news has swirled around Rick Snyder’s choice of a little-known young legislator as his pick for lieutenant governor.

That is, much of what you’ve read about. But at the same time, lots of arguably more important stuff was going on. For example, offshore drilling for oil. After the disasters in the Gulf of Mexico and the Kalamazoo River, wouldn’t you think that we’d be willing to do anything we could to prevent an oil spill in the Great Lakes, the most important source of fresh water in the world?

I would think so, and so does State Representative Daniel Scripps of Northport. The difference is that he actually is trying to do something about it. He’s been pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban offshore drilling for oil and gas. Drilling in the Great Lakes is already illegal -- but as it now stands, that could be repealed in hours by a simple vote in the legislature.

Scripps wanted to give our lakes more protection by putting an amendment in the state constitution banning drilling. He wanted the legislature to put it on the ballot this November so the people could decide. But that’s not going to happen.

Why? Because the Michigan Senate decided instead to go on vacation. That’s right. Even though the clock is ticking, and the state budget isn’t anywhere near done.

The state house, which has been on vacation since before the August 3rd primary, came moseying back this week. But then, the Senate, which was supposed to be working, promptly canceled its sessions and took a break until after Labor Day.

Don’t you wish you could do that on your job? Anyway, that killed any chance of putting any proposed constitutional amendment on this year’s ballot. The lawmakers would have had to act by next week -- but the senators will be gone.

This also would seem to mean that we will be going into another last-minute showdown to see whether the lawmakers can avoid another government shutdown. The budget has to be passed and signed by the end of next month.

However, the senators aren’t even planning on showing up for work again until September 7th. There are times when it‘s hard not to sympathize with those who say they are overpaid.

To be fair, the senators are willing to do something. They made it clear last week that they are, by God, willing to block any appointments the governor makes to any state boards and commissions. Legally, she has a perfect right to make these appointments. We elected her to serve till New Year’s Day.

But Republicans, who control the senate, want those slots left vacant till the next governor, who they think will be a Republican, comes in. By the way, how important are these jobs?

Here’s a sample. The governor wants to appoint Ryan Malburg, Steven Bouwkamp and Richard Oomen to the state carrot committee.

She wants to put Tim Wilkes of Alma on the potato industry commission, put Tom Klapp on the Board of Chiropractic, and keep Kathy Spiller of Saginaw on the state Cosmetology Board.

Stop the presses. Yet blocking those unpaid appointments is evidently important to some of our leaders.

More important, that is, than doing their jobs. Some days I wonder if a monarchy wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Essay: Snyder Makes a Choice - 8.25.10

Republican nominee for Governor Rick Snyder has made a somewhat surprising pick for a running mate. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look back at the state’s past lieutenant governors.

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Being lieutenant governor of Michigan is a job something like being vice-president of the United States used to be. As Nelson Rockefeller once put it, it means you are “standby equipment.”

FDR’s first vice-president, John Nance Garner, is often quoted as saying the vice-presidency “wasn’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.” What he actually said was not “spit.”

But things have changed somewhat in Washington. Vice Presidents, who used to have nothing to do except preside over the senate in case of a tie, are now usually given more visibility and responsibility, and later often run for President themselves.

In Michigan, however, the job of lieutenant governor has changed little in modern times. Tell me - would you recognize our current lieutenant governor if you saw him in your grocery store?

Can you name John Engler’s first lieutenant governor?

If the answer to either of these questions is yes, your social life clearly needs improving. Frankly, regardless of what the governor at the time may tell you. Michigan lieutenant governors haven’t been much more than placeholders and standby equipment.

They are often chosen in order to appeal to a particular constituency, or to balance a ticket in some way. Jennifer Granholm, for example, took John Cherry because he had a lot of legislative experience and she had none. It‘s not clear, however that she ever took his advice much or used his skills to get bills passed.

This year, the Republicans ended up with a surprise dark horse as their candidate for governor: Rick Snyder, a venture capitalist who comes from outside the traditional political establishment.

Now, he’s making a choice for governor that is somewhat conventional and somewhat surprising: Brian Calley, a 33-year-old state representative and former banker from just west of Lansing.

Almost nobody has ever heard of Calley, but he brings about two and a half qualities to the ticket. He has been endorsed by Michigan Right to Life, something that may help with the large anti-abortion faction of the Republican Party. Many of them don’t believe Snyder is sufficiently anti-abortion, but since Democratic nominee Virg Bernero is enthusiastically pro-choice, they have nowhere else to go. Calley is a bit of a surprise in one way, however:

Some people thought Snyder, who hasn’t spent a day working in any branch of government, would take someone with legislative experience. This is where I give Calley half credit.

He has some, but not much. Calley’s spent less than four years as a member of an outnumbered minority caucus in the legislature. What people say he does have is good chemistry with Rick Snyder and a common way of looking at the world and solving problems.

That makes sense. However, as a citizen, I had been hoping Snyder would tap Ken Sikkema, the former Senate Majority Leader.

Sikkema is just as conservative, but experienced, capable, and wise in the ways of Lansing. Which brings us to a factor that troubles me. Not to be morbid, but any of us could die at any time.

That’s the real reason we have lieutenant governors and vice-presidents. I am not convinced that any 33-year-old is ready to be governor of this complex state, especially one with Calley’s relatively narrow geographical and professional experience.

But I am more than ready to be proven wrong.

Essay: How Will They Fix Things? - 8.24.10

With ten weeks to go before the November elections, voters will soon know who all the candidates are. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks what really matters is knowing what they would do if they win...

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We are about to elect not only a new governor, but almost an entirely new group of state officeholders. No more than nine of the thirty-eight state senators will be back next year.

Depending on what the voters do, only about half of the lower house will return. All of the legislative leaders will be gone forever. We’ll have a new governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state and attorney general. Not only do we not know yet who these folks will be, in some cases, we don’t even know yet who is running.

But they‘ll all take office barely four months from now.

And this fresh group of faces will be in charge of a Michigan with the same old problems. We have a cash-starved state whose budget process throws up a huge deficit every year.

We have an education system in crisis and a bloated, inefficient and vastly expensive network of prisons that seem to neither keep us safe, rehabilitate or even adequately punish serious offenders.

Michigan has lost almost a million jobs over the past decade, and Detroit has lost a million people since its peak. Our century-old core industry has withered to a shadow of its former self.

Nothing that comes near to replacing it, or the jobs it provided, is on the horizon.

Yet, incredibly, both city and state have been trying to do business as usual. That can’t work anymore.

What Michigan needs is top-to-bottom reform, or maybe reinvention of what government does and how it does it.

This has long been true, but is especially urgent now. As it now stands, in a few months we’ll either have a governor who is now the mayor of a medium-sized city, or a governor who is a successful businessman without a day’s experience in government.

Whoever the winner is will need to push for major reforms that will drastically change the way state government functions.

If that doesn’t happen - and happen quickly - we’ll just continue down our familiar dreary downhill slide.

What we need to hear from these candidates is how they propose to do this. For years, we’ve heard the same sterile, unthinking arguments. Republicans insist on tax cuts and not raising revenue, no matter how big the crisis.

Union leaders and some Democrats have been at least as absurd. They vowed to defeat Speaker of the House Andy Dillon - and they did - because he argued in favor of putting all government workers on the same health care plan, argued in favor of rational pensions the state could afford, and helped push some older and more expensive teachers into retirement. They never addressed the fact that the state is taking in billions of dollars less every year. They didn’t want to see the big picture. They didn’t care.

We need to demand that Virg Bernero and Rick Snyder tell us what they would do, now. This is for their good as much as ours. When the campaign ends, the winner won’t have time.

He will be exhausted, and faced with the problem of putting together a government and finding the right people for a wide range of jobs. For the next ten weeks, we will be hearing a lot about who’s going to win. But what really matters is what they’ do.

For a change, let’s try asking that.

Essay: Back to the Future - 8.23.10

Ever wonder what the underground railroad or Detroit’s gangster era were really like? There’s a man in Detroit who specializes in taking people there.

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Ever wonder what it would have been like to have been around during Prohibition, when rum-runners in speedboats crossed the Detroit River in the dead of night, trying to keep their precious illegal cargo from federal agents? How about during slavery, when Michigan and Canada were the final stops on the underground railroad?

Well, we can’t time-travel, at least not yet. But Stewart McMillin, a retired high school teacher, tries to offer the next best thing. For a fee that barely covers his costs, he leads a near-constant stream of tours of Michigan’s fascinating and mostly forgotten past.

Last week, for example, he led one of his most popular excursions, his African-American History and Culture Tour of Detroit. I personally loathe most tours, but his are different. He knows what to see and where to go, and manages to fit an almost unbelievable amount into a very full day.

He has what seems like inexhaustible energy. His business card says simply, Stewart McMillan: Since 1940. That’s not when his tours (www.McMillintours.com) began; that’s the year he was born.

However, he seems younger, in part because of his puckish wit. I am a good bit younger than he, and his schedule could certainly exhaust me. This week, he’s leading an all-day tour of Detroit’s historic churches on Thursday. Two days later, he is running his Canada Prohibition Tour, which will visit many of the famous smuggling sites and end up in a still-functioning tavern of the day.

And yes, those old enough will be able to sample the stuff. For those who want an even bigger taste of the gangster era, there is his Hootch, Hoodlums and Hoods tour on November.

He also does day-long tours of Muslim and Arab sites in the Detroit area and in October, is leading an ambitious four-day excursion to underground railroad sites in Ohio and Kentucky.

I have met black activists and historians who have gone along. Many were skeptical that he knew very much about what he was talking about. Later, they told me they were the ones who learned they didn’t know as much as they’d thought.

Sometimes, to be fair, they say it’s a little hard to get him to stop talking. He loves this stuff. But it’s all fascinating.

By the way, this guy is officially retired. So -- where does all this come from? He says it started because over a twenty-nine year career as a teacher in the suburbs, he had only one black student. He found himself taking his charges to visit mostly black high-schools in Detroit, and to learn about the city.

Now, he does the same for adults. He actually makes little distinction between his professional and personal life; many of the tours end up with a pizza party at his home, which, as you might suspect, is crammed with historical souvenirs.

When McMillin takes time off, his idea of a way to relax is travel. He‘s visited more than a hundred and twenty countries, and all fifty states. Africa has, in fact become his favorite place. Yet he says he’s devoting the rest of his life to helping Detroit and Michigan discover its heritage. He thinks we can’t possibly figure out where we should go until we understand where we’ve been.

Which makes a lot of sense to me.

Essay: Taking Stock - 8.20.10

General Motors is moving towards again offering stock to free itself from government control. But is it too early? Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry looks at the background.

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Years ago, when I first began to write about business and economics, I went to hear an expert talk about the stock market. I had the interesting theory that I might do a better job if I understood what I was writing and talking about.

I don’t remember very much about the lecture, except this: He advised that if you were young and had some cash to burn, you might want to think of investing in some high-risk new computer company, like Microsoft. It probably wouldn’t make it, but if it did, there would be big rewards at the end of the rainbow.

But if on the other hand you just needed a secure place to park your money, if you were an old fogy and not a risk-taker, then you ought to invest in something boring and totally safe.

Like General Motors. The big gray automotive monolith was then still the biggest corporation in the world. It was there; it had seemingly always been there, it always would be there.

Everybody knows that when GM President “Engine Charlie” Wilson was nominated for Secretary of Defense back in 1953, he said “I’ve always thought that what was good for the country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”

Well, nothing stays the same. If you had invested in Microsoft early on, you‘d be fabulously wealthy now. But anyone who was still clinging to General Motors stock last year lost every penny.

The company went bankrupt, and the stock became worthless. But in recent months, GM has resembled the legendary phoenix rising from the ashes. After shedding debt and obsolete factories, a smaller, sleeker General Motors is making money again.

GM has made profits of more than two billion dollars since the first of the year. But it is no longer really a private company. The U.S. government now owns most of what is sometimes sneered at as “Government Motors.” But that is expected to change soon.

General Motors is gearing up to again offer stock, so it can raise money, begin buying out the government, and once again be a technically private company. But are they rushing things?

Some think this is way too early. Others darkly suspect GM of doing this now to pay back the Obama Administration for saving the company last year. The Democrats are expected to have a hard time in the November elections, and one of their few visible achievements has been General Motors’ return from the dead.

However, there are lots of other analysts who say that this is perfect timing. The Associated Press’s Bernie Condon says “buying during bad times is the best way to make money with auto stocks, provided you have a stomach of steel."

My stomach is more like oatmeal. But my guess is that if the price is set low enough, GM could be a steal of an investment, at least for the next few years, when auto sales bounce back.

But I think potential investors should be asking more about the company. Does General Motors have it together? How does the quality and cost of their vehicles compare to the competition? Do they have a realistic, long-range business plan?

If the answer to those questions is yes, the stock offering ought to take care of itself, and of those who invest in it as well.

Essay: Smoke and Mirrors - 8.19.10

Governor Jennifer Granholm unveiled her budget-balancing proposals yesterday. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says they include no new taxes - and also no needed reforms.

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Well, we now know how Governor Jennifer Granholm plans to balance the budget. Make that, two budgets. The current year’s. which came unstuck when not as much money came in as planned, and the budget for the new fiscal year, which starts October 1st.

To sum it up, she plans to do it with paper clips, baling wire, accounting tricks and robbing Peter to pay Paul.

That's pretty sad, if inevitable. Granholm has never been a dominating presence in Lansing, and these days has less clout than ever. In five months, she’ll be gone.

To be fair, the budget process was screwed up long before she arrived. It‘s based on unrealistic assumptions nobody’s had the political will to change. What‘s needed is major, honest, structural reform, based roughly on what they used to call “zero-based budgeting.” What should happen is this:

Our leaders need to look at state government from head to toe, determine what the state needs to be doing, and how much it costs.

Once that is done, they need to enact the best, fairest and most economically rational way to pay for it.

Yes, sacred cows of the left, right, and center would be sacrificed. But in the end, we might have a government that worked.

For years, we’ve waited for Governor Granholm to come up with such a plan - especially after her landslide re-election victory four years ago. But it never happened.

Two years ago, she did tentatively propose consolidating eighteen departments into eight new streamlined ones. But she backed off the moment it was criticized.

So now she’s in her final months, and has not one, but two budgets to balance. A few days ago, hints were being dropped that she planned to do this with a combination of cuts and new revenue. That would make the most sense, except for one thing. Republicans still control the Michigan Senate, and Majority Leader Mike Bishop’s consistent bleat has been no new taxes.

No matter what. So the governor backed down. She now proposes this. She’d eliminate a three hundred million dollar gap in the current budget by taking $94 million in federal Medicare funding that was supposed to be applied to next year.

Then she would take $208 million from the School Aid Fund, which is meant for elementary and high school education.

Now, here’s how she proposes to solve next year’s budget problem. First, cut every state agency by three percent. Supposedly, that can be done without having to lay anyone off.

Right. Then, in a version of the classic shell game, the governor wants to change the rules for abandoned personal property so it reverts to the state faster. And, she’d sell rights to distribute liquor to the highest bidder.

My money is on Don Corleone. Then she’d throw in a tax amnesty program, and voila - a balanced budget.

On paper, anyway. The lawmakers ought to like it; they can pass this stuff rapidly, maybe after a little whining from the schools, and get out of town to campaign.

A month ago I went to Lansing to see former Attorney General Frank Kelley, the governor’s mentor. He told me he’d met with her that morning about her legacy. What she’s accomplished in office. And I’ve wondered ever since just what that could be.

Essay: Power of the Purse - 8.18.10

State lawmakers are coming back to work today, to try and balance two budgets -- this year’s and next year’s. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry worries they’re running out of time…

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A long time ago, when leaves were first appearing on the trees and a spring chill was still in the air, the governor and our legislative leaders said they planned to get next year’s budget finished and passed by June 30th. That made a lot of sense.

After all, most fiscal years in both public and private sectors end on June 30th, and new budgets have to be in place by then. Once, back when tail fins were still in style, Michigan’s fiscal year ended then too. But years ago, it was pushed back to September 30.

That was done in the 1970s, as an accounting trick and a way to put off difficult choices. This was not a good idea, however, because almost everybody else remained on the traditional fiscal calendar. And that meant that organizations who depend on money from the state - cities and school systems, for example - wouldn’t know how much they were getting till long after they had to complete their own budgets.

Back when times were good, that was a moderate pain. Once times turned bad, however, it became a nightmare, especially for schools, who had to make their hiring decisions well in advance.

So this year, our leaders agreed to try to fix this.

They would get everything done by June 30th.

This common-sense vow was partly self-serving. This is an election year, and virtually all the legislators are running for office, angling for appointments, or looking for jobs.

Unfortunately, they didn’t get it done. To their credit, they did get the education budget passed, though there is no guarantee it won’t be altered down the line. But next year’s budget isn’t done.

And to make matters worse, the current year’s budget has also slipped out of balance. The law says the books have to be balanced every year, and lawmakers have to somehow erase what looks like a $300 million deficit for the current year.

That won’t be easy.

Most of the money has been spent, and Republicans won’t agree to new revenues. So there will have to be desperate, last-minute slashing of something.

My guess is it may be aid to higher education. But in any event, once they get that done, they have to face the new budget.

Preliminary calculations show that next year’s budget assumptions point to a deficit of between $200 million and $600 million. That seems puny, compared to the billion-dollar plus deficits of recent years, but it may prove stubbornly hard to erase.

And your lawmakers haven’t been working very hard to get this done. Bob Emerson, Governor Granholm’s budget director for almost four years, is a normally mild-mannered man who served many years in the legislature himself.

Yesterday, he sort of blew his top - in a calm way - telling reporters, “July was wasted. Most of August has been wasted. It would be nice if people began getting more serious about this because the last time I looked, we had about seven weeks.“

Actually, six weeks. Forty-three days from now, we’ll either have a balanced budget or another state shutdown.

Common sense would indicate that a shutdown couldn’t possibly happen in an election year. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a lot of common sense in Lansing recently.

It will be interesting to see how this all turns out.