Gary the Hillsdale College Intern blames the governor for everything

by: Eric B.

Sun Oct 25, 2009 at 13:00:00 PM EDT

Part of the Center for Michigan's study on public pay and benefits includes mention of the Public Policy Associates study that found that the Dillon health care plan, which the News endorsed without thinking through whether it could be done in a sane and rational way, or whether its passage in September (relying as it would have, on the Legislature balancing the budget on time) would have saved the state one thin dime this fiscal year.  The Center, which also endorsed the Dillon Plan as a forward-thinking idea, gets credit for giving prominence to a study that disputes the plan. Perhaps the Center for Michigan is coming under the same intense pressure that forced Mike Bishop to tell the Detroit Free Press last week that the Dillon Plan might be cost-prohibitive to set up. Meanwhile, Gary the intern from Hillsdale College, dissents.

The crisis facing schools was no surprise either. Tom Watkins, who used to be the state superintendent of schools, spelled out the financial disaster facing school districts. He issued a report that showed that the spiraling obligations for health-care costs and retirement benefits for teachers was going to exhaust future education revenue.

...snip...

The messenger was dismissed, but the message was still true. Though Granholm did her best to pretend it wasn't there. During a meeting with our editorial board two years ago, she casually dismissed the increasing benefit costs. Health-care costs, she said, weren't her job; that was up to local school boards. She disingenuously said it would be too expensive to change retirement plans.

Gary the intern complains that the governor said this two years ago; Bishop just last week apparently told the Freep the same thing. And, it's predicated on the idea that concerns of the up-front costs of implementation are disingenuous. The answer to that is why I suspect the Livingston Press & Argus has farmed its Sunday editorials out to an intern. I mean, what else can you expect from an editorial entitled, "Gov. passes up the chance to shape state," even as we dance on to the next paragraph, a gem of self-contradiction:

Now the picture is much worse, and it isn't because of the so-called failures of Proposal A, the 1994 plan that cut local property taxes as the main source of school funding. Proposal A isn't perfect, but it isn't the problem. The problem is that from whatever source — property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, and, yes, taxes on bars so they can sell liquor until 4 a.m. — the state just doesn't have enough money to fund public education at today's level.

The problem isn't about the source of K-12 revenue. It's that the state doesn't have enough revenue to fund K-12 education. To believe the underlying problem, that there just isn't enough money anywhere in the state to fund K-12 education as it currently exists, you would have to believe that there are absolutely no revenue stones unturned. On the other hand, according to Lessenberry and seconded from Charles Ballard, we could have erased the state's current deficit by hiking income taxes by 1 percent, which would have been greatly softened by the fact that you can could state income taxes as a federal taxes. But, we get the point ... better to just yell and shout about how lost school funding is really the governor's fault because two years ago she said the same thing that Mike Bishop said last week.

She said other things two years ago, which leads us to three paragraphs towards the top of the editorial:

She said there needed to be a short-range plan to deal with the current slashing of school budgets, and there needs to be a long-range plan to meet public education needs in the new economic world that meets Michigan.

She said this Oct. 21, 2009. We would say that she was a day late and a dollar short, but that would be inaccurate. She's actually about 2,500 days late and a billion dollars or so short.

Her comments Wednesday should have been made the day she took office. She should have used her election victory to shape something valuable for the state. She failed to grasp that opportunity.

What Gary said ... in fact, that should have been one of her answers when she was on the Dating Game, or maybe even when she sat on Santa's lap as a young girl.

Hindsight is often 20/20. In this case, it has a profound case of astigmatism or is just cross-eyed from inbreeding. Just two years ago, the governor proposed local reforms (the carrots and sticks approach to sharing both municipal and educational ones -- education at the RESD level), and also to broaden the tax base to include services.  Her great failing as a politician was that when the Lansing press corps and the state Legislature got done laughing at all of this, she failed to stick up for any of it. Today, it's the same stuff that everyone is insisting needs take place. If she'd stuck to her guns two years ago, we might be moving towards substantive reforms. Of course, that would have required assistance from outside her sphere of advisers (for instance, the Detroit News could have endorsed two years ago that she was making a substantive contribution towards government reform, but that newspaper instead chose to regularly editorialize that she should excuse herself from the process of governing).

As for teacher health benefits, while Tom Watkins' study was accurate in identifying the problem, the cure is far from certain. While others may yell and shout about teacher benefits, we get back to the Center for Michigan's inclusion of the PPA health benefits study, one of the conclusions of which is that local districts have already moved considerably in the direction of bringing health care costs under control. That study and its conclusions, however, is not something of interest to Gary the intern from Hillsdale College.