Some random thoughts as everyone awaits spring …
1. What Were They Thinking?
By now you’ve heard that the state’s panel of political neophytes charged with reconstructing voting district lines in Michigan have voted themselves, what they think, is a well deserved 7% raise. So what were they thinking? Their critics contend they were not.
Polished pols with their fingers on the pulse of the electorate know that voting yourself a raise is right up there with hoping the Lions will win the Super Bowl. First of all, this group is just about done with its task, second of all they agreed to a $44,000 salary at the get-go and along the way they managed to overspend their budget by a not-so-respectable $1.2 million.
And for that, they want to reward themselves with a “job well done inflationary raise?”
Really.
2. The “R” Word Enters State Budget Talks
At first blush, the carnage you are viewing overseas is not touching your lives per se, but it could.
Normally when they write the state budget the only “R” word that enters the conversation is recession. Now there’s another more looming “R” word: Russia.
“We’ve started to think about that. It’s pressing but we don’t have a good answer for you yet. It’s a little early for us to understand the ramifications,” explains the governor’s new head bean-counter/budget director Chris Harkins.
It’s already showing up at the gas pump and where it goes from there and its impact on state revenue is anybody’s guess but surely it is not a positive “X” factor on the state budget front.
Could the war trickle down and force the governor and lawmakers to slash state services?
“I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. I’m really not sure yet what that might be (but) we certainly understand that there could be ramifications” he warns with fingers crossed.
3. Cat and Mouse Over Income Tax Rollback
When governors don’t want to answer a pointed question, first of all, they don’t have to and secondly, they will go to extremes to make sure they don’t.
Legislative Republicans have tossed a monkey wrench into Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s blueprint for spending $74 billion of your tax dollars. They want to roll back the state income tax rate to 3.9%. Up until the following exchange, the only thing the governor offered was, “this is not sustainable” which is code for if we give $1.8 billion back to taxpayers, we will have to cut education and public safety to do it.
Yet, the savvy governor knows that way back in the Jennifer Granholm administration, they raised the income tax rate with the promise that when times were good, it would automatically roll back.
Well, guess what?
It never happened and now come the R’s reminding the governor, who is up for re-election, that she can help fulfill the promise at long last. What’s a poor governor to do?
So she was asked if she supported the tax rollback which is a question she did not want to answer so she launched instead into a regurgitation of the tax cuts she does support.
Undaunted the questioner tried again. Do you favor the income tax rollback?
This time she ignored a direct answer saying her first priority on tax cuts was to award tax relief to senior retirees.
And yet a third time. Do you support the tax rollback?
Now she leans into the microphone and looks directly at the pesky scribe standing in front of her and brings the exchange to an unceremonious conclusion.
“You and I have had a very similar conversation over the years. I’m not going to negotiate with you. I’m going to negate with the Legislature when they are ready to do that.”
Score it governor one and you know who zippo.
Tim Skubick is a syndicated political newspaper columnist who also anchors and produces the weekly PBS show “Off the Record.”
