DETROIT – What kind of state is Michigan on the road to becoming? Does it have any hope of returning to the prosperity it once enjoyed when the auto industry was flourishing?
Will it find a formula to attract new jobs and industry? Will it take the steps needed to make it a place where people want to live?
Or is it doomed to decline, becoming something like West Virginia, a polluted poor state whose industry is largely obsolete?
That may depend on whether the politicians are willing to tackle and solve the greatest barriers to progress, including the state’s horrible roads, and the highest car insurance rates in the nation.
Four months into a new administration, the signs are not encouraging – mostly for the usual dreary old reason:
Partisan gridlock.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, was elected last November on a platform that indicated “fixing the damn roads,” was her top priority — and voters clearly agreed
But she can’t do that unless the Republicans, who still control both houses of the legislature, work with her.
Initially, GOP leaders did make some promising noises, after Whitmer’s surprisingly decisive victory. But that didn’t last.
Now, Republican leaders don’t seem willing to even consider coming up with new money for the roads. Instead, they passed car insurance “reform” that the governor says she may veto because it neither adequately protects people nor guarantees them lower rates.
Nor has anything much happened on other areas urgently needing reform, including education and a solution as to what to do about the oil-carrying pipelines under the Straits of Mackinac:
Here’s where the two highest-profile issues stand:
- Fixing the Damn Roads: Within a few weeks of taking office, Whitmer, a former legislative leader, announced a plan to raise gasoline taxes by 45 cents a gallon in three stages over a year. Transportation experts agreed that would come close to raising the more than $2 billion a year needed to return the state’s roads to acceptable condition.
For years, Michigan, the place that once put the world on wheels, spent less per person to maintain its roads than any other state, and it shows. Nobody seriously thinks the roads can be fixed without a lot of new money.
But Republicans have pronounced her solution dead on arrival. They claim they will have a road plan this summer, but so far, haven’t said what it is or how they will pay for it.
- Car Insurance. As every driver in Detroit knows, Michigan has the highest auto insurance rates in the nation, and Detroit’s are far higher still. Two years ago, a survey found the average driver in Cleveland paid $1,277 a year for car insurance. In Detroit, one of the poorest cities in the nation, the average premium was $5,414. That meant many people drove without insurance, even though that’s illegal, and thousands more have fled to the suburbs, from a city desperate for population.
Some blame the situation on the cost of Michigan’s unique and mandatory Catastrophic Claims Fund, which covers lifetime care for those permanently injured in auto accidents. Other experts say the real problem is that Michigan sets no limits on what doctors and hospitals can charge insurance companies for medical procedures.
Not surprisingly, the average claim is far higher than in other states. Attempts to get previous legislatures to address this always failed. But earlier this month, the state house and senate passed slightly different versions of a plan aimed at reducing rates, largely by allowing voters to opt out of the Catastrophic Claims coverage.
Democrats, with the exception of a few from Detroit, mostly opposed the plans, on the ground that they didn’t require insurance companies to lower their rates; they just assumed they would.
Others, including the governor, say the plans didn’t adequately protect consumers. However, something else was also going on.
There were hints the governor might be signaling she would be open to a deal on insurance if Republicans would get serious about coming up with the money needed to really fix the roads.
But so far, they say “they won’t be held hostage” that way.
What isn’t clear is who will be blamed if little is done to fix the roads. Republicans seem to be betting it will be the governor.
To be sure, polls show her gas tax proposal is very unpopular. But she has an advantage: Every member of the Republican-controlled house has to run for election next year. Ten senators may also face special elections, thanks to federal judges who ruled that their seats had been illegally gerrymandered.
Gretchen Whitmer doesn’t have to run again until 2022.
Years ago, another Democrat, Harry Truman, once ran for president blaming a “do-nothing Republican Congress” for not passing his proposals. He won the election, and Democrats retook both houses of Congress. Might that strategy work again?
Could Michigan voters punish Republicans next year if they perceive they’ve obstructed attempts to fix the roads?
We won’t know for some time. Nor will we know if both parties will be able to agree on a budget before the September 30 deadline– or whether we’ll return to the days of government shutdowns.
What we do know is that as long as the politicians fail to cooperate and agree on solutions, the real victims will continue to be the citizens of Michigan, who endure roads that are ruining their cars and car insurance they can’t afford to pay.
And I haven’t even mentioned a failing system of education, and education funding, that also badly needs reform.
