LANSING, MI – There’s an old story, probably apocryphal, about a fiery young congressman who makes his maiden speech on the floor of the House. He loudly blusters, denounces those oppose his programs and refers to the other party as the “enemy.”
Afterwards, an elder statesman, possibly the Speaker of the House, takes him aside. “Son, the other party is not the enemy. They are the opposition,” the sage old congressman said.
That story may not be true, but there have been times in Michigan, as in the nation, when both parties did sometimes work together to craft policies for the common good. That happened frequently when George Romney was governor and Democrats controlled the state legislature in the 1960s, for example.
But those days are long gone, as freshman Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been finding out this month. Whitmer’s main campaign pledge was to “fix the damn roads,” and that promise helped lead her to an easy victory last November.
Almost immediately, she proposed a 45-cent per gallon increase in the gas tax, which would have generated close to the $2.5 billion needed to improve the state’s crumbling roads and highway bridges.
But Republicans still control the legislature, 58-52 in the House and 22-16 in the state senate. They flatly said no to a gas tax hike.
GOP leaders promised instead to come up with their own plan, but repeatedly failed to do so. Eventually, they suggested issuing bonds against the state teachers’ pension fund.
That was denounced as a bad and risky idea by virtually everyone, including GOP-leaning economist Patrick Anderson.
Governor Whitmer, who herself served in the legislature for 14 years, insisted she would veto any budget that didn’t include adequate funding for the roads. Michigan is on a fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, and under state law, the 2020 budget has to be passed by Sept. 30.
Otherwise, state government is forced to largely shut down, with payless paydays for its employees. That happened twice when there was a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature a decade ago, and neither party looked good as a result.
Finally, Whitmer gave in. On September 9, she met with Republican leaders and announced that she was backing down, and would sign a budget without new money for the roads.
“We have all agreed to continue conversations about road funding in a meaningful way (but) … right now, our number one priority is getting a budget passed,” the governor and the Republican leaders of the legislature said in a joint statement.
When I heard that, I thought of what Secretary of State Dean Rusk said when the Soviets backed down during the Cuban Missile Crisis: “We were eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.” The governor blinked this time.
Two days later, she may have regretted it.
The fragile agreement she had to get a budget passed fell apart. Republicans suddenly insisted on changing spending priorities to add another $500 million in a one-time fix for the roads.
They would do this by rerouting money from the already cash-strapped General Fund for roads. This would likely mean less money for schools, the governor’s other main priority.
Not only the governor, but non-partisan experts like Lance Binoniemi of the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association (MITA), a group that represents contractors, took a dim view of throwing a sudden $500 million into roads.
He said MITA was all for more road funding — but a sudden, unexpected one-time shot of cash was disruptive. What was needed, he said, was funding that was “sustainable and long-term.”
Within three days after what everyone thought was a budget agreement, the governor was hinting at vetoing bad budgets again, though it wasn’t clear if she meant using her line-item veto to nix specific items, like the spending for roads, or the whole bill.
Republicans then threatened to just pass a budget on their own without any negotiation with the governor or the minority Democrats, and send them to the governor. The GOP senate leader told reporters that if she vetoed it “we’ll send it to her again.”
What may be most unfortunate is that none of this is likely to strengthen citizens’ faith in government. What’s clear is this — a succession of governors and legislatures have let Michigan roads get into their present disgraceful state — disgraceful, especially, because Michigan was the state that put the world on wheels.
Since term limits mean lawmakers can serve only a few years and can never return, they had little political incentive to plan for the long term, and the citizens are now paying for that.
Michigan now desperately has to attract more jobs and industry, but that’s not easy to do with third world roads.
You’d think vital infrastructure needs would come before partisan bickering. They certainly should.
But in this case, sadly, you’d be wrong.
