City PTSA - Welcome

Citizen's Thoughts on Budget

Dear Senator or Representative,

I am compelled to write you because we are at a time in our state's history when the decisions you make and the vote you cast must be a turning point for our state. I feel legislators have listened to the wrong voices and our state is paying a heavy price. To me, it is as if we have been lead to the edge of an abyss and legislators have plunged us into its' depths by listening to these voices. Our cities, our entire infrastructure, cannot afford to remain on this trajectory.

My son is a "Proposal A" baby, born the year the proposal was passed. His academic career has been plagued with district budget cuts due to the reduction or stagnation of the per pupil funding. He lives in a state where 20J funding has enabled a gap in the per pupil funding to remain between school districts. I have always been morally opposed to the 20J funding and am ashamed that it took a governor line-item veto to remove it . Our children deserve consistent, adequate and equitable funding. My son's graduating class will be the first ones that have to meet the new high school graduation requirements. I will be honest, his future and the future of all children in Michigan appears bleak because of the structural deficit that exists in our tax system.

So I want you to know that I support a freeze on the scheduled cost-of living increase in the individual tax deduction. I support a graduated income tax, as I feel it is a more just way to tax. Four percent on a family's income of $40,000 cuts into basic needs, where four percent of $100, 000 probably cuts into disposable income. I believe it should be a balanced "take", if you will, from each individual. It should impact each person the same.

I support shaving 15 percent off of the special interest tax breaks and closing the loop holes that exist in our tax system. I support a service tax pretty much across the board, save for the medical end and groceries. I support toll roads. I could go on and on with revenue increases I support. We are past cutting out wants and we have been cutting deep into the needs of this state. Revenue increases are the only way to stop the butchery. I am also not the only one who holds these sentiments towards revenue increases. Many people feel we are at a point that is incomprehensible and could have been avoided.

I look to you to help us find long-term solutions to the structural deficit in the State of Michigan. For twelve years I have been tracking, researching and writing legislators about the structural deficit and the inadequate way schools are funded. I have done my job as a citizen. It is your turn to do your job as a legislator. Pull us out of the abyss.

Thank you for listening,

Dear Senator (insert the last name of the Senator here):

The last several years have been very trying for many people, especially for those of us in Michigan, including the Legislature. The economy has slowed and there just isn't enough money to go around. Many entities have made deep cuts and reforms. Grand Rapids Public Schools have cut around $70 million since 2001!
Several non-partisan groups have shown that Michigan needs to raise revenue. It has been shown that we can do that by eliminating tax loopholes (an additional $39 billion), instituting a graduated income tax or just upping the income tax rate overall, or implementing a tax on services. Unfortunately, many legislators are afraid to raise taxes even when there is a dire need, like now, because they fear their failure in the next election cycle. Too many in Lansing are concerned about that instead of doing what is best for Michigan NOW.
For the sake of Michigan's schools, healthcare, police and fire protection, municipalities, roads and other essential services, PLEASE raise revenue. Regardless of your party affiliation, I urge you to work with your fellow legislators, together, for Michigan's future.

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Bishop "Stands Strong" in the Wrong - A Perspective on the Senate's Position

In the Oct. 15 press article "Governor, GOP still differ on funding" Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop says he intends to "Stand strong" against plans to generate new revenue in Michigan. In this case, to 'stand strong' through recalcitrant maneuvers -- such as withholding the budget bills from the Governor until the 11th hour -- is right up there with the infamous utterance "I'm in control here at the Whitehouse." It is the Governor who bears the ministerial responsibility and the right to veto bills that cause harm. There is a well-documented, exponentially growing structural deficit in education funding. A zero budget (or less!) inevitably REDUCES services due to inflation. What Bishop is really saying is "I stand strong to continually reduce the quality of services taxpayers receive in K12 education, Medicaid and local government; and I believe in breaking a Promise to fund a scholarship that has ALREADY been contractually awarded to students in their cost of attendance budget."

If you believe Governor Granholm should "stand tall" and defend the quality of life in Michigan and the education of our most valued resource, tell her to veto bad partisan bills. Bishop's version of standing strong is to stumble backwards. Even farther backwards than 30 years ago, when our income taxes were MORE than today. Where has underfunding this state gotten us? Are we "standing strong" in quicksand?

By contrast, it takes real guts to do the right thing, which is to close the structural deficit with new revenue models that reflect the current and future purchase trends in goods and services and include reasonable adjustments to personal income tax to offset inflation. To have the foresight to plan to prosper and protect the future -- however unpopular -- that's truly "standing strong."

Sincerely,

(insert your name and address)

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OR

Thanks to the legislators who have been sincerely trying to protect our children's education, as well as other crucial amenities. The state revenues are down tremendously and do not support our cities, healthcare, or schools. We are bare bones spiraling down toward anorexia--every month has even more deficit than foreseen. People don't seem to realize that taxes have been cut over 30 times in the past 10 years, and more cuts won't help. How much farther do we have to watch our state decline before we understand that things need to change?

And why pit business against schools, or health care against prisons? There are people across the political spectrum who recognize that our state needs more revenues, but not enough clamoring to catch our legislators' attention. There are solutions: increase the income tax, implement a service tax, eliminate tax loop holes, a combination... We deserve to be the healthy state we once were known to be. We must not judge by how our immediate family is faring, but seek to understand how all sectors of our community are suffering as a whole. It should be our desire to work on the front end; help all children reach their potential, enabling them to contribute to the community. This is less damaging and much easier than trying to fix problems after the fact--problems we could have avoided.

Who wants to be involved in a failing situation? Who will want to come to Michigan, and who will want to stay? Our good teachers will go elsewhere, as well as our families who are able to choose the state in which they want to live. People judge a city by its schools, and once our schools are destroyed, it will take decades to bring them back.

(Please contact your legislators now and ask them to fix this dire situation before we are unable to climb out of bottom rankings when compared to all the other states in the Union.)

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RAISE MY TAXES SO I CAN RAISE MY CHILD!

Please close the structural deficit by any means possible, including modest personal income tax increases, a replacement for the SBT, pop taxes, VAT taxes, collection of or closing of loop holes in corporate taxes, that do not result in an erosion of services or decrease our investment in our human capital. This is truly the only reasonable business solution for a state in this condition.

For example, if the state were a business, it would by now be operating with no margin due to the "low price pressure" of partisan political myths and would be viewed as providing services/goods that are too inferior for its intended demographic -- it would have bottomed out in the market because it did not embrace innovation or invest in its human capital and instead gutted itself to please a certain percentage of shareholders who demanded benefit that imperils future prosperity. Sound familiar?
Instead of responding to market pressures with confidence and a plan, it fought the war on the myth of price and volume. The casualty is first and foremost education funding that ties directly to the sales tax. Since the State can not move itself to China or Bangalore or open a new market in terms of its residents in light of its current degradation, it is faced with either catering to its least profitable segment or devising a sound restructuring plan that indeed, combines raising the price as the market can bear with innovative ways to reduce costs and gain efficiencies.

Despite (or because of) decades of wealth, Michigan has not kept pace with other states in terms of its personal income tax rate. A phasing up of the general rate by a fraction of a percentage would help close this gap without imperiling most folks. After all, it IS scaled to income, protecting the most vulnerable. I am sick of people complaining about what amounts to a few trips to the show or an increasingly disposable purchase of clothing, electronics or other unnecessary items. Collectively, we can do without a little to contribute to the services we seek, whether we have the foresight to KNOW we need them or not. The same characters who froth at the mouth about a fraction of a percentile increase are often the same people who could single-handedly finance an urban school's
per-student shortfall with their kids' cell phone and text message bills each year. Our priorities are askew.

I am not expressly a member of either the Republican or Democrat party. I do hate waste but I also understand that when your tax base does not keep pace with inflation, you are inevitably ERODING your infrastructure and that ultimately so-doing will produce inferior results.
I do not understand WHY most Republicans cannot appreciate this fact. I thought Republicans were supposed to support family values and business. In what way could a Republican rationalize an erosion of education or health services (that affect children and elders in families) or fail to see the business sense of investment in operating a quality entity. How is it that "business interests" have come to represent inhumane slashing, politicking, and sophist arguments that belie the economic sense of the foregoing statement?

How disingenuous is it for almost the entire house - Democrats and Republicans alike - to kill the proposed Education cuts, yet only ONE PARTY will actually support a new REVENUE model to fund it. I mean, if you're going to vote it down, you darned well better FUND the alternative.

We are watching. Many of us understand PRECISELY what some of you are up to.
Without further ado, I sincerely encourage you to do the right thing.

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Dear Michigan Legislator,

I am urging you to stop following the prevailing attitudes and opinions in Michigan's House and Senate and start doing the job you were elected to do. We need you, as our elected representative, to stop acting as if you were sent on some kind of colonial crusade to save us all from the evil governmental "dragon". Please start working instead as our proxies or our honest brokers. Find a way to work within and for the system you have chosen to work for: Michigan's democratic government.

I know you are continually inundated with fact after fact about how to fix dozens of issues facing Michigan. I would not claim you have chosen an easy job. However, there are several things I would like you to do as you consider the myriad solutions to our complex problems:

1. Work to stop the rancorous rhetoric blaring from the Lansing.
2. Set aside iconic partisan positions, especially those that cull followers through media repetition but are really more like shallow brands designed to achieve hidden, distorted or misguided agendas.
3. Employ critical thinking and use your best judgment. Stop throwing all your efforts at gallant but futile efforts to save us from ourselves when in reality you are promoting the erosion of our public support systems (schools, communities, infrastructure, employment, clean environment, healthy citizenry, etc.).
4. Please project your intelligence beyond your tenure! We need you now more than ever to employ both your vision and your rationality.

Granted, these are general concepts and easier to list than achieve. However, it is critical that you meet with other legislators, set some ground rules (like 1 through 4 above), and consider all our future needs across the widest range of functions that this state's citizenry has obligated itself to provide. Then rationally devise realistic and demonstrable strategies to move Michigan in that direction. Even if we don't agree on every detail, we should be able to produce a consistent set of needs and resources around which to build consensus and to move us where we need to go.

I for one will be looking very closely at those choosing to run in the coming election year to see who can meet their obligations to the families still choosing Michigan as the best place to live decent lives in safe, healthy and rewarding circumstances. For any so-called Michigan leader to remain committed to "cutting the fat" after what Michigan has been through is a sure way to sign for me that they need to go!

Sincerely,