Rick Snyder supposedly has offered a plan to balance the state budget.
How much the budget was projected to be in deficit seems to be in dispute. Sometimes, news stories say the deficit is $1.8 billion. Other times, $1.4 billion or $1.6 billion.
Anyway, Snyder has a plan to get rid of the deficit -- by moving it to your local school district, university, city, or township. School districts will face state aid cuts of $470 per student, costing school districts millions of dollars even though the state school aid fund has a surplus. Universities are taking a 15 percent cut. Revenue sharing for cities and townships would be cut.
So by balancing one budget, Snyder has unbalanced hundreds more, leaving local officials with the chore of re-figuring their budgets while he can claim to have eliminated the state deficit, however much it is.
This is what passes for leadership in Michigan -- shifting the problem to someone else to solve.
4 comments:
The champion at pushing the problems to someone else is your own Jennifer Granholm. She failed to deal with Michigan's structural deficit, and then had the gall to say she left Snyder with a surplus.
His plan may not be perfect, but he least he is trying to deal with a problem that his predecessor ignored.
Nicely done Judy. That's one of those points many of us subconsciously know, but didn't realize until someone articulated.
Gov. Snyder has balanced the state budget, and simulataneously unbalanced hundreds of others. I hope he is cognizant of that and at least tries to help fix the problems he's creating at the local level.
We'll have to see, but the odds are against it.
Governor Granholm left Snyder a budget surplus in his first year, unlike John Engler, who left her a $1 billion budget deficit to fill.
Judy,
Can you possibly believe that surplus lie? You are either very ignorant or a willing liar.
The state budget was hugely out of balance but got a bailout out from the federal government, which is kind of funny when you think about it since the fed budget is $1.4 trillion in debt.
The structural state budget was not addressed. She did not leave the state with a surplus. It's incredibly dishonest to make that claim, and it trivializes everything you say.
You would have done well in George Orwell's world. People like you scare me.
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