By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
CASSOPOLIS – Chris Siebenmark, district representative for Sen. Ron Jelinek, highlighted the five statewide ballot proposals facing voters on the Nov. 7 general election ballot Thursday for the Cass County Board of Commissioners.
"The argument against (Proposal 5, tying mandated education funding hikes to inflation) is that K-12 has been well-funded in recent years – well past the rate of inflation. Some folks say higher education can raise tuition. If you have one spot in the state budget guaranteed funding increases every year, that's really not fair to other portions of the budget.
"You're going to have to get the money from somewhere. Are you going to raise taxes? Is Medicaid going to take a hit? Close a prison? Will revenue sharing be gone? Nobody knows what that would look like," Siebenmark said.
A coalition of small business, firefighters, police officers and health care with 57 members thinks Proposal 5 looks like a "money grab" that will benefit teachers more than students.
The coalition says Proposal 5 offers no guarantee the money will get to the kids.
The 974-word proposal never mentions classroom achievement, students, technology, higher grades, smaller classrooms or lower tuition.
The only guarantee is that $360 million will be earmarked for teacher retirement.
Proposal 5 will cost Michigan at least $565 million in the first year with increases each subsequent year, the vote-no coalition says, on top of the $400 million increase in K-16 funding already passed for FY 2006-07.
Proposal 5 also requires a three-fourths majority vote for any change, effectively tying the hands of legislators, regardless of the impact on the state, the vote-no coalition says.
"Voters should be aware of the likely unexpected consequences of this proposal, Mackinac Center for Public Policy analyst Kenneth M. Braun also said Thursday.
"This is true not just of the proposal's mandated annual increases in state government's primary, secondary and higher education spending, but of the lesser-known and most expensive part of the proposal, which would shift financial responsibility for the growth in education employee pension costs from school districts to state government."
Braun calculates that from 1995 to 2005, state spending on primary and secondary education rose by 40 percent, leaving it about $1 billion above the 27-percent total inflationary growth for that period.
Michigan ranked in the top 10 states in per-pupil primary and secondary education funding in 2004 and in per-capita spending by state community colleges and universities in 2002.
"Given that education was generally guarded from the larger budget cuts following the recessionary decline in state revenues after 2001," Braun said, "the proponents' goal of higher education spending is already being met."
"The real issue," Braun added, "is Proposal 5's requirement that state government cover the rapid cost increases in state education employee pension payments. These pension costs in the past three years have actually consumed every additional dollar provided to school districts through the state's per-pupil foundation allowance. Proposal 5 does not address this growing problem in the education employees' unusually generous public pension; the proposal simply shifts which part of the government would be making the payments. Unfortunately, the shift could make the problem worse by providing a subsidy that would encourage school boards to increase their payroll, intensifying the retirement system's long-term liabilities."
Braun also observes that the proposal's less-heralded provision to increase payments to districts with declining enrollment would artificially bolster their budgets and soften incentives to reform, even if students were leaving because of flaws in the school system.
"This could delay important reform, a risk that is also present in the proposal's basic guarantee of increased education spending regardless of schools' academic performance," Braun said.
Although the proposal mandates overall annual education spending increases, it is likely to lead next year to cuts of as much as $141.7 million in certain state education spending programs, such as adult education and vocational education.
Colorado's experience with a similar spending initiative reinforces the likelihood of non-education spending cuts and further tax increases.
"Higher taxes would be unwise during a state recession that sets Michigan apart from the growing national economy," Braun said. "This is particularly true given that the non-partisan Tax Foundation found that Michigan's overall state and local tax burden in 2006 was 16th-highest in the nation. At the same time, Michigan's spending on public education is high compared to most other states, yet that spending has not produced the prosperity that some have claimed for it."
Proposal 1 would establish a conservation and recreation legacy fund, giving the game and fish trust fund and the non-game fish and wildlife trust fund constitutional protection.
"When something's in the constitution, it really grows roots and is very hard to modify," Siebenmark said. "A yes vote says you want the constitutional guarantee. A no vote would leave them as they are."
Proposal 3 relates to "the most resilient animal, in my opinion, in Michigan," the mourning dove, Siebenmark commented. "We're voting on whether to ban hunting of them or not. This is one of those 'yes is a no and no is a yes' deals. A yes vote says you no longer could hunt them. A no vote would mean that you want to maintain the hunting of mourning doves. Ballot proposals are written that way because you're always voting on whether to maintain a law or not."
The Committee to Keep Doves Protected says there is no good reason to shoot mourning doves because: they are not overpopulated; they do not harm humans, property or crops; they are not shot for food, as they "have little meat on their tiny bodies"; shooting doves "amounts to nothing more than live target practice"; there are already 40 game bird species in Michigan; and Michigan traditionally protected mourning doves since 1905 – and it sees no reason to change that now.
Proposal 4 addresses eminent domain. "What you're voting on is to amend the state constitution to restrict the powers of state and local government to take private property for certain private purposes," Siebenmark explained.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Thursday signed legislation designed to strengthen Michigan landowners' rights when the government wants to seize their property for economic development.
The legislation aims to complement the proposed constitutional amendment appearing on the Nov. 7 ballot.
The ballot proposal essentially reinforces a 2004 state Supreme Court decision that keeps state and local governments from taking property for private economic development purposes.
The legislation the governor signed puts the burden of proof on the government to show property has a public use, restricts its ability to designate property as blighted and requires the government to pay property owners at least 125 percent of the fair market value of land taken by eminent domain.
Proposal 2 addresses affirmative action. "If you voted yes on this, you would be saying, 'No longer should affirmative action be part of an application process. A no vote is to keep it as it is," Siebenmark explained.