Michigan Leadership: Just Like Texas in 1994?
Michigan Politics
By George Weeks

Texas, the eyes of Michigan Republicans are upon you.

"Michigan is going to be like Texas in 1994," says newly-elected Republican State Chairman Saul Anuzis, referring to the defeat of "popular, very articulate" Democratic Gov. Ann Richards after the "can-do campaign" of Republican George W. Bush.

Michigan now has a personally popular, highly articulate female governor in Jennifer Granholm, who, like Richards, speaks with theatric flair. Richards is best remembered as the 1988 Democratic National Convention keynoter who said of George H.W. Bush: "Poor George. He just can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

But Anuzis can carry the Texas analogy only so far.

For starters, Granholm is too smart to make the mistake in 2006 that Richards did in turning off 1994 voters by belittling her challenger. Richards called Bush "shrub" and "some jerk who's running for public office."

And, although some well-credentialed prospects are considering seeking the GOP nomination, none has a father who is a former president.

In advance of Friday's start of the Republican State Convention in Grand Rapids, two legislators announced they are seeking the nomination to oppose Granholm–Sen. Nancy Cassis of Novi and Rep. Jack Hoogendyk of Texas Township near Kalamazoo. (He can have some fun with the Anuzis analogy.)

Said Cassis: The state needs a governor who will make the tough choices and who will cut spending and cut taxes so we can create new jobs and emerge from the ongoing recession that seems only to be affecting Michigan and two other states."

Said Hoogendyk: "Amer-ica's economic engine is humming right now, but Michigan has been left behind. It's time for someone to acknowledge what the problems are facing employers in this state and to work to keep Michigan jobs in Michigan."

DeRoche Drumbeat

Meanwhile, new House Speaker Craig DeRoche, R-Novi, has been quick to join, and in some respects lead, GOP criticism of Granholm on management of available funds. It appears that he will be more hard line in his dealings with Granholm than was just-retired Speaker Rick Johnson, R-LeRoy.

DeRoche and U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton, recently said Granholm is failing to take full advantage of federal education money available to the state. They said Michigan ranked 49th among states on this score; lost $5 million in funds that were reverted to the federal treasury by late 2004 because they were not used; and has $100 million at risk this year.

In response, the Michigan Department of Education said the money in question was allocated by the state to local schools but lapsed because they were unable to spend it.

DeRoche also said Granholm "has waited far too long" to release funds from the Great Lakes Water Quality Bonds to local municipalities. By an overwhelming margin in 2002, the bonds were approved by voters to finance sewage treatment, storm water and water pollution projects.

DeRoche said voters "did not expect the funds to be locked away in a bank somewhere. They expected the money to be used to help our environment."

Furthermore, said DeRoche, "a great by product of this effort is the jobs created by releasing these funds. Someone has to pour the concrete, design the facility and build it."

He said, "our state is facing a major economic problem and this is just one way we can stimulate the economy."

Granholm Press Secretary Liz Boyd said DeRoche's criticism "is inaccurate and suggests a lack of understanding."

Director Steven Chester of the Department of Environmental Quality said that since the 2002 vote to add $100 million-a-year to the water quality revolving fund first created in 1989, DEQ has approved 31 loans totaling $368 million to municipalities. That includes more than $90 million in Detroit and more than $60 million in Dearborn.

Not exactly locked away in a bank.

Follow the Money

State and local governments are subsidizing "runaway sprawl in Michigan" with multi-billion-dollar-a-year public investment practices that erase greenfields and erode vitality of cities, including those in northern Michigan.

That's the conclusion of a revealing "Follow the Money" study of government spending since 1987 that outlines how public bonding and state grants for transportation and economic development skew toward the countryside at the expense of cities.

The report is the result of year-long research by the Beulah-based Michigan Land Use Institute (MLUI) and funded by United Cerebral Palsy of Michigan, which understandably frets about how deterioration of public transportation impacts the disability community in core cities.

As an example, the report said that of the $382 million spent from the state's Transportation Economic Development Fund since 1988, only 22 percent went to core communities while 78 percent went to new suburbs and rural areas.

As an example, it cited Oakland County's Auburn Hills, a community that didn't exist until 1983, getting more than $25 million, or $1,250 for each of its 66,000 residents, "for streetscape improvements, new roads, a bicycle path, and other amenities." It said that was $2 million more than Detroit, "which received a miserly $25 for each of its 920,000 residents."

MLUI said that in Grand Traverse County, once-rural Garfield Township "received more than $20 million in state and federal support to execute a business development strategy that encouraged sprawl. This has triggered an expensive traffic congestion problem and forced the township to double its sewer rates to keep up with growth."

The institute also cited Marquette County as an example of where state transportation funding outside a city (Marquette) far surpassed that of in the city.

It should be noted, however, that Traverse City and Marquette also are examples of shoreline cities that have limited room for unavoidable growth.

The report urged Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Legislature to take 10 steps "to thrust the sword of reform deeply and make the significant changes to spending that will end sprawl, build viable public transportation systems, rebuild cities, and turn Michigan into a greener, cleaner, dynamic state of opportunity."

The steps to a large extent reflect recommendations of Granholm's own bipartisan Michigan Land Use Leadership Council, created in one of her first acts as governor and co-chaired by ex-Gov. Bill Milliken, a Republican, and former Attorney General Frank Kelley, a Democrat.

A driving force on the council was Keith Charters of Traverse City, chairman of the Natural Resources Commis-sion, who was primarily responsible for forging unity of purpose on a council that had a broad spectrum of members on the left and right of the sprawl issue.

Reacting to the MLUI report, Granholm Press Secretary Liz Boyd said Granholm "has been at the forefront" for balanced growth. Twenty-four of her council's recommendations have been implemented by legislation or executive orders.

Boyd, pointedly, also said Granholm does "not apologize" for such things as the $54 million in business tax credits and other incentives for Daimler Chrysler and two Japanese partners to build two engine plants, worth $700 million and providing 600 jobs, on a 245-acre field in rural Monroe County.

The "Follow the Money" report acknowledged that the state had tried to promote some urban sites for the two engine plants, but said that at $90,000 per job, "state spending is better directed at small businesses and suppliers ready to locate in cities."

That's an assertion that Granholm can't embrace. Reeling from all the stories about Michigan leading in the nation in job losses, and facing reelection next year, she'll take 600 new jobs wherever the state can get them–sprawl or no sprawl.

Based on U.S. Census figures, MLUI said, "people are moving in droves to the state's forested northern Lower Peninsula, now the Midwest's fastest-growing region," with the Minneapolis area ranking second.

The institute also said:

"The Detroit region is growing more slowly than almost any other major American metropolitan area. It is shedding manufacturing jobs by the thousands and losing droves of young adults tired of bad traffic, dead end jobs, and centerless suburbs. Many of the more than 200,000 young people who left Michigan in the 1990s came from metropolitan Detroit, literally making it the national brain drain champion."

By the way, such rhetorical flourishes come from the lead author of the report, former New York Times writer Keith Schneider, deputy director of the land use institute that he founded in 1995.

He said: "Sprawl cannot exist without massive public spending for roads, water, sewers, public buildings, and business development. These intense, taxpayer-financed intrusions into the market have distorted the landscape, ruined central cities, harmed the environment, and reduced the quality of life."

Sprawl concerns are not limited to Democratic urban areas. As the report notes: "They also spark lively conversations in Republican strongholds along the coast of Lake Michigan and in the newer suburbs outside Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Traverse City."

Granholm: Not Interested

The way Newsweek reports it in its January 31 issue, Granholm declined a request of several other governors who wanted her to agree to become "general chairman" of the Democratic National Committee upon February departure of DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe.

The way it really went down, spokesperson Boyd insisted, is that Granholm was among a slew of governors who were sounded out. "She was not singled out, nor interested," said Boyd.

That's the last headache she'd want at this time.

Education Spat

Granholm is not the first governor to have a spat with the state school chief or want Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Watkins to disappear. But the Granholm-Watkins tiff was as about as ugly as it got.

In a letter to Granholm, Watkins, once in the cabinet of Democratic Gov. Jim Blanchard, accused her of making a "politically expedient" deal with legislators on an education funding issue.

He also urged her to tell her staff "to cease bullying members of the state-wide elected State Board of Education to sell out their convictions and their support of me."

Under the Constitution of 1963, the superintendent is picked by the eight elected-and often obscure-members of the board whose fate at the bottom of the ticket is determined not so much by merit but by what happens at the top of the ticket. That at least is better than the earlier system of electing the superintendent.

A strong governor in some cases can beat the system. In the mid-1990s, Gov. John Engler wanted inept Superintendent Robert Schiller out. A friendly state board saw to it that he ended up in another state.

He was unable to get rid of Watkins, who was hired in 2001. But he managed to have some of the Department of Education functions transferred to places more responsive to Engler.

My beef with the current system is not to say that it has failed to produce some good superintendents, such as 1980s Superintendent Phil Runkel, a parttime Mackinac Island resident who had a stint as President of Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City.

I agree with Granholm, former Republican Govs. Engler and Bill Milliken, and current Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, R-Wyoming, that the superintendent should be a gubernatorial appointee as the U.S. secretary of education is a presidential appointee.

A governor should run, and be accountable for, the executive branch, other than for those departments run by the constitutional elected officers-secretary of state and attorney general.

It struck me strange that Granholm, who promised an administration that would "think out of the box," was so at odds with Watkins, who certainly does that. But spokeswoman Boyd said the reason Granholm wants Watkins to leave "for the good of education" is that "he can't do the job."

And, in the end, Watkins did indeed leave, taking a job at Wayne State University.

Judicial Spat

Leelanau County's Betty Weaver is the odd justice out on the Michigan Supreme Court. She's leaving as she entered it a decade ago-her own way.

The only justice from north of the Lansing area, the former Leelanau County probate judge is unique among most of the seven current justices in having trial court experience, and in first getting on the Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court by election, not appointment.

As widely reported after her surprise announcement that she's stepping down in October even though her term lasts until 2011, Weaver has been out of step with her four more conservative Republican colleagues. They ousted her as chief justice in 2001. Hers was the sole vote cast against Jan. 6 election of Republican Cliff Taylor as chief justice.

Her resignation gives opportunity for the first high court appointment by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who praised Weaver's "philosophical balance" and called her resignation "a loss for the court." But will Granholm appoint someone with similar balance?

Republican National Committeeman Chuck Yob is an advocate of Weaver's elevation to the federal bench. He called her "a solid Republican" who "hasn't been treated very good" by some other state Republicans, including ex-Gov. John Engler, who blocked submitting her name to President Bush for the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

All this political intrigue should not obscure two points:

• Weaver leaves as, and remains, a leader on juvenile justice issues, and chair of the Governor's Task Force on Child Abuse and Neglect. Granholm pointedly said Weaver keeps that role.

• Weaver insists her decision was not to stab Republicans but to signal need for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits for Supreme Court justices, and curb "unchecked power" of governors to fill high court vacancies. Quitting after 10 years, she says, is putting "my money where my mouth is."

She said: "With no offense intended to any governor past or present, or to any justice past or present, hopefully the Legislature will begin working now to present to the public for its consideration and adoption a constitutional amendment to lengthen the present term limits of the senators and representatives of the Legislature, which are too short; to shorten the present term limits for the Supreme Court justices, and how vacancies on the Supreme Court are filled."

Taylor declined my quest for comment her ideas for changing the system. But he nailed it in reacting to Weaver's resignation: "In making this decision, as in everything else, she clearly knows her own mind."

Among those who agree with Weaver that the present system of selecting justices needs change is Traverse City's Bob Griffin, a former justice and U.S. senator who believes her ideas "are worthy of consideration."

Another Traverse City justice, the late Jim Brickley, also was an advocate of changing Michigan's bizarre system where the parties select nominees for the "bipartisan" ballot.

As for term limits, they are six years for representatives; eight for senators. Justices can run for repeated eight-year terms until they reach age 70. To fill high court vacancies, notes Weaver, a governor "is not required to seek advice from anyone, nor consent from the Senate."

I'm not a fan of term limits, and was glad to hear one such fan, former Republican State Chairwoman Betsy DeVos, say there might be merit to extending the state House terms from six to eight. But DeVos is right: the public climate is not yet ripe for change.

George Weeks is the political columnist for The Detroit News and is syndicated by Superior Features.