We are Michiganders
Kathleen Galligan/Detroit Free Press/MCT
No state has been hit harder by the economic recession than Michigan, where unemployment stands at 15.2 percent. Michigan has had to cope for years with huge losses in auto and other manufacturing jobs. Lawmakers have made an annual ritual of painful spending cuts to meet declines in state revenue.
This year the legislature there had to bridge a $2.7 billion gap with budget reductions of greater than 20 percent. Last week an editorial in The Detroit News, the Motor City’s conservative voice, noted that state support to local government took a major hit, a circumstance that “should be taken as a mandate for change.”
“Municipalities and school districts have to consolidate and share programs so they can get along with less money while still providing the services vital to citizens,” according to the editorial. ”Our current, balkanized system is simply too duplicative and costly. Do we really need 1,775 separate local government units . . . each with its own government and administrative staff?”
These should be familiar themes to Missourians, a state that faces economic conditions differing only in degree from those confronting Michigan. Missouri, too, has experienced a major loss of manufacturing jobs. It has has been treading water for a decade, creating few good-paying jobs of any description.
Once second only to Detroit in automobile production, the St. Louis area today has just 700 auto manufacturing jobs. Missouri has just 60 percent of Michigan’s population, yet is home to 114 counties, 946 municipalities, 312 townships, 536 public school districts and 1,514 special taxing districts.
In a very real sense, we, too, are Michiganders.
But even amid its economic crisis, “a sense of urgency toward . . .money-saving reforms hasn’t been evident” in Michigan, according to The Detroit News.
We understand that in Missouri, too. Consolidation and regional coordination of local governments isn’t even a science-fiction concept here.
Missouri’s political leadership also appears to have no appetite to pursue the most obvious strategies for the state’s economic revival. The Sedalia Democrat recently reported that residents of the central Missouri town of Pilot Grove, population 723, are lamenting the loss of their last grocery store.
Commerce moved to larger population centers, such as Boonville and Sedalia. Dave Drebes, editor of the Arch City Chronicle blog, pointed out the simple lesson this holds for economic development in the state: “In the larger cities, there are simply more opportunities,” he observed. Wouldn’t “big investments in the state’s most potent assets — its labor force, its cities, its investor class — make the state more competitive over the long term?”
That’s not how things work in Missouri. The state’s urban centers are the economic engines, but they hold little sway in a rural-dominated Legislature and with a governor who constantly plays for support from out-state interests. Part of the problem is local: urban and suburban lawmakers often act parochially instead of cooperating on programs with regional benefits.
This year, the Legislature grudgingly gave St. Louis’ Metro transit system a one-time appropriation of $12 million from federal stimulus fund to temporarily offset crippling service cuts. Most years urban transit programs get nothing from the state. St. Louis lawmakers had to fight desperately to avoid crippling cuts to historic tax credits, which have been key to reviving urban centers.
Missouri may not be destined to share Michigan’s profound economic decline. But for matters under their direct control, it’s hard to see what the state’s political leaders are doing to avoid such a fate.
Nobody seemed to (and still doesn’t seem to) care about all of the spending. There seems to be almost nothing proposed that we can’t do without. The real shame is that as it all comes crashing down, they still won’t understand; they’ll find scapegoats the same way they turned the blame for their own situations to the credit card company or mortgage lender.
Think Busch Stadium.
“Lawmakers have made an annual ritual of painful spending cuts to meet declines in state revenue”
Agree w/ egoist. These pigs have to stop coming to the tax trough to keep feeding their spending habits. Something’s gotta give and soon you’re gonna see what it is soon. Stop saying spending cuts are painful. Nobody at the PD is saying taxes are painful unless they are talking about the “poor” who don’t pay taxes anyway.
Sales taxes in this cow town are out of control. Try dining out in the city and you’ll pay almost 10% in sales taxes. Stupid.
Here’s a question. If cutting taxes are so bad why every year during the “tax free” weekend are the stores packed?
Also think about the Dome that is really a convention center and the $2 billion runway at Lambert. The Kirkwood School District wants to spend over $3 million to redo their football stadium. All the elected officials are out of control.
Next up in November will be the increase in sales tax of 0.1% that will bring in over $13 million a year for emergency phones. Why not ask where the excess money is going?
So the big city newspaper believes that only big cities should have the right to self-government. Wipe Pilot Grove off the map, and let Cooper County take it over. And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of Pilot Knob (697), Licking (1,471), Rosebud (382), Advance (1,244), Bourbon (1,348), Agency (599), Bland (565) and Shell Knob (1,393). After all, why should these cities have the right to exist when there are perfectly good, larger governmental entities willing to swallow them up?
And that problem of rural domination in the legislature, we can fix that too. Instead of allocating seats based upon population - you know, that old “one man, one vote” silliness - we should allocate them based upon income. After all, it’s not fair that the “economic engines” of our state don’t control the legislature. We need more legislative power for the most productive people in our state, people who live in places like Clayton, Chesterfield, and O’Fallon, and less power for people who live in unimportant places like Kahoka, Granby, Pine Lawn, and Hillsdale.
Pine Lawn and Hillsdale? Hey, just because they’re in St. Louis county doesn’t mean they are part of the “economic engines.” If economic productivity is measured by household income, Hillsboro is twice as productive as Hillsdale. Yet you would tilt power in favor of Hillsdale residents, because they happen to support Post-Dispatch values.
Dave Drebes says that there are “simply more opportunities” in large cities. Certainly, at this moment in history, where productivity in agriculture has emptied the small towns of the midwest, people have crowded into the cities in search of opportunity. But we are in the final minutes of the twenty-third hour of this historical trend. For more and more people, technology has created a work world where there is no need to commute to an office, so long as you’re in reach of high speed internet. I would expect that in such a world, many people will return to our small towns, where the cost of living is much lower, and horrific crime isn’t a daily event. If this is the future, it would be unwise to focus all our resources on urban areas, as Mr. Drebes suggests.
There is much we can do in Missouri. All it will take is leadership.
http://dangerousintersection.org/2009/02/02/states-don%e2%80%99t-have-to-wait-for-stimulus-payments/
Oh!—I thought we were Michiganas.
If, by that, you mean meshugana — then that too!
Observation to PD: Funny how your sole measure of eonomic success is always the amount of money the gov’met collects in taxes.
Where’s St. Louis’ conservative voice? Can we get the Detroit News to relocate here? We’ll give them the PD.