Question 1): Week before last, on the Grand Hotel porch of Mackinac Island, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced she was appointing a “Growing Michigan Together Council.” Why?
Because Michigan is one of the slowest-growing states in the country. In fact, we aren’t growing at all. Michigan lost more population in the first decade of the 21st century than any other state in the country except Rhode Island. In the second decade, we lost more than all states save West Virginia. In the last three years, we haven’t done any better. Detroit was still the nation’s 8th biggest city as recently as 1998; now it’s 29th.
The council is charged with trying to figure out ways to stop the population hemorrhaging. The panel will be co-chaired by businessman John Rakolta, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, and Wayne State University Board of Governors Vice Chair Shirley STANCATO.
Stancato, a former CEO of the Detroit leadership coalition New Detroit Inc. and former Senior VP at Chase Bank, will be the Democratic council chairperson.
“We have a collective responsibility as a state to reverse the tide of Michiganders leaving our state and attract people from outside our borders,” she said during the press conference, adding that the list includes her son, who migrated to Arizona. Stancato said that, regardless of political affiliation, it’s important to “come together” and improve the working and living conditions for Michiganders.
She was joined by Rakolta, a former CEO of Detroit construction company Walbridge. He is also a former diplomat who served as the U.S. Ambassador to the UAE from 2019 to 2021. He’ll be the Republican chairperson.
Rakolta said he’s worked with Stancato for over 25 years to address crime in Michigan, including work with the Detroit Race Relations Council and a stint on the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren.
“We have vastly underperformed the nation in terms of K-12 education,” Rakolta said. “We have an infrastructure that, quite frankly, is collapsing, and most important to me is we lack the cohesion, the cultural cohesion, that it takes to compete on a global basis today.” He said the council will attempt to address Michigan’s overall approach to attraction and retention.
In addition to the two co-chairs, Whitmer’s executive order mandates that the council, which will be created as an advisory body within the state Department Of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO), should include 28 members, with 21 voting and seven non-voting members.
Non-voting members will include the state Budget Office director, state treasurer, director of the Department of Transportation (MDOT), CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), executive director of the Office of Global Michigan and two gubernatorial appointees, one with a background in economics and one with a demography background.
All 21 voting members will be governor-appointed, including the two chairs, director of LEO, 14 members representing the interests of the private sector, labor, workforce development and talent, infrastructure, philanthropy and education, and four total members from the legislature.
Interestingly, it will contain at least one member under 25 years old, but we might think there should be more, since Michigan is losing its younger population to other states at an alarming rate.
Indeed, the two Republican legislative leaders — House Minority Leader Matt HALL and Senate Minority Leader Arik Nesbitt — reacted negatively to the creation of such a council. MIRS newsletter noted that Hall spoke on the “Big Show” radio program about the council likely being political cover for a tax increase (See “Hall Looks At Gov’s New Council And Sees Tax Hikes,” 5/31/23).
Nesbitt also spoke out against the council, calling it an end-run around the legislature and a failed effort at bipartisanship.
“Just as we saw with her disastrous unilateral policies during the COVID crisis, Gov. Whitmer is again seeking to go-it-alone and usurp the Legislature, now controlled by members of her own party for the first time in 40 years,” Nesbitt said. “Anyone can see her self-spun ‘bipartisan’ council, appointed solely by her, is actually a far cry from bipartisanship.”
Could Hall and Nesbitt be right? Is the real goal of the new ‘Growing Michigan Together Council’ (which is supposedly to find ways to increase the state’s population) really all about justifying tax hikes?
Answer 1): Whitmer’s proposal is both a noble, long overdue effort to address a phenomenon that has been neglected for decades AS WELL AS an effort to provide political cover for what will surely turn out to be a call for additional state spending to “correct” Michigan’s alarming population decline. The two go together. It’s hard to imagine Michigan government can reverse years of population stagnation by spending LESS than it’s been spending for the past half-century. But whatever the new council advocates, everybody should realize it will take a long time to produce measurable results. Problem is, the pain of new tax levies will be felt by the general public far sooner than the final result the hikes will try to shape, and that will result in ‘blowback’ against the council and anybody who backs what it recommends.
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Question 2): By publicly suggesting the hidden agenda of the new ‘Growing Michigan Together Council is to increase taxes, did Hall and Nesbitt make that outcome less likely to happen?
Answer 2): Not necessarily, but it’s probably a smart move for the two Republican legislative leaders — State Rep. Matt Hall and State Senator Aric Nesbitt — to frame the “council issue” the way that they have. It puts the news media and general public on notice that everyone should hold onto their wallets, because we’re going to be asked to shell out more tax money to fund whatever magic elixer the council comes up with to plug the population drain. Still, if majority legislative Democrats are in lock step with the Whitmer agenda to the extent they have been so far this year, they can do the council’s bidding notwithstanding Republican opposition. The question then will be whether they pay a big price for doing so next year and beyond.
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Question 3): Is it likely that Michigan voters would view the goal of increasing the state’s population as being so desirable that the effort is worth spending taxpayer dollars and raising taxes?
Answer 3): Yes, Michigan voters might very well come to this conclusion, because Michigan’s population stagnation is a REAL THING that has been going on for decades. However, the bottom line is whether the taxpaying public really cares whether 10 million people is too few and that we should have more, or whether we don’t really care. Maybe 10 million is about the right size, and, besides, who are these new people that might be forthcoming going to be? More babies from an exploding birth rate? Suddenly immortal senior citizens who stop dying? Immigrants? Uh-oh! Who might those be?
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Question 4): Republicans are expected to legally challenge the interpretation that Michigan’s income tax rollback from 4.25% to 4.05% was limited to just one year. Should observers consider that to be an opening salvo of the GOP’s 2024 campaign?
Answer 4): It may not be the ONLY ‘opening salvo,’ but it will be one of them. The Republican mantra of lower taxes will persist, and the tax percentage debate gives the party still one more argument it can be counted on to weaponize as much as possible.
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Both sides are disseminating BS. We do need more capable and creative people, and the only way to get there is fixing the schools and the infrastructure. Appointing a council of recycled bureaucrats is useless . Cutting taxes gets us all the way to West Virginia status. And yes, we need immigrants to get there. That’s how we got prosperous in the first place.
Either Jack Lessenberry is getting up much earlier than I am, or just not going to sleep as he awaits the next drop of the Ballenger report. Recent moves by the legislature on abortion and LGBTQ rights, as well as moves around gun safety will help to make Michigan more attractive to a younger population. However, as Jack said, if our education outcomes and infrastructure continue to rival the bottom third of states, those moves will mean nothing. Immigrants value education and will pass by Michigan for Massachusetts, Tennessee and other states. Better transportation networks in our urban areas requiring regional collaboration – “the power of &” – combined with a variety of affordable housing opportunities must be a priority. Last point – we may eventually be seen as a haven for climate refugees, but let that not be seen as our answer to future growth.
old men get up in the middle of the night. Someday, Kurt will know why too!
Everything Kurt says here is very true.
Sensible people are leaving Michigan because the current governor and legislature are anti-gun, pro-taxes and think it’s Ok to kill babies just before they are born, So, the solution is simple… replace the governor and the legislature,
Depopulation’s major cause in Michigan has been quite evident because of republican elected officials such as House Minority Leader Matt Hall and Senate Minority Leader Erik Nesbitt, who represent the same 40 years of our decline. Because republicans hateful governing it will take another 40 years to stabilize and grow Michigan’s population. Unfortunately, Bill Ballenger and many of us will not live long enough to see, what if anything, led to improvement.
It all boils down to “Opportunity.” No opportunity, no progress. The “KISS Principle” always applies.
Many commentators are correct…Michigan began experiencing major population losses 20 + years ago. Fewer births, lower ISD school census, fewer jobs in population centers, etc. It will probably be another 20+ years for the reverse Texas migration to occur. Let’s deal with the facts responsibly and push the politics to the side. Our current (last 10 years) group of legislators has looked at the issue as time to pick the low hanging fruit, and make the taxpayer the brunt of the issue. There is a tax solution, and that is to give every new birth a tax credit for the parents (big) and to support new creative jobs for the parents and future parents. Otherwise, nature will take its course..
Metzger and Lessenberry have NAILED IT regarding Infrastructure and EDUCATION-RANKED 41ST IN ACHIEVEMENT and 58,000 Unaccounted for students. 58,000 students NOT Registered with the Michigan Dept. of Education. Ballenger “Flint has a population of 90,000 with only 3,500 in Public Schools.”
Tax Increase is a NON-starter just like Bill Ballenger discussed on OTR that a Tax on Services is a Non-starter.
Doing NOTHING IS not AN OPTION FOR HALL OR NESBITT. LEADERSHIP= GUTS. BRAINS AND SENSITIVITY TO DO THE RIGHT THING.
The key is ECONOMY.
Detroit had been the fourth largest city in America after the 1950 U.S. census with 1.85 million residents. It is now about 650,000.
Drivers often have no license plates on their cars. Homes often sell for $10,000-25,000 range and some blocks have 2/3rds of homes vacant. Drug users, mentally ill, and homeless persons roam the streets accosting passersby for handouts. Is it wonder no businesses are investing in Detroit on a large scale?
City of Detroit is a stark case study in urban decay. Run by a failed city and county government. It is an embarrassment to the rest of the state and in need of billions in infrastructure improvements that no one will fund.
Oakland County, Ann Arbor area, and Macomb County – on the other hand – are experiencing a boom in both population, tech start-ups and jobs.
Take Detroit out of the equation, Michigan does fine.
As long as all income taxes within the state are flat (i.e., not progressive) then there will ALWAYS be opposition amongst the voters to an increase in the income tax rate.
Michigan’s Century XXI economic development strategy of subsidizing large, politically connected companies with direct grants, enforced market hegemonies, and government facilitated pricing power doesn’t seem to be working very well.
The serfs are fleeing.
Nice article, Bill. Sorry for the delay in commenting, but this is my sixth revision, and believe it or not, shorter than the first five.
Population loss has been and remains an ongoing problem. We lose the equivalent of the population of Saginaw every 36 months due to people leaving. We lose the same number of people roughly every 22 months through abortion. Since the passage of Prop 3, it seems that Michigan only wants to deal with the 36 months.
The fundamental reason for the population leaving Michigan is the loss of good jobs, beginning in the 1970s when Americans started buying – in large numbers – foreign nameplates. When the foreign companies located plants here, they studiously avoided Michigan – though they did choose Ohio – so union shop rules were not the deciding factor.
There are also political ramifications to Michigan’s declining population over these past few decades, loss of clout in Washington.
Redistricting after the 1970 census led to a pair of Republicans, William Broomfield and Jack McDonald, running against one another (courtesy of the Democratic majority Supreme Court).
The 1980 census resulted in the loss of Jim Blanchard’s seat (he was running for governor which made the decision easy).
The 1990 census resulted in the loss of Carl Pursell’s seat (forced into Bill Ford’s seat) and Carl retired.
The 2000 census resulted in the loss of Lynn Rivers’ seat (forced into John Dingell’s seat) the GOP payback for William Broomfield – Jack McDonald.
The 2010 census forced Gary Peters and John Conyers into the same district, but Conyers and Hansen Clarke switched districts so it was Peters v. Clarke (GOP payback for Carl Pursell).
And redistricting after the 2020 census resulted in Andy Levin running against Haley Stevens rather than defend a seat in Macomb County (won by John James) courtesy of the Citizens Redistricting Commission.
Whether this Council can come up with good ideas only time will tell. But first they have to figure out the causes of the population loss, what can, and CANNOT be done to fix it. I suspect any fixes will tick off both political parties, but will fuel lots of political discussion in what’s left of Michigan’s media.
THINGS WE CANNOT FIX: We hear Michigan must compete with the sunbelt. Geography and climate, things we cannot fix, say we can’t. The sunbelt has sun. Lots of it. And heat. Michigan, being in the eastern Great Lakes, gets less sun than Seattle. And we get snow, sometimes lots of snow. People prefer sun and heat to cold and dark. We lose on climate unless the climate change catastrophists get air-conditioning banned. Don’t count on it.
THINGS THAT HAVE NOT WORKED:
COOL CITIES. Nice sounding idea from the Granholm administration. It had praise heaped on it from various “thinkers”, including some who spoke at Mackinac Island. Now some are discussing a hipper version of “cool cities” the 15-minute cities to attract people. What these are is nothing new. They are describing the EPCOT Walt Disney envisioned 60+ years ago. And like EPCOT, cool cities have not really worked or turned out the way it was envisioned. Granted, it has created some vibrancy in some downtowns, but the neighborhoods surrounding the downtowns mostly suck – like my old neighborhood in Detroit. The state of these cities is best described by Charlie LeDuff in his books Detroit and SH*T SHOW! These are not quite 21st century Potemkin Villages as much as they are creating the neo-feudalism described by Prof. Joel Kotkin. Onward to the 12th century is not a good advertising slogan to attract people.
TAX CUTS AND ITS SIBLING DEREGULATION. Under GOP leadership starting with John Engler, Michigan’s state and local tax burden – as David Waymire has pointed out numerous times quoting the Tax Foundation stats – is now the fifth LOWEST in the country, down from the middle of the pack a decade or so ago. We’ve had deregulation so businesses and job creators would be unleashed. We implemented “Right to Work”. Despite all this, it has not made us an economic Mecca, a bustling hub of wealth creation, or a place people flock to because of work opportunities. Rather, those jobs, wealth creation and work opportunities have gone elsewhere. Tax cuts and deregulation have given us crumbling infrastructure, fractured social and mental health services and crumbling cities. And a population slowly slipping into a form of serfdom, but not the kind F. A. Hayek wrote about.
THINGS WE CAN TRY TO FIX AND HOPE IT WORKS. THIS TIME.
EDUCATION. First of all, no more lockdowns. Lockdowns resulted in lost learning and diminished test scores. For special education students, the lockdowns resulted in lost learning they will never recover from as they cannot make up for the lost classroom time. European countries returned to the classroom much sooner than we did, and they have the education results to show for it. If schools are really about the students, no more lockdowns.
ACCOUNTABILITY: Despite the complaints in the comments on education funding, we do spend a considerable amount of money on education. Before you ask for more, it is a good thing to see what we’re getting with the money we spend now. How much of that money is spent in the classroom? On administration? On sports? On building maintenance? How do we know that the money spent in the classroom is doing any good?
To answer that last question, the GOP pushed through legislation that essentially held children back in the 3rd grade if they could not read. They also came up with a grading system for schools, in essence a report card for them. Now in power, the Democrats have repealed both with no real alternative proposed. Insisting that 3rd graders read at least near a 3rd grade level before advancing to 4th grade – absent cognitive or learning disabilities for special education students – is not asking a lot. If the child cannot read by this age, their academic future is rather bleak. Some sort of grading system for schools and school districts – including charter schools – is not unreasonable. If only 50% of 3rd graders read at grade level, the school gets an “F”. If 60% do, they get a “D-”. If it is 93%, an “A”. This is something parents understand and if their school or their school district is performing poorly, it might be the incentive to get them out to school board meetings and/or more involved in their children’s education. Absent some sort of measure of student and school accountability, getting more money will be hard.
CHARTER SCHOOLS: The GOP champions charter (technically public school academies) schools. The more the merrier they say. Charters feed into their love of deregulation and the power of the Divine Market fueled by customer choice. They argue school choice is the only choice Democrats don’t like. This is why we have for profit charter schools, and the reason why the vast majority of charters stop at 8th grade. This is because Michigan gives a flat grant of money per student for education regardless of grade. It’s cheaper to educate an elementary school student than a middle school student, and cheaper to educate a middle school student than a high schooler. Simply put, charter schools don’t make any, or enough, money running a high school. Democrats, on the other hand, don’t like charters as a general rule. They feel charters cripple traditional public schools by diverting money from them. What has surprised me is that they have not moved against for profit charters yet. Something for later in the term?
One thing they could consider is changing the grant by tweaking it to the actual cost per student. This would result in smaller grants the elementary students, higher grants for high school students, and middle school students staying about the same, give or take a buck or two.
But the only important question for charters is, do the charters educate the students as well or better than traditional public schools? This is the only question that needs answering. Any objective evaluation will depend on student test scores and so forth, comparing them with the public school district in which the charter is located, and comparing those statistics to what we feel they should be. Maybe Bridge Magazine or some other entity could do the study. Given the current State Board of Education, the GOP would not accept any result from them and they for the most don’t like test scores anyway.
The one overlying problem with any evaluation – when you finally figure out the evaluation process – is what do you do with it? If the charters are not measuring up, and the local public schools are doing just as poorly, do you shut both down? Does the State take them over? Is the school district abolished and the student sent to neighboring districts? Sadly, neither party in Lansing has an answer to this, nor do I suspect they want one.
CLASSROOMS: But the major question is, what are we teaching?
This is my rant on the subject. Everyone agrees (or should agree) that teaching reading, English, history, math, science, social studies, shop, music, art and home economics is good. Everybody needs to learn to cook, sew on a button and other such tasks; as well as to do basic home maintenance stuff. We need to learn our history, do numbers, understand that biology is biology, read a page of music and know where the “C” note is vis-à-vis the “A” note. We need to know what folk music is, classical music and opera (thank you Mr. Grimmer). We need to draw, and color, as well as how to read and appreciate literature. These classes are neither racist nor sexist. Those who argue they are, have no business in education. If schools don’t teach these things, why fund them?
School starts way too early in the morning. For the most part, kids don’t get up before sunrise to milk the cows anymore. Have school start later in the morning, say around 8 a.m., so the kids have enough sleep (this also means parents have to enforce bedtimes for their children). This means school ends later. Fine. It may interfere with football, but school does not exist to field football or any other sports teams. This isn’t Texas.
Learning is a discipline requiring effort. If it was easy, we’d have boatloads of brain surgeons and rocket scientists. But it isn’t so we don’t. Discipline is needed, at home and school. Bad behavior must have consequences. It used to be if you got in trouble at school, you were punished at home. If you got bad grades (grades below you were able to achieve) there were consequences. For getting a “C-” in English in 4th grade, I was grounded. No TV, no radio and no record player. This was the 1960s equivalent of absolutely no social or electronic media of any kind, including cell phones. It meant no playing with my friends or no reading the morning Free Press for fun. Just chores and schoolwork. Guess who did not get another “C-” in English.
We also need teachers who can read, spell and use proper grammar. For more than 38 years, I worked at the Disability Determination Service and did social security and SSI disability cases for a living, with 2+ decades doing disabled children’s cases. One of the most aggravating things was coming across some SSA-5665s (teacher’s report) on a child whose parent(s) filed for SSI disability benefits, or whose child’s disability benefits were under review, from teachers whose spelling and grammar ranged from bad to atrocious. I am not exactly sure how they can teach their charges what they need to learn. I’m afraid I do not have a solution to this problem.
COLLEGES: We have a smorgasbord of colleges and universities. Big ones, small ones, private ones and public ones. One thing they have in common is the metastatic rise of non-teaching bureaucracies where administrative staff numbers rival the number of undergraduates (Bill Maher had a nice rant on this a while back). This is madness and one of the reasons tuition costs are so high. When I was a freshman at U of M, fall term tuition was $400 for a full load, 13 – 18 credit hours, for freshmen and sophomores, $500 for juniors and seniors. This was about 25% of the cost to attend U of M for in-state residents. The state paid the other 75%. NOT ANYMORE! Cut back on administrators and spend that money educating students, what a novel thought.
FINANCE: Many of the comments talk about education, improving it in hopes that businesses will flock to Michigan and people won’t flee. We’ve tweaked education before. So, what have we done so far? Under the Republicans, the Engler administration got John Engler’s Proposal 1 passed and we re-did the way we finance public schools. To put this in shorthand, the state now covers the classroom money while the district covers the pensions with locally raised money (6 or 12 mills depending on district). Money is more regular now and we no longer rely on millage elections to fund schools. There have been talks about tweaking Prop 1, but short of a constitutional amendment, Prop 1 is not going anywhere.
STUDENT EXPECTATIONS: As someone who did SSI and social security disability cases, another frustrating thing were these 18 and 19 years old high school grads – who were learning disabled or borderline cognitively impaired – being sent to college. This was, and remains, setting them up for failure. They could not do the work, incurred debt they would have trouble paying off, and knew nothing but frustration. School counselors need to understand not everyone is college material. We need carpenters, plumbers, electricians, construction workers, mechanics and other skilled trades. It means the GOP must stop looking at trade unions as an enemy. It means parents need some realism about what their children can do. It means rediscovering the benefits of gainful employment that requires you to shower AFTER work, not before it. Industrial arts classes are necessary. School districts that cancel them are doing an egregious disservice to their students and society as a whole.
This is enough for now. I apologize ahead of time for any typos. I should have been more diligent in Mrs. Brenner’s typing class at Central Middle School, and I am not ready to do revision #7.