Bloggin’ on the Edge

Posted by Scott Spielman at 2:00 AM | Comments

The latest concept to come out of Lansing to help solve the Michigan budget crisis is a temporary income tax increase, coupled with governmental reforms.

Come on.

How gullible do our elected officials think we are, anyway?

There is no such thing as a temporary anything when it comes to government, least of all a tax hike.

You see this all the time locally or county and state wide.

In the cities of Wayne and Westland, the ‘temporary millage to fund the debt at the Western Wayne County Sanitation Authority incinerator is still in place, even though the thing is two years in the ground and the debt was repaid at the end of the 2006-2007 fiscal year.

They’re still collecting it as part of the overall sanitation millage in Westland. In Wayne, they simply moved it over to help bolster the general fund.

You can find examples in areas other than finance, too. Take the City of Northville, where a ‘temporary’ dog park in the city limits has had its leash extended two or three times now.

Temporary is a word that governmental officials throw around because they know a long-term tax increase would never pass the muster with voters.

The reason is this: if a ‘temporary’ tax increase is put into place, it would all but negate the need for governmental reform, which is really the only way out of this mess. The government will expand to the size that the tax revenue allows it too—sometimes more, as is the case right now.

There will be no incentive to approve reforms that will trim the size and cost of government. The temporary levy will only be extended and the residents of this state will continue to suffer the ill effects of the economy and the unwillingness of state officials to keep their own budgets in check.

I’d rather see additional concessions made on the state level than the continual picking at the bottom—reducing revenue sharing, keeping school funding levels stagnant and forcing municipalities to request tax increases because their own revenues have been clipped by the state.

Those local leaders see it roughly the same way, too. They understand that if a funding source is ‘temporarily’ cut or reduced by Lansing legislators, there’s no way it will ever be returned to previous levels. They would probably all be best suited to prepare their budgets without any outside help and look at whatever revenue comes down as a Christmas gift.

This talk sounds like a lot of other lip service that comes from Lansing these days. They promise reforms, but enact few of them. They talk about belt tightening, but take revenue from elsewhere.

They talk about a temporary tax increase, when what’s really sought is an excuse to carry on the same way as before.

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