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12
May 2008
The 'next' budget battle?
Posted by Scott Spielman
at 11:04 AM | Comments
There was an interesting tidbit in one of the state news services today. Technically, it was published on Friday and I just got around to reading it.
It’s about state legislators now getting concerned about the ‘next major fiscal crisis’: local government.
Imagine that. After years of stripping away state shared revenue and promising just about every tax break in the book, people in Lansing are now looking past their noses. Those efforts, coupled with the declining real estate market will, in fact, make things more difficult for cities and townships. It’s a ripple effect and the first wave has yet to hit the shore. It only makes sense that when property values go down, tax revenue will follow and we haven’t seen the long-term impact of the housing market yet.
I’d try to find a way to tie-bar statutory revenue sharing payments with long-term plans designed to reduce the cost of local government. There’s no sense in throwing money at a city or township now just to keep up the bloated salaries of municipal workers.
We’ll see what, if anything, they can come up with to help the situation. If history is any indicator, though, it’ll come too late and the general tax payer won’t see much relief.
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