Michigan's Governor Rick Snyder proposed a new budget for the State that may have an effect on college students. In this New Budget, Snyder plans to cut back on funding for Universities across Michigan. Heres the article from the Detroit Free Press for more detail:
Before AARP railed about Gov. Rick Snyder declaring war on senior citizens, before actor Jeff Daniels accused Snyder of lying about film credits, before Mayor Dave Bing said the governor's budget threatens Detroit's fragile fiscal progress, Snyder had already run a gauntlet of red flags and raised eyebrows from his own inner circle.
"Oh, man, you're killing me," Snyder's chief of staff Dennis Muchmore piped up weeks ago, when he realized the governor was serious about taxing pensions. "My gosh, that's a lot to take on."
Muchmore, 64, a longtime ex-lobbyist and Lansing sage, knew instinctively that Snyder was playing with fire by taking away a tax break for senior citizens, a powerful and growing voter bloc.
Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, 33, saw the hurdles, too. Calley now has to defend eliminating virtually all tax credits for business, including one for filmmakers that Calley himself voted to create a few years ago when he was in the Legislature.
Snyder welcomed, even enjoyed, differences of opinion during the intense internal budget debate, key advisers say. But he also had a compass and direction that never wavered.
If an aide dwelled too long on the political implications of some decision, Snyder would call a halt, saying, "You signed up for this trip."
Snyder led the charge for radical changes
Nearly every day from Jan. 3 to Feb. 16, for two to four hours a day and sometimes longer, Snyder and his inner circle met to hammer out details of the next state budget, their manifesto for the coming revolution.
They packed it with radical departures from past practice -- a new flat corporate income tax, elimination of business tax credits and pension tax exemptions -- and deep cuts in spending on schools, prisons, nearly everything but Medicaid.
Joining Snyder for most budget-forging sessions, in a second-floor conference room across from the Capitol, were budget director John Nixon, newly arrived from Utah; chief of staff Dennis Muchmore; senior adviser Dick Posthumus; communications director Geralyn Lasher; Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, and strategy director Bill Rustem.
Participants came armed with the usual stuff of budget meetings: paper, iPads, spreadsheets. Lasher usually brought her Michigan State University Tom Izzo water glass, Muchmore a Coke or Pepsi.
Each meeting started on time. All Snyder meetings start on time.
Snyder, a businessman and political novice, had promised repeatedly that he would "reinvent Michigan," but candidates say a lot of things. Would he really shake things up? Or bow to politics as usual?
His top lieutenants, a mix of new blood and old Lansing hands, soon found out.
"Whenever people would get weak in the knees and offer a political answer about why not to do something," said Calley, Snyder would come back with, "What's the right thing to do?"
When longtime Lansing staffers were called in for briefings on individual department budgets, Lasher said, "You could tell some were thinking, 'OK, we've got to get the new guy (Snyder) up to speed.' But then they were really taken aback at the depth of his questions, and you could see they were thinking, 'Whoa, he's way beyond up to speed.' "
Hair-raising ideas
Snyder said at his budget presentation Thursday that his own team was often taken aback by the boldness of the changes they were deliberating. When I asked Nixon and Snyder who in the group kept pushing the most radical ideas, Nixon smiled and kept pointing to Snyder.
Muchmore said there were long, spirited discussions about a host of budget issues:
• Medicaid. "In the end, we just couldn't cut there," he said.
• Ending Michigan's tax exemption on pensions. Despite the predictable outcry, the group bowed to Snyder's fairness argument. "A young, unmarried mother of two gets taxed on her earnings. Why should any other group be exempted?" Muchmore said.
• K-12 education and universities were cut by 5% and 15%, respectively, after "long and very intensive discussions."
• Film credits. "Early on, the governor decided we were going to do away with as many tax credits as possible," Muchmore said, "but the (Detroit Metro) Convention and Visitors Bureau was a big advocate of the film credits. We heard from the studios, from other supporters." The budget proposal ultimately included a $25-million cash incentive for 2012 and would honor film credits already awarded, but it's clearly less generous than the program now in place.
When asked about the unique input of each key player in the budget process, those who were in the room are reluctant to say.
The no-credit rule
There's a no-credit rule that the core team observes, one said. In other words, no public chatter that could be interpreted as angling for credit or pushing a personal agenda.
Still, it's clear that Nixon, who also is president of the National Association of State Budget Officers, had a big role.
He's a Medicaid expert who advanced the idea of including a 1% insurance claims tax in the new Michigan budget to replace a 6% Medicaid HMO use tax, which the federal government may soon ban.
He also helped craft incentive grants for universities that hold tuition hikes below 7%.
Posthumus, a 20-year veteran of elective office, will have a key role in shepherding the budget though the Legislature.
Calley played a major role in shaping the taxation policy elements of the budget.
'Eyes getting bigger'
Clearly, Snyder's inner circle knows now that they have embarked on a crusade that will get national attention -- and also cause some indigestion along the way.
"On some of the politically charged things, Dick Posthumus and Bill Rustem and Geralyn would look at each other, with their eyes getting bigger and bigger," Muchmore said.
Above all, he added, one thing is perfectly clear.
Snyder is the guy leading this charge. "In every single meeting," Muchmore said, "the governor asked more questions than everybody else put together."
Tom Walsh: twalsh@freepress.com
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