Budgeting and taxes are the key drivers in this speech.
Snyder gets earful of advice | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
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A discussion of policy, politics and culture in government and society.
Despite all the good advice the Governor recieved prior to his speech, he did not really address any of the issues brought up in this article directly. In terms of education he did not offer any specific proposal, other than to note that we need to think about P-20 instead of K-12. In terms of business taxes he proposed an elimination of the current system and replacing it with a flat 6% corportate tax. The one issue that he was specific on was the new international bridge at Detroit, where he put himself firmly behind the project that excludes the current Ambassador Bridge owner. Regarding budget cuts and ways of reducing the deficit he provided nothing more than general comments regarding our need to all work together to fix our state.
ReplyDeleteAll in all the Governor's address tried to strike a tone of being optimistic while at the same time indicating a serious aspect of a coroporate executive getting to work to achieve measurable results. I think in some ways he succeeded, but what many people were looking for was a description of how to resolve the budget dillema. I don't think he addressed this at all, and this left the audiance somewhat baffled, not energized.
All of this advice that the governor received before he gave his speech was well intenioned, and included many good ideas. The one piece of advice that I thought was a good idea that could become encouraging policy if acted upon was the new international bridge. Building a new bridge to connect Detroit to Canada would, as the article said, create many new jobs. It would also be able to pay for itself by tolls. I also think that Snyder should take what the MEA had to say into serious consideration. Their plan to make it so that 85% of school funds are spent in the classroom could have major positive effects in public education in our state. Let's hope that Snyder can keep the support that he is seeing during this honeymoon period by enacting good policy and doing specific things to get the state back on track.
ReplyDeleteI dont think Snyder hit the points he wanted to address in specifics in his speech. He did describe his plan for a flat corporate tax of 6 % but I had a hard time getting behind this proposal. He talks on reducing the deficit but this plan increases the deficit and as the article states, it doesn't help increase michigan's competitiveness with other states to draw new business. I did like the talk of the bridge construction to bring new jobs to the area but other than that I didn't hear anything specific that would improve the deficit. I wanted to hear more on how he was going to increase jobs while improving the deficit.
ReplyDeleteI think that the MEA's approach (their 5-point plan) is very creative, and thoughtful. Although the governor may not agree with all the aspects of it, they laid out a plan for him, rather than just their demands. Part of the MEA's 5-point plan is to consolidate school districts. The Marquette-Negaunee-Ishpeming areas would really benefit from this, financially and resourcefully, regarding staff. Another part of the plan, holding teacher's more accountable, is an admirable request as well. It would be interesting to see if there is a quantitative way to measure productivity in the classroom, but if there were new attempts at holding teachers accountable for their curriculum and efforts that there would potentially be less slack or waste of time and resources. This is not to say that is the teacher's responsibility to manage every students education (parents), but that the teachers own efforts are commendable and thorough.
ReplyDeleteI thought that providing the new governor with a well though out "plan" was a very strategic move played by the MEA.