Tagged: budget proposal

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette hopes lawmakers will make room in the budget for his plan to hire 1,000 new police officers. Gov. Rick Snyder did not include Schuette’s plan in his executive budget proposal.

Schuette says state officials need to be forward-thinking with public safety.

“We have to be decisive, we need to be solution-oriented in this new Michigan, and that means in terms of this linkage between economic growth and public safety.”

Schuette would also like the state Legislature to toughen sentencing guidelines for repeat violent felons. Governor Snyder plans to deliver a special message on public safety next month.

Governor Snyder has said the state needs to do more to attract immigrants, and get them to stay once they’re here.

In his recent budget proposal, Governor Snyder calls for the creation of a Cultural Ambassador program to attract and welcome immigrants to the state, which is similar to a program he helped create when he worked at Ann Arbor SPARK.

Yesterday, while everyone was focusing on the details of  Governor Snyder’s budget proposal, I was struck instead by something Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley said about it.

The state needs to “resist the temptation to go back to the old way because the old way did not serve us well.” And it’s impossible to disagree with that, whatever your politics or ideology.

Cast your mind back to the dreadful budget wars of the Granholm administration, when nearly every year we saw bitterly partisan battles which occupied the legislature for months, threatened government with shutdown, and resulted in unthinking, last minute solutions harmful to everyone.

Governor Rick Snyder today presented his budget proposal for the fiscal year 2013, which begins this October.  He calls for modest increases in K-12 education, state police, and cities.

Ken Sikkema, former Senate Majority Leader and senior policy fellow at Public Sector Consultants, and Susan Demas, political analyst for Michigan Information and Research Service joined Michigan Radio's Jennifer White to talk about the governor’s budget proposal.

There were no big spending cuts or structural changes. Sikkema is not surprised.

“We did big things last year. Now let’s just solidify them and continue in the direction we’re going in,” says Sikkema.

The Governor has proposed a public safety initiative that includes a 16 percent funding boost for the Michigan State Police, an additional $15 million in “law enforcement enhancement,” and about $5 million for youth employment program in high crime areas.

Michigan has numerous cities with high crime rates.  Demas says, “Now that we do have some more money in the surplus, it’s probably not a surprise that this was an area that we went to.”

President Obama came under fire yesterday for proposing that the richest Americans pay a higher proportion of the tax burden, especially with deficits soaring out of control.

Republicans, some of whom are running for president, said this would hurt the economy‘s ability to create jobs.

They said this was just one more wrong-headed left-wing proposal to solve economic problems by “soaking the rich.”

Well, that’s a battle that will be fought out on the national stage, likely throughout next year’s presidential campaign and beyond.