Readers deserve better government reporting

Ladies and gentleman, your leaders have failed you, and we in the media have failed you.

This Richard Clarke-esque epiphany crystallized somewhere in a 3 a.m. haze at the Capitol on Monday against the backdrop of infantile threats and finger-waving on the floor of Michigan's greatest deliberative body.

Afterward, everyone was left to bemoan what had gone wrong in our great state to make us shut it down for five hours, costing us upward of $1 million, when we were already almost $2 billion in the hole.

Culprits were, quite correctly, fingered as term limits, hyper-partisanship and gerrymandering.

Our neophyte legislators clearly had no concept of what it took to piece together a $42 billion budget without the aid of accounting tricks, even though they had 10 months to learn.

Thanks to term limits, which remain wildly popular, there are no old bulls left in the chambers to help steer the state from disaster. Former House Appropriations Poobah Don Gilmer paced helplessly on the sidelines Sunday night as he watched tadpole reps flail about.

Few, if any, lawmakers bothered to consult the erudite Emergency Financial Advisory Panel headed by former Govs. Bill Milliken and Jim Blanchard.

Pols would rather play the game of poisonous partisanship than make policy, pushed by the two parties and lobbies entrenched on both sides.

It's a dysfunctional system bolstered by redistricting, which is controlled by the party in power at the time of the census. Amazingly enough, the GOP last time managed to sketch state and federal districts that secured majorities, just as the Dems had before.

But enough about them. Flog the media, too.

We are your last line of defense against politics run amok. When the people are informed, it's a lot harder for leaders to run roughshod over us.

Sadly, too many media outlets view politics as a horse race and lack basic understanding of policy, so we figure you don't have to get it, either.

As an ignorant former editor of mine put it, "I view politics like baseball. The exciting time to cover it is during elections, like the playoffs. Otherwise, it's pretty much the off-season and no one's paying attention."

Wrong. I know poodles with a more nuanced take on public affairs.

You deserve to read about the history of the budget crisis, dating back to the '90s, when legislators — many who did know better — capitulated to what was easy and politically expedient. They slashed taxes to unsustainable levels to win elections. They raided $4.2 billion from reserves so they wouldn't have to make real reforms.

You deserve to read how budget cuts and higher taxes affect your life — how much you pay, how much you gain. That means connecting the dots from the state budget to all those local millages you've been asked to OK, program cuts at your local elementary school and the business that didn't open in your neighborhood because a tax structure wasn't in place.

You deserve to read about bills when they're introduced, not after they're law — from HPV vaccinations to pop-up tax reforms — so you know what your lawmakers are up to in Lansing and can be involved in the process.

In the last month, Michigan's press has been a model on all counts. But as soon as this crisis evaporates, so will our policy coverage.

Because just as the Legislature doesn't look like it did in 1983, neither does the Capitol press corps. It's been downsized by at least half, often the first victim in newspaper and affiliate cutbacks. Most media only run copy from wire services, which have taken big hits, as well.

What kind of message do we send to you, the people, when we don't do justice to the most important issues of the day?

In part, that's what's led to the explosion of political blogs, but most just litter the hyper-partisan wasteland. Anonymous posters at Right Michigan and Michigan Liberal routinely run propaganda the mainstream media normally wouldn't (and shouldn't) touch, such as the unbiased (ahem) state GOP poll showing Democrats are doomed with a tax hike or the Senate Dems whining about not being allowed to snap pics for political gain of the tax-hike tally.

We at the Enquirer, a small but scrappy paper, try to do our part, and I think we succeed more than any other in our weight class. But all journalists need to do more.

Because the stakes are too high in Michigan right now for us to fall down on the job.

Cowards and courage: I took aim in Tuesday's column at Sen. Glenn Anderson, D-Westland, for stalling on a vote for immediate effect of the new services tax. But Anderson did vote for it, though not for the actual bill, a move which could cost the freshman his seat.

That's what lawmakers are paid to do. But it's worth contrasting that with Rep. David Agema, R-Grandville, who decided embarking on a Russian hunting excursion was far more important than voting on Michigan's fiscal future.

Anyone who thinks the sheep slayer deserves another term should volunteer as his target practice.

What was the budget war good for? Absolutely nothing

LANSING — It was about 56 minutes into Col. Mike Bishop's quixotic last stand at the Capitol early Monday when one of his GOP foot soldiers crossed enemy lines.

John Pappageorge marched over to fellow Sen. Tupac Hunter on the Senate floor and bellowed, "C'mon, let's go home."

But the Democrat didn't budge, and he didn't vote on the budget."Tell him to stay on the other side of the aisle," he hollered, just a half-hour after the last near-fisticuffs on the floor.

It would be another 26 minutes before the last vote hit the board at 4:18 a.m., much to the chagrin of yawning staffers and reporters.The skirmish was over a new services tax, the first shot Gen. Jennifer Granholm had fired when negotiations commenced in February.

The Democratic governor finally marshaled the troops, first twisting the arm of Republican Rep. Chris Ward on the income tax. Her next target was AWOL Democratic Sen. Glenn Anderson, who was quivering in the back room as a blue-jean-clad Granholm strutted across the chamber.

"Where is he?" she demanded with the moxie of Douglas MacArthur.

She got her man. Seconds after Anderson pushed the button for the service tax, Republicans fell in line and our long state budget nightmare was over.

In bleary-eyed hindsight, Granholm looked to have executed a flawless strategy.

Even consternated conservatives conceded victory after the Dems triumphantly impaled the GOP's no-tax mantra, hoisting a bounty of $1.35 billion in new revenue.

Granholm didn't even bother to hold a news conference right afterward, letting the results speak for themselves.

In reality, she got lucky after months of bitter brinkmanship. And to the victor go the political spoils.Truth is, Republicans couldn't pull the trigger.

Even the GOP-controlled Senate could only muster up $600 million worth of cuts — a far cry from the $1.8 billion deficit. In the end, Bishop had an easier time selling income- and sales-tax boosts to his soldiers than even that level of cuts.

Proving that although Republicans hate raising taxes, they hate cutting spending even more.

Everyone is gung-ho for cuts until they hit home. Then lawmakers aren't so keen on moms, teachers, seniors and CEOs banging on their office doors.

Take the $500 million the House cleaved from business tax breaks. Sounds great until you read the fine print, that without exemptions, Battle Creek's Duncan Aviation would high-tail it out of this state.

The reality is, no one in Lansing truly was itching to raise taxes. It was simple arithmetic. After more than a decade of cutting taxes and raiding funds while the state's economy tanked, the bills came due this year.

Proposals to gash spending fell far short of the deficit, like paring welfare and employee salaries, or were deemed unfeasible, like slashing prisons and schools.

That's because, year after year, we've already chopped higher ed, community health, K-12 schools and child-protective services. State government has the fewest employees since the 1970s.

Michigan's budget doesn't work like the feds', packed full of pork (or earmarks when they're in your district) and can (and does) run in the red year after year.

We don't have that luxury.

Maybe legislators finally had an attack of common sense in the blue hours of Monday morning.Or maybe they were just sick of sleeping in their cars after 17 straight days of battle.

Whatever the reason, Michigan dodged a ruinous government shutdown with the extreme last-minute budget deal — and that is good news for all.

The bad news is, legislators passed a hodgepodge of bills no one's even bothered to read, and they'll now have to spend the next 30 days working out the kinks. We can only hope the flaws won't mean the Wolverine State will face another critically out-of-whack budget next year.

For now, bruised lawmakers have left the battlefield in search of showers and Scotch.They said they were fighting for Michigan — but their backbiting and infighting has only further jeopardized the state's future.

"In a true compromise, no one can claim victory," Sen. Mark Schauer said without a hint of a smile late Sunday night.

After this debacle, no one in Lansing should.