Ooo-ooo, that smell…

Last month, after the Detroit News tore back the curtains on the secretive “skunk works” group, staffed by some of Gov. Snyder’s aides and aimed at destroying our public school system while funneling the proceeds to for-profit charter schools, the group was quickly reconfigured to be one that was more, shall we say, public? The Governor’s staffer was replaced with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan who vowed any discussion of vouchers and the like would be “off the table”.

My pals at Progress Michigan endeavored to learn more about the group with a Freedom of Information Act request but were, in part, denied because “the Basecamp server that housed ‘Skunk Works’ discussions and files was shut down following the revelation of the group’s existence, making several files unavailable.”

They did receive some documents however.

The documents made it clear that the workgroup planned to implement their scheme as quickly as possible. One presentation (pg. 250) included a plan for a new legal authority to “remove regulatory barriers,” and indicated their new schools would require a request for an extra $4 million in funding. {…}

The documents also included a February 28 email indicating that Richard McLellan had collaborated with Michigan Virtual University (pg. 161), despite subsequent comments to the media from Snyder’s chief information officer David Behen that teachers had been intentionally excluded from the process.

McLellan also used the “Skunk Works” email listserv to criticize MSU President Lou Anna Simon, explaining he asked her to identify academics “primarily…from outside the College of Education” to contribute to the workgroup. He noted that she responded by sharing his request with the College of Education and “lecturing” him for “about 45 minutes… (if you know her, that is not unusual).”

Read more about the results of their FOIA request HERE.

Progress Michigan has now released a new video that gives a quick overview of what this super secret stinky group was up to.

Enjoy:

This is what a blue state state looks like

56.8 percent of Michigan residents support same-sex marriage, according to a new poll from the Glengariff Group. That’s up 12.5 percent from a year ago largely due to a shift in the views of Republicans and independents.

In 2004, the state approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, even as it voted for John Kerry.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a policy question move as quickly as this one,” said Richard Czuba, president of Glengariff.

On the heels of Minnesota becoming the 12th state to legalize equal marriage, it seems that a candidate named “same-sex marriage” would easily beat Republican Governor Rick Snyder in a head-to-head match-up.

When he last commented on the issue, Snyder was for civil unions but against marriage equality, which was President Obama’s stance just about a year ago. But the political landscape has shifted as quickly as ice in the Arctic is melting.

Whoever Democrats nominate to face Snyder will immediately put the nerd in a pickle by endorsing same-sex marriage. If the governor doesn’t do the same, he’s breaking with the majority. If he does endorse it, he lose the minority who oppose modernity, also known as GOP primary voters.

This sudden acceptance of same-sex marriage  is a huge victory for civil rights. But that it’s happening in Michigan, where 76.6 percent of voters were born and raised, shows that this isn’t some demographic shift.

This issue is becoming a comment on the role of government. For all their talk of smaller government, the GOP — especially in Michigan — wants to privatize the public and publicize your privates.

We can see that voters aren’t buying into the latter part of that formula. Now we just need to educate them about why the former is so dangerous for the middle class.

[Photo by ep_jhu | Flickr]

This took WAY too long

[Caricature by DonkeyHotey from photos by Anne C. Savage for Eclectablog]

Updated with a statement from Progress Michigan below.

Facing withering criticism from all fronts, the Snyder administration finally sorted out its priorities and has released money to reopen the Buena Vista schools that have been closed due to lack of funds.

State Superintendent Mike Flanagan has released money to the Buena Vista School District to allow the school to reopen and complete the school year.

The Saginaw County school district of 430 students has been closed for two weeks after the district could not make its May 24 payroll and laid off all but three employees.

Flanagan on Wednesday, May 15, approved the district’s third attempt at a deficit elimination plan, clearing the way for the Michigan Department of Education to release funding, the department announced. The district gets $7,776 per pupil.

The funding is Buena Vista’s normal state aid for May, June and July, allowing the district to meet payroll and recall 27 laid-off teachers, among other employees. The education department and district are working together to determine the amounts of the funding, the department stated.

“Now, I encourage the local school board, administration, and staff to get the schools open as soon as possible for the students,” Flanagan said in a statement.

For a technocrat who prides himself on his business acumen, Governor Snyder and his administration showed an offensive amount of hemming and hawing and excuse-making on this issue. Had they had their priorities straight in the first place, they would have advanced the money immediately and sorted out the details afterwards so that the students of Buena Vista, along with their parents and teachers, wouldn’t have been put through the wringer. There’s no doubt that the statewide and national attention this embarrassment has garnered had much to do with it.

Congressman Dan Kildee has been on the forefront of pushing the Snyder administration to act. He released the following statement this morning:

I am pleased to see that the State of Michigan will release state aid payments to the Buena Vista School District. This is certainly a promising development and it is my hope that the kids and teachers will immediately return to their classrooms and finish their school year.

It took great restraint on the Congressman’s part, I’m sure not to add, “What the hell took you so long?”

UPDATE: Jessica Tramontana, Communications Director for Progress Michigan, released the following statement:

The students of Buena Vista Schools have been out of classrooms for eight days while lawmakers in Lansing pointed fingers. There are hundreds of students in the Buena Vista school district who have been denied their constitutional right to a public education, and it should have never come to this. We applaud the decision to finally provide the funds for Buena Vista to reopen their doors, but it’s shameful children had to pay the price for political games in Lansing. It’s time we prioritize Michigan’s kids instead of playing the hot potato blame game, and that starts with Lansing politicians restoring the funding cuts they made to our public schools.

We regret the error

[Caricature by DonkeyHotey from photos by Anne C. Savage for Eclectablog]

While the State of Michigan has stepped in to save the failing Pontiac schools from closing its doors due to lack of funding, they have NOT done this for Buena Vista schools. Rather, the federal government has, albeit in an absurdly lame fashion. The school is closed for the remainder of the school year but the feds are providing money for a voluntary “enhanced skills camp”.

Congressman Dan Kildee has been outspoken on this and released the following statement:

The students of Buena Vista have a constitutional right to an education and deserve the same educational opportunities as other Michigan children, and that means being in a classroom full-time to complete their school year. I do not believe that a voluntary camp amounts to a proper education for the children of Buena Vista.

It is dangerous precedent to allow school districts to close six weeks early as a cost-saving measure, only to replace a child’s education with a voluntary camp. Such a patchwork fix fails to live up to a commitment to provide a quality education for students. Children deserve better. Simply shutting down the schools early hurts the students of Buena Vista and ultimately punishes the children for a problem they didn’t create.

Congressman Kildee appeared on All In With Chris Hayes on this issue last night and spoke also about the number of kids in this impoverished area who receive meals at school but who will no longer do so for the remainder of this school year:

The Detroit Free Press is excoriating the Snyder administration for their lack of action:

The big difference [between Pontiac schools and Buena Vista schools] seems to be that Pontiac schools developed an acceptable deficit elimination plan; Buena Vista hasn’t.

But that shouldn’t matter. The state — not local school districts — carries the ultimate responsibility to provide a free and adequate public education for Michigan children. When local officials fail, the state should step in.

At least that’s what Gov. Rick Snyder’s team has said in the past. When they crafted Michigan’s tough new emergency manager law, the rationale was simple: the state must provide for the health and well-being of its residents, even if it means displacing elected officials, breaking union contracts, or rewriting a law rejected by Michigan voters. {…}

The same principle should apply when school districts can’t make payroll. Students have a constitutional right to be educated, and that shouldn’t be abrogated by local malfeasance or incompetence.

Fiscal responsibility and good management at the local level are important, but in an emergency situation, the priority should be assuring that children’s education can continue. {…}

[I]n the short-term, Snyder needs to just be sure that the state meets its constitutional obligation to provide public schooling for the kids who don’t have it.

Snyder’s belief in his constitutional responsibility to care for all Michigan residents is correct. When local governments are unable to provide the services constituents fund, the state must step in. Public education is not expendable.

This is an abject failure of the Snyder administration. It is a stain on their time in office and it’s scandalous that they are sitting on over a half billion dollars in the Rainy Day Fund (as well as discovering they have taken in more than a half billion dollars they weren’t planning on in addition to that) and refuse to act.

For shame, Governor Snyder. For shame.

MSNBC journalist Ned Resnikoff has more on this HERE. I spoke with him yesterday to help sort out some of the vagaries of Michigan politics and how our school districts are organized.

Just not raining hard enough in Buena Vista Township, I guess…

This is front page of the Buena Vista School District website this morning. While it says that school will be closed on Thursday, apparently nobody has been to work yet today, either, because the school is still closed today. This is the fourth day the school has been closed because it has no money to pay teachers and staff.

This is truly outrageous. Where is Governor Snyder in all of this? Why is he waiting and allowing this to go on?

It’s gotten so bad the Congressman Dan Kildee has weighed in (and not subtly):

Gov. Snyder can – and should – immediately act to keep these kids in their classrooms for the remainder of the school year. It is fundamentally important that these kids go back to the same classrooms with the same teachers who have been guiding them through their curriculum all year long. Children in Buena Vista have a constitutional right to an education and the state must act to provide it to them.

Gov. Snyder and the Michigan Legislature have previously acted to provide financial assistance for financially challenged school districts. H.R. 4445, passed in February 2012 by the legislature and signed by Gov. Snyder, provided $4 million in emergency appropriations to the Highland Park School District after it announced that it could no longer meet its payroll. The bill allowed those students and teachers to remain in their school facilities. After signing the legislation, Gov. Snyder called it a way to “address the critical education needs of Highland Park students” and a way to “keep…children in the classroom, where they deserve and need to be.”

As in the case with Highland Park, Gov. Snyder has the authority to promptly provide funds to keep schools operating through the end of the school year. Immediate action is necessary. The longer Gov. Snyder waits to act, the more the children of Buena Vista will continue to be set back through no fault of their own.”

Yesterday, in an open letter, Congressman Kildee called on Gov. Rick Snyder to act to ensure the Buena Vista Schools reopen.

Article VIII, Section 2 of the Michigan Constitution requires that the state provide free public elementary and secondary education to Michigan students, stating “the legislature shall maintain and support a system of free public elementary and secondary schools as defined by law.”

In other words, do your damn job, Governor. One wonders if you would be acting this slowly if the private school your kids attend with its nearly $20,000 annual tuition bill were closed due to lack of money. As the newly flush Rainy Day Fund sits there like some sort of prized Republican possession to brag about, it’s raining like Hell in Buena Vista.

Do your job, Governor, and fix this.

Adding…Buena Vista isn’t the only school that is out of money. Pontiac schools are broke, too. Also, I’m not the only one looking at the $400 million in the Rainy Day Fund and asking what the hell these “leaders” are doing. So is State Rep. Stacy Erwin Oakes from Saginaw.

UPDATE: Governor Snyder is declining to intervene:

Snyder said Thursday he hopes to quickly resolve the financial crisis that caused the small Saginaw County system to lay off employees and close its doors. But the rainy day fund won’t be used to bailout Buena Vista schools, Snyder said, because “that’s not what the rainy day fund is really intended for.” {…}

Snyder said the lengthy process for installing an emergency manager in Buena Vista schools makes state intervention impractical for keeping the district running through the end of the school year.

Leadership!

Why don’t we like thee, Governor? Let me count the ways…

Mark Schauer speaks to the Youth Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party on April 27th, 2013. Photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog.

Recent polling conducted for the Democratic Governors Association and shared with Politico.com shows Mark Schauer with a lead over Rick Snyder:

In a document prepared for the DGA – and shared with POLITICO by a Democratic source – pollster Geoff Garin reveals that a recent DGA poll showed Snyder to be vulnerable to a challenge by Schauer. {…}

The poll shows Snyder tied with a generic Democrat, taking 40 percent to an unnamed Democratic opponent’s 38 percent. But Garin argues that the situation for Snyder is even more dire – especially if Schauer runs.

“The bad news for Snyder is that undecided voters are much more likely to split for the Democratic candidate: they voted for Obama over Romney by 24 points and they are 18 points more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than with the Republican Party,” Garin writes. “After hearing a brief positive description of Mark Schauer’s background, voters prefer Schauer over Rick Snyder by 54 percent to 38 percent. When given this alternative to the incumbent, independent voters favor Schauer by 16 points.”

Schauer’s lead holds up even after voters also hear “a series of criticisms of Schauer, a case statement in support of Rick Snyder’s reelection, and a series of criticisms about Rick Snyder.”

“In a fully informed trial heat, asked at the end of the survey after respondents heard both sides of the argument for both candidates, Schauer continues to lead Rick Snyder by 48 percent to 42 percent — an extremely encouraging result that bodes well for the strength of a potential Schauer candidacy,” Garin concludes. “Schauer benefits from an exceptionally strong showing among women voters, with whom he maintains a 20-point lead.”

Yeeouch. It’s no surprise, really. As Michiganders have gotten to know him, they’ve come to realize that Rick Snyder is not just a “businessman”, he’s a “business’s man”. In other words, a corporatist who sees every problem as an opportunity to fatten the bottom lines of corporations in our state. Despite his arguments to the contrary, he is, in fact, the consummate corporatist with a laundry list of accomplishments:

• Signed multiple bills into law to harm unions including making the birthplace of organized labor a Right to Work for Less state.
• Stripped massive amounts of funding from public schools to weaken them, prime to be taken over by charter schools.
• Signed legislation into law to expand charter schools including computer-based “cyber schools”.
• Gave away nearly $2 billion in the form of tax credits to corporations.
• Raised taxes on over half of the taxpayers in Michigan.

And that’s just the obvious stuff. In Detroit News op-ed yesterday, Royal Oak Education Association president Sidney Kardon hit the nail on the head:

Michigan is no longer functioning as a democracy. It is a corporate oligarchy in which aides and friends of the governor create policy in secretive groups.

The Republican Legislature is always happy to advance the corporate agenda, to the detriment of our students, public schools, and communities.

How long will Michiganians tolerate the assault on community schools to turn a profit? Snyder and his cabal of aides do not care about our kids, our communities, or our democracy. They only care about their profits. Phrases like “education reform” and the assault on unions were only stepping stones to the real right wing objective: Ensuring that you and your kids are profitable to companies.

She’s totally right (except calling us “Michiganians” rather than “Michiganders”, of course), and Governor Snyder has worked hand-in-hand to give our ideologically extreme legislature nearly everything it has asked for.

Mark Schauer, on the other hand, has a long history of working to protect the poor, the middle class, and of standing up against the corporatist Republicans both in the state legislature and during his term as a U.S. Congressman. He was instrumental in helping our domestic automakers secure the federal assistance they needed to get back on their feet and he was a fierce advocate of the Affordable Care Act.

Schauer is a brilliant campaigner and a strong fundraiser, as well. With these poll results, which echo a similar poll several weeks ago, it’s clear that, even without widespread name recognition, he will be a powerful candidate. With him and Gary Peters at the top of the ticket, I predict a huge turnout by Democrats for the November midterm election.

Everywhere I go, Democrats are totally geeked about a Schauer candidacy. Though it seemed unlikely several months ago, he’s being lobbied hard from within the party and it’s looking increasingly likely. I expect him to make an announcement very soon.

In the meantime, check out the “Draft Mark Schauer for Michigan Governor” page on Facebook. With over 500 followers in just a few weeks, it’s rapidly becoming a page to watch.

That’s not a relationship built for education

Last year, Michigan’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill that was then signed into law by Governor Snyder that expands cyber schools in our state. Michigan already has nearly a quarter of the county’s charter schools and upwards of 80% of them are for-profit, run by corporations who make decisions based on their impact on the corporate profit statement.

I’ve been concerned about this ever since the law was passed because cyber schools rob our children of the human contact and relationships that are essential for helping them become happy, productive adults with the social skills needed to be successful. The bill was, ironically, part of a package of bills the Republicans, without a trace of irony, called Parent Empowerment Education Reform (PEER.) Except that kids who “attend” cyber schools won’t actually have any peers, at least not the kind of peer you can interact directly with.

Rita Pierson is an educator who feels deeply about this topic. A teacher for 40-years, she has come to see the essential value of the relationships teachers develop with their students. She gave a TED Talk recently where she speaks in direct terms about this topic and her message is one legislators in Michigan would benefit from hearing.

We know why kids drop out. We know why kids don’t learn. It’s either poverty, low attendance, negative peer influences. We know why. One of the things we never discuss or we rarely discuss is the value and importance of human connection. Relationships. James Comer says that no significant learning can occur without a significant relationship. George Washington Carver says all learning is understanding relationships.. {…}

A colleague said to me one time, “They don’t pay me to like the kids. They pay me to teach a lesson, the kids should learn it, I should teach it, they should learn it, case closed!” Well, I said to her, “You know, kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.” {…}

For years I watched my mother take the time at recess to review, go on home visits in the afternoon, buy combs and brushes and peanut butter and crackers to put in her desk drawer for kids that needed to eat, and a washcloth and some soap for the kids who didn’t smell so good. See, it’s hard to teach kids who stink. And kids can be cruel. And so she kept those things in her desk, and years later, after she retired, I watched some of those same kids come through and say to her, “You know, Ms. Walker, you made a difference in my life. You made it work for me. You made me feel like I was somebody, when I knew, at the bottom, I wasn’t. And I want you to just see what I’ve become.” {…}

Can we stand to have more relationships? Absolutely. Will you like all your children? Of course not. And you know your toughest kids are never absent. Never. You won’t like them all, and the tough ones show up for a reason. It’s the connection. It’s the relationships. And while you won’t like them all, the key is, they can never, ever know it. So teachers become great actors and great actresses, and we come to work when we don’t feel like it, and we’re listening to policy that doesn’t make sense, and we teach anyway. We teach anyway, because that’s what we do.

Teaching and learning should bring joy. How powerful would our world be if we had kids who were not afraid to take risks, who were not afraid to think, and who had a champion? Every child deserves a champion, an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.

Fortunately, the law caps the percentage of Michigan students who can be enrolled in a cyber school at 2%. It’s puzzling why they put the cap on. If they were concerned about the quality of the education kids would receive in cyber schools, why have cyber schools at all? And if they are so blithely unconcerned about the impact that funneling tax money into the coffers of for-profit school corporations and the resulting profit-driven decision-making process that is part and parcel of their business model, why cap it? Were they concerned about the public perception of too many of our kids spending their entire school day in front of a computer? Or perhaps their intent is to get the camel’s nose under the tent with further expansion to come later.

Regardless, this is a bad law and it’s a horrendous model for educating our kids. I would love to speak to a parent who thinks that a cyber school education is right for their child. It’s a way of thinking I simply do not comprehend.

Okay, this stinks

Here’s the thing about the idea of giving Michigan parents vouchers to use at any school, public or private, to educate their kids: it’s unconstitutional. Twice in the past 35 years Michigan voters have shot down ballot proposals to allow the funneling of tax dollars into private, non-public schools. This, of course, doesn’t stop corporatist groups and individuals like the Mackinac Center or the DeVos family for pushing endlessly for a school voucher system and the shifting of tax money earmarked for education into for-profit corporations.

This past week the Detroit News did some fantastic investigative journalism and reported that a group of school reformers, a self-dubbed “skunk works“, has been meeting in secret with the Governor’s blessing to form a new sort of private school where kids will be educated on the cheap using a for-profit model and it will be paid for with vouchers. The best part? No educators are part of the group.

A secret work group that includes top aides to Gov. Rick Snyder has been meeting since December to develop a lower-cost model for K-12 public education with a funding mechanism that resembles school vouchers.

The education reform advisory team has dubbed itself a “skunk works” project working outside of the government bureaucracy and education establishment with a goal of creating a “value school” that costs $5,000 per child annually to operate, according to meeting minutes and reports obtained by The Detroit News … The school would seek to maximize the roughly $7,000 annual per-pupil funding regular schools get from taxpayers by applying “concepts familiar in the private sector — getting higher value for less money.”

John Austin, president of the State Board of Education, whose name is among those talked about as a potential candidate for Governor, knew nothing of the “skunk works” reform group. He’s suitably worried about their efforts:

The initiative is “very unnerving” given the history of Lansing lawyer Richard McLellan, a work group member, in pursuing vouchers, said John Austin, president of the State Board of Education, who was unaware of the “skunk works” project. A voucher system lets parents use tax dollars to choose between private and public schools — something prohibited by the state Constitution.

“This is disturbing to hear of secret group meetings,” Austin said. “That reflects the ideology and political agenda of the creation of a for-profit and parallel enterprise market for schools. Part of its goal is to take down the education establishment: superintendents, school boards and teachers unions.”

The group consists mainly of information technology experts along with anti-public school/anti-union reformers McLellan ensuring that their final recommendations will be aimed at privatizing the education of kids to corporate entities who will use cyber schools and computer learning models to achieve another “concept familiar in the private sector”: corporate profits. However, these profits will come directly from tax payers as the privatized schools cherry-pick the students with the best potential to fatten their bottom line, leaving special needs students and poor school districts behind to fight over an even smaller pool of funds.

The secretive group is headed up by Governor Snyder’s chief information officer, David Behen, one of five state employees on the panel. Behen says the group isn’t being secretive despite the fact that members were asked to use private email addresses “because it’s just easier”. Just why it’s easier to use one email address over another is unclear. What IS clear, however, is that the group was, indeed, secret until the Detroit News broke the story, and they wanted it to remain that way. The secrecy has elicited strong responses from educators and their union leaders across Michigan:

Four state government employees, including the state’s chief information and technology officers, were directed to use private email accounts to correspond on the project, according to records obtained by The News.

Snyder, who has made government transparency a top priority since taking office in 2011, said questions about the education reform team’s discreet actions were “overblown.”

But school groups slammed Snyder for endorsing an aide’s deliberate decision not to involve teachers and administrators in an education reform project.

“I thought we were beyond the Watergate secrecy, all kinds of things being done in a clandestine fashion,” said William Mayes, executive director of the Michigan Association of School Administrators.

Mayes said the secretive group’s deliberations leaves “a dark mark on (Snyder’s) tremendous legacy.”

Steve Cook, president of the Michigan Education Association had some pointed words, as well:

Snyder’s secret group deliberately shut out input from educators in favor of information technology companies who stand to make money off this scheme. This is a direct attempt to undermine elected school boards, principals and school employees, and it’s a slap in the face to teachers and education support professionals, who work tirelessly to educate our children every day.

Rather than holding secret meetings with corporate special interests to concoct new school voucher schemes and value-meal education, Snyder should be making the proper funding of our kids’ schools a top priority.

Michigan kids deserve a world-class education – not a dime store diploma.

Here’s David Hecker of the American Federation of Teachers Michigan:

This report indicates that Gov. Snyder and Lansing Republicans are now acting in secret to continue their work to undermine public education. First they cut $1 billion from K12 schools to give a $1.8 billion tax cut to big banks and insurance companies, then they cut a backroom deal to force through right to work, locking citizens out of the Capitol and accepting no input from Michigan workers and families.

Now we learn that Gov. Snyder’s administration has been holding secret meetings with corporate special interests to hatch a risky new voucher scheme that has been twice rejected by Michigan voters, because it shortchanges students. The idea that we would hand the keys to even more of our schools over to for-profit companies when nearly 50% of new businesses fail within five years is not what is best for our students.

Instead of setting education policy in smoke-filled rooms with lobbyists and lawyers, we need our elected leaders to start working together with teachers to invest in education and help our kids succeed. The Snyder Administration must be committed to transparency and inclusiveness to ensure that kids receive the world-class education they deserve.

I’m becoming more and more alarmed by the corporatist takeover of Michigan. It’s something I expected when Rick Snyder was elected but it’s happening on a much more profound level than I thought possible. Now that we learn that members of his staff and administration are actively working in secret to undermine public education to help provide yet another income source for private businesses, it’s time Michigan voters demand accountability from our governor. He was elected to run our state in a way that creates “more and better jobs” and provides the services we expect from our tax dollars. Those tax dollars aren’t a plum for him and his administration to award to private corporations under the guise of “efficiency”.

If Governor Snyder wants to run the government like a business, that’s his prerogative. What is NOT his prerogative is to turn our government over to business, whether it’s the education of our students, the incarceration of our prisoners or the delivery of essential public services like fire and police protection.

[CC image credit: anemoneprojectors | Flickr]

“Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value”

Photo by Chris Savage/Eclectablog

Earlier today I wrote about the budget priorities of the Michigan House Democrats. In that piece I wrote, “In stark contrast to our far-right ideological Republicans and our corporatist Governor, the Democrats’ priorities reflect concern and care for middle class families, children and seniors. Their budget is a sincere reflection of their values.”

Little did I know that, just a few hours later, House Republicans would show their values. It’s a very ugly thing to behold.

The House Appropriations subcommittee voted along party lines to cut over 200,000 people from food assistance (FOOD ASSISTANCE!!!), to cut 1,000 jobs in the Department of Human Services, and proposed cuts to services for children and the disabled. As outraged as I’ve been over GOP overreach over the past two years, this move shows that Michigan Republicans are no longer pretending that they care about children, the poor, or any of the other groups that most need our collective help in this state.

Here’s the laundry list:

• Over 1,000 workers, roughly 9% of the total staff, would be cut from the Department of Human Services, the state department that, among other things, handles welfare, food assistance and child abuse investigations
• Cuts $108.6 million from Governor Snyder’s proposed budget
• The three juvenile justice facilities in Escanaba, Grayling and Whitmore Lake would be shut down
• 30 employees who work on permanent placement for children would be fired
• 223 full time in employees in local DHS offices would be let go
• $6.2 million in funds for the Pathways to Potential program would be cut
• $683 million in food assistance funds would be eliminated which make 211,496 people ineligible for the program
• $546,000 in disability assistance — gone
• $15 million in foster care payments — eliminated, reducing the number of foster care cases by 550

These cuts are clearly going to put children at risk. Not only that, they may put the State of Michigan in legal jeopardy:

In 2006, New York-based Children’s Rights filed a class-action federal lawsuit. In it, the child welfare advocacy group accused the state of endangering children by trapping them in a system that failed to meet even basic needs. Ultimately, DHS agreed to a sweeping, multi-million dollar overhaul — still in force today and overseen by a federal court judge — that would, among other things, reduce caseloads in what most agreed had been an overwhelmed system.

The DHS has hired hundreds of new workers to meet that requirement.

Any cuts in child protection staff aren’t just a legal problem, Sara Bartosz, a Children’s Rights attorney, said.

“Reasonable case loads are absolutely essential to ensuring the safety of children in state care,” she said.

Democratic House Representative Rashida Tlaib, the minority vice chairwoman of the DHS budget subcommittee, was blunt:

We cannot afford to have any more children under our care killed or abused or neglected … These staff reductions and cuts to frontline workers will make it extremely difficult for the remaining workers to help these families and protect children from abuse and neglect. The DHS is finally beginning to comply with minimum standards set forth by the Children’s Rights Modified Settlement Agreement, but that work is not done, and cutting staff jeopardizes the progress that’s been made in protecting these vulnerable children. I fear these massive cuts to the protection of our most vulnerable children will come back to haunt us when the state struggles under increased caseloads. Michigan was sued due to these kinds of negligent actions by the Legislature in not ensuring the safety of neglected and abused children.

Democratic Representative Andrew Kandrevas called the proposal “a scorched-earth budget that harms families and the front-line workers who are trying to help them.”

Governor Snyder has, apparently, seen the House proposal. Rather than rejecting it outright as any true state leader who cares about his constituents would, he simply called them “part of the legislative process”. This budget proposal isn’t “part of the legislative process”, it’s a cold, heartless, and intentionally cruel approach a saving money to funnel into the coffers of their corporate benefactors. And it’s being done on the backs of children, the disabled, and the most needy citizens of our state.

“Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value”

[Caricature by DonkeyHotey from photos by Anne C. Savage for Eclectablog]

This week the Michigan House Democrats revealed their budget priorities for the year. In stark contrast to our far-right ideological Republicans and our corporatist Governor, the Democrats’ priorities reflect concern and care for middle class families, children and seniors. Their budget is a sincere reflection of their values. By the same token, Republicans show what they value as they work to eviscerate public education, demonize teachers and other public employees, raise taxes on the majority of middle class Michiganders and cut taxes for corporations by an astonishing $2 billion.

Here is an overview of the Dems’ budget:

House Speaker Tim Greimel released the following information:

The funding priorities include:

• $781.8 million in middle-class tax relief, including the repeal of the senior tax, restoration of the $600 per-child deduction, fully restoring the Homestead Property Tax Credit and phasing back in the Earned Income Tax Credit
• Restoring $537 million to Michigan classrooms, including $65 million for early childhood education
• Making higher education more affordable with a $37.5 million investment
• reating real jobs for our Michigan workers with an investment of $50 million for film incentives and brownfield redevelopment and historic preservation incentives at $20 million
• Protecting our community values with a $62.4 million investment for public safety and local services, $4 million for women’s health and $16 million in veteran services

To fund these expenditures, House Democrats propose to prioritize the budget and get rid of corporate welfare programs that don’t work. “We can’t afford to spend taxpayer funds on tax breaks for big corporations that don’t create more jobs. Michigan families, not CEOs, are the key to reviving Michigan’s economy,” Greimel said.

Funding sources for the House Democratic budget include:

• $115 million from reducing MEDC’s corporate welfare programs that have no track record of creating new jobs
• $206 million by accepting federal Medicaid expansion dollars
• $200 million in eliminating government waste through audit savings
• $300 million from cost-effective vendor contracts
• $158 million from the budget stabilization fund

These are solid, pro-family, pro-middle class priorities and proposals. It will be interesting to see how the Republicans respond. Since none of this includes further erosion of women’s reproductive health options, destruction of unions, demonizing teachers, shifting the tax burden to the middle class, denying democracy to Democratic constituents, or paying for corporate tax breaks on the backs of working families, students or senior citizens, one would expect they will reject it in its entirety.

Because that, my friends, is how they roll.

P.S. House Democrats are also rolling out a plan today — which is National Pay Equity Day, the day on which women catch up to men in terms of their earnings from 2012 — to restore pay equity to Michigan women. While I fully expect Republicans to reject this, as well, we should all watch Republican women legislators closely to see if they will vote against their own self-interest and the majority of Michiganders when this package of legislation comes before them.