Daniel Howes' Blog

Untying the labor knot key to Michigan's deepening money woes

At some point, the politically indefensible costs of Michigan's spending on public-employee wages and benefits will collide with the economically unsustainable. Actually, we're already at the unsustainable part; just waiting for politics to catch up.

Over the weekend, the Dearborn Press & Guide carried a surprisingly revealing piece about a Plante & Moran study of Dearborn Public Schools. Apparently Dearborn spends more per student on bus service than peer communities; it spends more on custodial services per square foot; it has a profusion of pools at its schools, driving up maintenance costs.

Privatizing bus service cuts transportation costs as much as 25 percent, the district was told. Privatizing custodial services can cut the cost of those services up to 50 percent. But privatize services? The district didn't ask for those kinds of recommendations, because they're politically incorrect.

"I can think of dozens of things we used to do for our students that we don't do now," Mary Lane, a school board member, told the Press & Guide. "I don't know what else there is left to cut," added Aimee Blackburn, also a board member.

Nothing "left to cut" evidently is code for "can't touch union jobs." Which is the economically unsustainable part of the inexorable slide toward the politically indefensible. At some point the people whose state and local taxes keep these work forces comparatively whole will collide with the reality that most of us in the private sector are paying three times: Once at work, with pay cuts, benefits eroded, maybe jobs lost; a second time with the climb-down in state and local revenues and how it effects property values, retail districts, school and municipal services; and a third time with the refusal of elected officials to demand some sacrifice from public-sector employees.

"Excessive political influence of ... unions makes it impossible for our political class to solve these and countless other problems," writes Jack McHugh, senior legislative analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, in a blog post here. "The real choice is whether the perks, privileges and numbers of Michigan's school and government employees will finally yield to the reality of a fiscal tsunami. For most members of the political establishment the decision was made long ago: No way.

"That choice made, all that's left is wrangling over which other components of our society will go under the bus: Medicaid doctors, college students, business owners, investors, families, taxpayers and even welfare recipients. The sacred trust that the political class will never, never break is protecting the privileged class of 'public servants' and their unions from having to share the sacrifice."

Don't need to take ol' Jack's word for it. Look at the fruits, so far, of the budget debacle, at the state of the school budget, at the vitriol heaped on those who dare suggest -- as my colleague Nolan Finley did Sunday -- that cuts to classroom spending be spared and taken instead from the Cadillac benefit plans of public school teachers. They're 41 percent higher, on average, than the national average and consume 35 percent of school-district budgets.

The point here is not -- I repeat, not -- to demonize teachers or public employees. The point is to illuminate the self-aggrandizing way political power continues to be wielded by the institutional unions, their leaders and lobbyists at the state and local levels. And it's killing the ability of state legislators and local school board members like those in Dearborn to cope with the serious (and, most likely, permanent) step-down in financial resources.

What's it gonna take to reverse the trend? Until it changes in places like Michigan, California, New York and New Jersey, the downward spiral will continue -- and communities will be the poorer for it.