Friday, the state of Michigan sent a memo to 35,000 of its 53,000 workers instructing them not to come into work on Monday because they are being temporarily laid off until such time as a budget is passed. This is reasonable as you don't want to have people come into work if you can't pay them, but there's a problem. Union contracts require at least twenty days' notice of impending layoffs to give those workers time to prepare (one of the good things unions have been able to procure for their members). Several hours after the temporary layoffs were announced, the Civil Service Commission failed to enact a rule change that would have enabled the governor to follow through on the announcement. Granted, it's not like this is something that sort came out of the blue, so workers have probably been preparing for this eventuality for some time, but the governor's failure to put herself in a position to deal with the looming shutdown by temporarily laying off non-essential workers in a manner consistent with the contract the state has signed with its workers' unions is yet another example of how her governance of the state has been utterly inept.
Governor Granholm is bound and determined to advance policies which continue to prevent Michigan from dealing with its severe economic problems (highest unemployment rate in the country) for the sake of protecting the interests of her union backers, and now she's willing to let the government close down in order to secure these aims. The sad thing is that the tax increases the governor wants to impose aren't even necessary for the fiscal health of the state. What's more, if the state wanted to save another $194 million, it could move its employees into Health Savings Accounts.
In her 2006 State of the State address, Granholm said that, because of her economic policies, we'd be blown away (this after four years of the state economy tanking on her watch). So far, she's being proven right, though not in the way she probably had in mind.
1 comment:
The madness has been growing since the beginning of the year and before. But the Governor is only one part of the triad that owns Michigan's current budget crisis. The Republican Senate and Democratic House each deserve their share of the blame for failing to do their jobs.
Yes, Gov. Granholm should have been on top of things and sent out layoff notices at the beginning of September. Maybe if she had done that, the legislators would have seen the seriousness of the situation and gotten down to business instead of asking for my time to fiddle while Michigan burns.
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