© J. Adrian Wylie

Best Practices or Budget Cuts?

Governor Snyder's baby carrots

by James Leonard

posted 10/1/2011

Asked how the reinvention of Michigan is working for the Ann Arbor School District, school board president Deb Mexicotte replies, "Lousy."

Governor Rick Snyder is pushing local governments and school districts to adopt what he calls "best practices." For cities, he says, that means three things: transparency, collaboration, and health benefits. For schools, he adds two more: outsourcing and health insurance ownership.

The plan enacted by the legislature uses a stick-and-carrot approach to get municipalities and schools to cooperate. The stick is that municipalities will lose all revenue sharing and schools up to $500 in per-pupil funding if they don't go along. The carrot, which is really only a baby carrot, is that if they cooperate, they can get some of that money back: up to $300 per pupil for schools and up to two-thirds of their 2010 revenue sharing for municipalities.

That means a cut of up to $1.4 million for Ann Arbor--"and we're already getting $5 million less a year than we used to ten years ago in total revenue sharing, constitutional and statutory," says mayor John Hieftje. "They then eliminated statutory revenue [sharing], but they tell us we can get two-thirds back again--maybe--by meeting the three criteria."

Hieftje figures Ann Arbor as a cinch for two. For transparency, the governor wants municipalities to put a "dashboard" on their websites showing their budgets and other financial information. "We're very transparent," says the mayor. "We already have it out there.

"As far as collaboration goes," the mayor continues, "we already collaborate with the county for community development, and we have combined data service with the county, and we have combined police dispatch. And we plan to do more."

The governor also wants employees to cover 10 percent of their health insurance premiums themselves. "Our staff is paying 12 percent," Hieftje says, "but that's without police and fire." The police officers union strongly opposed premium copays, arguing that its members were harmed by radon in the department's former offices. But they agreed

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in September to accept them--under pressure from state legislation that would mandate even bigger employee contributions.

The mayor believes the city will get "the maximum for transparency, collaboration, and health insurance. But it still won't add up to what we got last year, and the state will expect us to do more with less."

For schools, Snyder wants the same three "practices," plus taking bids to outsource non-educational services and becoming the policyholder on their employees' health insurance, meaning it'll no longer be subject to collective bargaining.

Mexicotte reckons Ann Arbor will likely get credit for at least four out of five. "There's a net loss of $500 per student, but we could get $300 per student back, which is worth about $1.6 million total to us. We've got the collaboration piece, and this dashboard is just a web thing. But we're not sure how they'll count the benefits. Our employees already put in an average of 10 percent, though some individuals might be paying more or less. Also, we capped health care costs, which should count for something."

But however the state grades the school district, it's got to be higher than the grade Mexicotte gives the governor. "Snyder's been in office eight months, and he's accomplished a huge amount of stuff in that time," she says acerbically. "He's trashed education, he's gotten tax cuts for business, and he's set up emergency officers to take over our cities and schools."

In Ann Arbor, she adds, "We've had to slash programs and cut seventy teachers because next year we have $14 million in cuts. That's three years straight of double-digit cuts--which isn't how you build a better school system."

Mexicotte doesn't believe "best practices" are really the governor's goal. "This is about breaking unions and removing locally elected officials and board members, and it will push some school districts over the edge financially," she predicts. "Ypsilanti and Willow Run are already in default. They're broke!"   

[Originally published in October, 2011.]

 

 

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