Daniel Howes

As Massachusetts voters speak, Lansing leaders should listen

Hey Lansing: The electoral aftershock from the special U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts sends a clear message to those of you in search of higher office or rescuing a legacy: Ignore the basic economic worries of folks at your peril.

Anybody listening?

This is a key election year for Michigan, the final year of its first "lost decade." And yet the latest proposal from Senate Republicans to steer the state back into the black amounts to another half-measure that focuses pain on a rival constituency (public-sector unions) even as it avoids acknowledging that Michigan has a revenue problem, too (because that would rile the GOP base and imperil Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop's bid to become attorney general).

The Democrats? Even worse, starting with Gov. Jennifer Granholm's slow walk on comprehensive tax reform and her reflexive defense of the public employee lobby. Add Speaker Andy Dillon's one-note shot at health-care reform for state employees and retirees, and what you get are risk-averse leaders of both parties unwilling to table comprehensive solutions to big, complicated problems lest they alienate their respective bases.

Here's a thought: Political success, and the beginnings of an economic turn here, might accrue to the pol with the guts to treat voters like adults and push a comprehensive turnaround plan that recognizes what most normal people already know. Michigan's tax structure is out of whack; the wages and benefits for public employees and retirees are unsustainable; spending too much matters; and the state's image mostly says "not open for business."

Voters may not embrace every proposal, best articulated by the "Michigan Turnaround Plan" being flacked by Business Leaders for Michigan, the statewide CEO group. But what voters clearly won't embrace, if the electoral smackdowns of Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia are any indication, is a) playing politics and doing nothing or b) doing something that imperils the economic vitality of their employers and themselves.

Nowhere is this more relevant than in Michigan. The state, by itself, accounted for half of the private-sector jobs lost nationwide in the past decade. Company after company has tweaked benefits, cut wages or ordered no-pay furloughs, eliminated jobs through buy-outs and layoffs -- all because revenue imploded, just like is happening to the state Treasury.

You don't need an MBA from Michigan or a Ph.D. in economics from State to understand these simple economic concepts, or to get that you can't spend more than you take in. Basic common sense leads to the inescapable conclusion that the path out of this fiscal mess includes a thicket of reforms -- tax reform, wage and benefit cuts like so many in the private sector, structural reform, local consolidation -- sure to offend just about every constituency.

Bishop, the Senate majority leader from Rochester, and Dillon, the speaker from Redford, can push their targeted proposals, likely to go nowhere. But a comprehensive plan grounded in a cold assessment of where Michigan really is can only come from the governor.

And why not? She says she won't ever again seek elected office. She's in the last year of her final term. She has a legacy shaped in part by many events beyond her control, which is why a comprehensive turnaround plan that would borrow from the Republicans and pull her own Democratic levers is her best shot to influence the narrative of her tenure.

She has nothing to lose. The guv is preparing a package of reforms that one administration official described as surprising, adding that "the governor likes most of what the business community has put on the table" -- rebalanced tax policy, more rigorous forecasting and budgeting, pay and benefit cuts for state employees, regulatory reform that would help move Michigan up in the ranks of states ripe for new investment.

Yes, it's an election year. Yes, there's little incentive, in the traditional sense, for politicians to risk their re-election with unpopular and painful legislation so close to an election.

But a lesson of Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts, as well as gubernatorial elections last November, is that voters are ready and willing to punish those whose ideological agendas blind them to the economic realities real people face every day. Because it's all about the economy, stupid. Still.

dchowes@detnews.com (313) 222-2106 Daniel Howes' column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays