Switalski Comments on the Status of the Budget What a difference a year makes. The Senate finished a productive week in That is a stark contrast from last year. We are on target to finish our budget ahead of time this year, well before July 1st. You may recall that we didn’t finish last year until November, and the Government actually shut down for a few hours in October before we could reach any agreements. The constant bickering, the all-night sessions, the dueling press conferences are all so last year. There is a new spirit of cooperation and mutual respect between the parties and the chambers this year. It’s like when you finally have the big fight in the schoolyard, the antagonists bloody each other up and then become friends. It is kind of like that in the Michigan Legislature. Once you’ve gone through an ordeal like last year’s battle, you know whom you can trust and you also gain respect and understanding of where colleagues are coming from. Even when you disagree, you find a way to argue without losing your temper. You concentrate reaching a conclusion, not fighting for its own sake. That’s where we are now. We disagreed about funding for decline in property values and resulting property tax payments, we agreed to lower the funding increase for schools. That is the reasonable thing to do, but in the past that hasn’t always happened. We had a spirited debate about how much to give every district and how big of an equity payment or bonus to pay to the lowest funded districts. I offered an amendment to raise the minimum all districts would get and lower the bonus payments only some would get, and it failed by one vote. We had a spirited debate, and I lost. But I then addressed the Senate Chamber. I voted for the bill, as did most of my colleagues. "You know, this marks the seventh of eight budget bills that we are going to do in this chamber, originating in this chamber. I would like to thank the Senate for the rapidity with which we have moved these bills. You know, yesterday and today we had good debates about some fundamental issues on bills, but we had good, respectful debates. We had honest and open exchange of views and we came to a conclusion. We’ve received agreement on these bills. I think I’d like to thank the members for the way that they’ve conducted themselves on some things that are pretty hard issues and some have pretty strong feelings about them. I think what we’ve done stands in contrast to last year. I think it’s a message to the people of Now we do have differences on the form and the size of equity payments in this and the need for early childhood and for small high schools, but overall, this budget accomplishes many worthwhile goals. There is a foundation increase almost double the size of what we had last year, and it provides additional dollars for declining enrollments, school-based health centers, credit recovery for students who failed algebra, and hold harmless funding of $4.7 million for school readiness. The infrastructure grants provide almost $20 per pupil to districts, and the health care and pension contributions for school districts have gone done for the second year in a row. That is almost unheard of. Everywhere else, we’re worried about double-digit increases in health care. That is a very significant savings statistic. So these are important improvements from where we stood a year ago, Mr. President. You remember, we were down $1.75 billion in the hole. We really had no hopes of getting a budget done. It took us until October to get finished. We had about this time of the year, we had just passed a budget bill that had cut $300 million out of the School Aid Fund and zeroed out a proposed 2.5 percent increase. We ended up giving a percent last year and now nearly 2 percent this year. So I think this bill today validates the actions we took last fall, and I think it’s an honest budget. It’s free of any gimmicks, one-time spending, or smoke or mirrors. We’ve got something that we all can be proud of. So while it’s not a perfect bill, this K-12 budget is one that I’m proud to support. It doesn’t mean I didn’t think the 2X-plus would have been better, but on balance, this is a good budget. I hope all members will support it." They did.
March 28, 2008 by Senator Michael Switalski
Posted in Budget
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