LANSING ? Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Friday that her administration has laid the foundation for the “Next Michigan” she described in her second inaugural address of 2007, where the state would have a diversified economy and better-educated workforce.
Leaving office in 15 days after a wrenching eight years of economic upheaval, Granholm, continuing a series of exit interviews with news media outlets, acknowledged that achieving the vision she laid out as she began her second term is still a work in progress.
“When our unemployment rate is at 12.4 percent, you can’t say you’ve arrived yet,” she acknowledged in an interview that included reporters from Gongwer News Service.
Granholm will officially transfer power to Governor-elect Rick Snyder at noon January 1 on the east steps of the Capitol when he takes the oath of office to become the state’s 48th governor.
In the wide-ranging interview, Granholm covered a variety of topics, including the government shutdowns of 2007 and 2009, her corrections policies, the woes of the Detroit Public Schools, her much-debated and criticized approach to higher education, her budget policies, the removal hearings against Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the difficult relationship she had with Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester).
The rancor between Granholm and Bishop was notorious, but Granholm said she did everything she could to improve it.
“I have tried everything from carrots to sticks,” she said. “Ultimately, it came down to a fundamental difference of opinion.”
Granholm shared with reporters that she visited Bishop near his South Haven cottage in the summer of 2007. At a local Big Boy, she said the two talked about how they could get along better.
Asked whether she could have tried to establish a personal relationship, Granholm, said, “Tried. Tried.”
Despite the conflict, Granholm said she was still able to work with the Legislature and accomplish 80 percent of what she proposed in her various State of the State addresses, and that she vetoed legislation less frequently during Bishop’s tenure than when both chambers of the Legislature were controlled by Republicans.
Indeed, most of the most significant policy changes during Granholm’s time in office came during her second term, while having to work with Bishop, such as the workplace smoking ban, “Race to the Top” education reforms, the Great Lakes water compact and the renewable energy legislation.
Still, many times, Granholm lamented that the Senate was immovable on several issues.
The piece of legislation Granholm said she grappled with the most whether to sign in her eight years in office was replacing the 2007 sales tax on services with the Michigan Business Tax surcharge. In fact, Granholm said it was mistake to sign the bill.
“In the end, I said to the business community, ‘Both of these affect the business community. If you’re telling me you will create more jobs if I sign the surcharge rather than a sales tax on services, then I’m going to listen to you, but I don’t think it’s a good thing for the future of Michigan because I think we have to spread the sales tax more to services so we that can fund public education,'” she said.
She said her biggest regret was the defunding of the Michigan Promise Scholarship in the 2009-10 budget. She recalled how Senate Republicans, under then-Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, had made what was then the Merit Award scholarship their top budget priority in her first term only to see the Senate GOP kill the program in 2009. Granholm could have vetoed the higher education budget for 2009-10 in an attempt to save the program, but did not do so.
The governor said her best moment as governor was when President Barack Obama came to Holland for the opening of an advanced battery plant there.
“It was symbolic of the future of Michigan and the steps we’ve taken and are still taking to diversify our economy,” she said. “It was a great way to put Michigan in the national spotlight for the electrification of the vehicle.”
The worst moment was when Obama called her to inform her he was putting General Motors into bankruptcy.
“It was clear that the auto industry in Michigan would never be the same,” she said.
THE NEXT MICHIGAN: Changing the curriculum standards for K-8 and then for high school students was a critical piece of her vision for the Next Michigan, Granholm said. Students have continued to improve their math and reading skills and the state has seen the dropout rate among high school students decline from 15 percent to just more than 11 percent.
Seeing a 70 percent increase in the number of students taking advanced placement courses shows policy matters, Granholm said.
“If you send the right signals and the right expectations, people will conform,” she said.
But the governor also said the state’s energy reform of 2008, coupled with battery grants offered by the U.S. Department of Education, also have advanced the “Next Michigan” argument.
Since 2008, Michigan has seen 48 new bio-energy, wind, solar and advanced battery companies come to the state with 89,918 jobs created and $9 billion in new investment, she said.
When the state was unable to keep Electrolux from closing here and shipping jobs to Mexico, Granholm said that was a turning point for her team in terms of economic development.
“That realization caused us to just shake the economic development blanket and say we need to focus on what we know we can compete in,” she said, which is why the state focused on six core areas: tourism, film, alternative energy, advanced manufacturing, homeland security and defense, life sciences.
While she didn’t have any apprehension signing the 21st Century Jobs Fund, Granholm said her administration did struggle with how to shape that legislation as it was signed into law.
The Legislature had sent various tax cuts along with the jobs fund bill back in 2005, but because of a series of tie-bars, Granholm was able to act on some components, while others were vetoed.
Republican lawmakers balked at Granholm’s actions, saying she had abandoned tax relief for job providers.
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