LANSING – It seems the Michigan Senate
can add one more group to its list of skeptics on its plan to fix Michigan
roads, as the Michigan Association of Counties says it cannot get behind the
plan because of its reliance on funding shifts.
“MAC has consistently supported
the difficult, but necessary, decision to raise additional revenues to meet the
crisis. Unfortunately, this plan, like others before it, relies heavily on
funding shifts,” Steve Currie, deputy director of MAC, said in a
statement. “Our fear, backed by more than a decade of evidence, is funding
shifts will equal cuts to local governments, further crippling counties.”
Last week, the Senate passed – after
a long, seven-hour session spent mostly garnering votes for the proposal – a
plan that raises the gas tax by 15 cents over time and creates parity with how
the state taxes diesel fuel (See Gongwer
Michigan Report, July 1, 2015). Also included in the package is an income
tax rollback (SB
414
) that moves $700 million from income tax revenues to the
Michigan Transportation Fund for roads, rather than going to the General and
School Aid funds as it does currently.
“We are already in a financial
crisis and more cuts to local public services won’t fix what ails
Michigan,” Currie said. “As our constituents know, you don’t raid
your mortgage account to pay your utility bills. Recent polling has shown
Michigan taxpayers will make investments to fix their roads. Let’s follow their
lead.”
Groups such as the Michigan
Municipal League, the League for Public Policy, and others were also concerned
about the proposal (See Gongwer
Michigan Report, July 1, 2015).
The package is now before the House
– the chamber in which it originated, though in a much different form – where
some majority Republicans have described the plan as “significant”
and “aggressive,” and have uncertainty about the proposal as a whole.
This story was published by Gongwer
News Service. To subscribe, click on www.gongwer.com
