The Only Campaign Promise Snyder Has Kept - Part 2

This is Part 2 of a multi-part series of articles discussing the prediction made by Snyder a mere two days before the election that won him the governor’s office and how he has done everything possible to see that his prediction comes true. This series is just the beginning. I will be publishing a book in August (co-written with Randa Morris) about the first three years under the Snyder administration.

 

It was mentioned in Part 1 that on October 31, 2010, Rick Snyder made the following statement to the Ann Arbor News in answer to why services need to be consolidated by municipalities.

“Literally there’s a fairly significant likelihood that you could have hundreds of jurisdictions going insolvent in the 2013, 14 time frame, if not sooner. It’s not just a Michigan issue. This is the next hidden national issue.”

No one caught the dire prediction and he was elected by a wide margin. Since gaining office, he has implemented austerity measures much like those attempted by former Governor Engler in the 90s. Many of the policies were directly out the play book of the uber-conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy, primarily funded by folks like Dick DeVos, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a bill mill primarily funded by the Koch brothers.

In order to ensure that his “prediction” would come true, Snyder began eviscerating the state budget as soon as he got into office. His first budget for 2012 (submitted in 2011) claimed huge cuts for education and even larger tax breaks for large corporations. By cutting funding to education, Snyder deprived school districts of the needed funding to provide an adequate education. This forced many districts to the brink of financial despair, and forced several over the cliff into deficit-land.

As soon as the original PA4 law was passed March 16, 2011, Snyder also began training Emergency Managers. Although he assured citizens that he only intended to use the law “sparingly,” there were more than 400 Emergency Managers trained to take over school systems and municipalities. When applying common sense and thinking about the “sparing use” promised by Snyder, one would likely determine that a maximum of maybe two dozen EMs would be needed to have a fully trained contingent of personnel to select from in the event an EM was assigned. But yet there were more than 400 people trained within the first year of the passage of the law.

Some people began to see the direction the governor and the legislature were headed and they began to take action. A recall campaign was started in March 2011, with ordinary citizens organizing and calling for action. Sadly, the unions still put their trust in Snyder, the legislature, and smoky, back room deals made in secrecy.

 

 

 

Shortly after the recall effort began, a different group of organizers began a repeal effort to bring the Emergency Manager Law before voters. That effort was supported by AFSCME 25 and Michigan Forward. They managed to collect enough signatures to put the matter on the ballot, but faced a legal battle over a trumped up charge about incorrect font sizes on the petitions. The fontgate battle against the repeal effort was headed by the same lawyer that argued against the language in the recall ballot against Governor Snyder.

Eventually the fontgate issue was settled favorably and the matter of the Emergency Manager Law, PA4, was put on the November 2012 ballot for voters to decide.

During the same timeframe, the recall effort failed to gather enough signatures, but did manage to collect almost 500,000 signatures. Since the effort was an all-volunteer force and the organizers spent less than $75,000, the volunteers did a phenomenal job.

The entire recall effort was made without the support of any unions (because they were double-dealing behind closed doors at this stage in a futile attempt to avoid the threatened Right to Work legislation) or the Michigan Democratic Party, which is largely controlled by the power of the unions. In fact, many unions and the MDP were actively working against the recall effort in 2011 by sending communications to their members recommending that they not participate, even as volunteers in any recall efforts.

In spite of that, there were numerous union members actively gathering signatures, and especially many MEA teachers, who saw the writing on the wall before union leadership admitted it. Those teachers should be commended for their participation, determination, and drive to make things right for the state against the desires of their union leaders.

At the same time as the recall against the governor and the repeal effort for PA4, there were petitions filed against every sitting Republican Senator and many Republican Representatives. In total, there were more than 30 recall petitions running simultaneously in an effort by the citizens to stop the bloodbath that was unleashed in early 2011. A few haphazard petitions were filed against Democratic Representatives by the Tea Party, in an attempt to threaten them into voting for the cracked policies of the GOP/Tea Party in the House and to use their influence to make the citizen-led recall efforts stop.

This is the end of Part 2. As this continues, please bear in mind that many more details will be revealed in the book coming out in August. Stay turned for Part 3 coming out soon.