Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing) slammed the GOP education budget Wednesday in a speech on the floor as the state Senate prepared to pass the contentious budget deal that cuts education funding significantly.

“It is a budget that robs our kid’s future. Taking 400 million out of a fund that was supposed to be set aside for K-12 education and spends it instead on tax cuts for business. Tax cuts without the promise of a single job or investment in the state of Michigan. Now, granted, you are robbing the school aid fund less than the governor proposed to. But it’s still wrong. You’re still cutting schools when they don’t need to be cut. There is a balance in the school aid fund. This is a cut of choice.”

Whitmer then pleaded with Republicans to vote no on the budget, as well as on the immediate effect vote. A budget bill must be approved, then provided an immediate effect vote in order for the budget to go into effect when the governor signs it.

You can see Whitmer’s speech here.

Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero introduced his 2012 city budget to the Lansing City Council last night. The budget includes an estimated $20 million deficit caused by declining property values and proposed cuts in state revenue sharing.

To close that budget hole, Bernero’s “worst case” budget plan proposes eliminating as many as 78 positions from the police department and 71 from the fire department, reports the Lansing State Journal. The proposal would also cut millions in road repair funds, close three fire stations and scale back on housing and code compliance officials.

Bernero has backed a May 3 ballot move to increase property taxes. That proposal would raise nearly $4 million for the city’s general fund. That could lead to some police and fire officials coming back to the job, he says.

In a press statement released before Bernero addressed the city council, Bernero had this to say about his budget:

“We find ourselves in a serious predicament, one not of our own making,” Bernero said. “We are fortunate that the most profound economic crisis this state has endured since the Great Depression has not hit Lansing as hard as many others. But make no mistake, even as we see unmistakable signs that our recovery is finally underway, the worst impacts of the national economic meltdown are only now finding their way to the bottom line of our city budget.”

Bernero says he will seek unspecified concessions from the city’s union workers. Such concessions could include things like furlough days for the non-emergency workers of city hall.

The proposed budget is the smallest since 2001, and represents a 9.2% reduction from the fiscal year 2011 adopted budget.

Luke outlines the crisis as it brewed this past decade, thusly:

It took a decade to lose close to a million jobs. It will take at least a quarter-century to get them all back.
Two statistics in the agency’s report illustrate why the decade was about as bad as it could get.

U.S. car sales that surpassed 17 million in 1999 plunged to about 10 million this year, with the Detroit Three’s market share dropping from 65 to 45 percent.

Personal income — right at the national average in 1999 — plummeted to only 86 percent of the national average in 2009.

And what does Luke say that translates to in terms of budget issues:

Another huge hole must be dealt with because tax receipts and spending for health care, public safety and education don’t match up. This fresh gap results from the loss of federal stimulus funding that in the current fiscal year provided $1.5 billion.
Congress may well step in with another bailout. But there are only three other options to keep Michigan solvent: cut spending by 20 percent, raise taxes on the order of the 2007 hike in income tax, or a combination.

Luke goes on to outline a desperate picture facing public universities, which were spared the budget ax this year because of stimulus money strings, prisons and Medicaid. Basically the 2010-2011 budget year battle will make anything we have seen thus far look like a walk in the park on a beautiful spring day. Get ready for the storm of the century, political grand standing and cutting the budget bones with possible amputations of essential government services. All of this will be informed and poisoned by, a brewing governor’s race, battle by the Dems to retain control of the House and the war to wrest control of the Senate from the GOP.

Dave Bing

DETROIT — Having secured another four years in office with an election victory Tuesday night, Mayor Dave Bing is continuing with business.

One of the mayor’s pressing concerns is getting municipal unions to concede to major cuts to pay and benefits, something that has challenged the mayor since he was first elected in May and something his predecessor, Kenneth Cockrel Jr., struggled with in his short tenure as interim mayor.

In October, Bing gave the city’s 50 union-bargaining units until this Friday to concede to his proposed cuts or face mass layoffs of up to 3,500 workers, the Detroit Free Press reports.

Bing also tried to halt the city’s collection of union dues, but the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 25 filed a lawsuit against Bing alleging that he illegally terminated their contracts. On Wednesday, a judge ruled in favor of AFSCME, ordering Bing and the city to continue collecting union dues.

As the Friday deadline for concession nears, both Bing and union leaders are refusing to give ground.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the Michigan State Police has already sent out 11 layoff notices to school bus inspectors.

“People are dying without health care, there are fewer police on the streets to protect us, and now we can’t even get our kids to school unless we agree to do away with safety inspections?” David Holtz, executive director of Progress Michigan said in a statement from the group. “This is the height of absurdity, and Mike Bishop’s at the top of it all.”

The Freep reports:

“The [school bus] inspections are a crucial part of ensuring school buses are safe. The most recent data, for the 2008-09 school year, showed that while 89% ( 15,214) of the school buses passed inspection, 9% (1,606) failed and were put out of service. Another 2% (264) had violations that had to be repaired within 60 days of the inspection.

Current state law mandates third party bus inspections, something that will have to change under the new budget. “The law may be amended quickly to make bus inspections voluntary,” Rep. Richard LeBlanc, (D-Westland) told The Detroit News.

Progress Michigan is calling on Bishop and the Senate Republicans to adopt the House’s revenue package and restore funding for health care, public safety and education.

“Some wonder why the Senate is willing to risk the safety of school children rather than raise revenues to address the underlying budget deficit,” the press release noted.

Since Bing is largely expected to win in November after getting more than 70 percent of the vote in the August primary, he has the advantage of getting to know who he will be working with next year.

The meeting had a high turnout, with 12 of the 13 challenging candidates in attendance. Bing used the time to let future council members know that his main goal in the upcoming year will be working to shrink the city’s $300 million budget deficit, the Detroit Free Press reports.

According to candidates who attended, the meeting went smoothly and helped challengers get an idea of the mayor’s agenda well before their first day in office.

One candidate who found the meeting informative said others shared his opinion.

“Everyone there was very receptive and pleased with the fact that he reached out to candidates – that’s fairly unprecedented,” Fred Elliot Hall told the Michigan Messenger. “[Bing’s] priority is to get Detroit’s fiscal house in order.”

At the meeting Bing said he believed unions will eventually see that cuts are inevitable and be willing to cede in negotiations for pay cuts. “[Bing] believes unions will get on board,” Hall said.

In calling this meeting Bing seems to be extending an olive branch to potential council members new to city hall to help mend a rift that had been growing between the mayor and city council members over the past couple of years since Ex-Mayor Kilpatrick was in office.

“The city has a cash flow problem that we’ve got to solve short term,” Bing told reporters at an ARISE Detroit! event, according to The Detroit News. Bing said that many people, including union officials will be unhappy with the cuts but that there was “no way around” layoffs.

Bing, who is expected to win in the Aug. 4 primary and the general election in November, said his administration will have a list of department mergers and eliminations before the end of next month.

Late Thursday morning, Free Press Editor Paul Anger sent a memo to staff about job cuts at the state’s largest newspaper. The memo was leaked to Gannett Blog, and has been confirmed as authentic by sources at the Free Press.

Part of the memo follows:

Reductions will involve about 10% of both bargaining unit and non-bargaining unit staff. Here are bargaining unit job classifications that will have reductions, and the number of positions we plan to reduce in each:

Editorial Writers – 1

Part-time Reporters – 4

Artists – 2

Picture Editors – 1

Librarian – 1

News Archivist – 1

Designers – 1

Sports Agate Editors – 2

Editorial Research Assistants – 1

Part-time Editorial Research Assistant – 1

Copy Editors – 1

Part-Time Copy Editors – 2

Part-Time Web Editors – 2

One source at the Free Press tells Michigan Messenger that Free Press staffers have known the cuts were coming because of an overall decline in revenues from advertising, something that is happening at most newspapers across the country.

Earlier this year, the two newspapers announced they were reducing home delivery to three days a week — Thursday, Friday and Sunday — and moving toward a Web-focused news operation. Earlier on Thursday, the Associated Press reported the two newspapers, who are under a joint-operating agreement, announced they kept more subscriptions than expected during the home delivery transition and saw an increase in single-copy purchases. The companies said they also saw an increase in Web traffic.

The Free Press source said the companies kept subscriptions 10 percent above what had been originally projected.