Recall election didn't resolve anything

By Peter Luke

Gov. Rick Snyder’s campaign vow to change the political culture that governs Lansing suffered the same dismal fate as former Rep. Paul Scott this week.

The Grand Blanc Republican surrendered his office Wednesday less than 12 hours after conceding that he’d been recalled by voters of the 51st House District by a slim, though unofficial, 232-vote margin.

Scott, who as chairman of the House Education Committee, was in a key position to advance Snyder’s agenda, can file next spring to get his job back in the November 2012 election. Though he’s barred from the Feb. 28 ballot that will determine who will serve out the rest of his term.

Snyder, on the other hand, has to examine why he has yet to reinvent a political environment that remains incapable of producing bipartisan outcomes. That was the goal he outlined in his inaugural address: "We have spent too much time fighting among ourselves and become our own worst enemy. I've been hired to represent all of the people of the state of Michigan and to move us all forward together.”

Or having followed up that speech with a non-combative tone and an agenda that includes many elements supported by Democrats in the past, does he now chuck such an approach? Republican operatives have three weeks to pay for the collection of enough signatures to put six Democratic House members up for recall on that same ballot on Feb. 28, which happens to be Republican presidential primary day in Michigan.

And do Snyder and Republicans now aggressively pursue issues the Michigan Education Association, through its financing of the Scott recall effort, hopes to block through the intimidating impact of its success? Those would include eliminating district withholding of union dues from teacher paychecks, placing further restrictions on the MEA’s health management affiliate and outright scrapping of compulsory union membership in local school districts.

Yet none of those things had become law when Scott was tossed from office. Nor were they reasons cited in the campaign.

He did vote to require that school workers and other public employees pay 20 percent of their health-care benefits, which is probably pretty popular with voters in the private sector, who are already paying at least that, if they still have health insurance.

And Scott did help write legislation overhauling teacher tenure; legislation that matches what a Democratic-run legislature crafted in Colorado, a reform effort that state’s Democratic governor said would “ensure that every student has an effective teacher and an effective principal.”

After their effort succeeded Tuesday, Scott’s opponents instead said his recall represented a voter rejection of Snyder’s broader agenda of education cuts and applying the income tax to pensions earned by those born after 1945 to finance tax reduction for small and medium-sized businesses.

Never mind that school aid was cut 5 percent to also protect health-care access for Democratic constituencies in the state’s Medicaid program. Or that progressive tax analysts have argued for years that senior tax benefits in Michigan were absurdly generous. Would the MEA object to taxing pensions if the proceeds averted teacher layoffs? Hardly.

Snyder’s latest ideas are more likely to be rejected by fellow Republicans, among them adding $120 a year to the cost of vehicle registration to finance road building favored by Democratic-leaning construction unions.

Which gets us back to the beginning. What is it about the culture of Lansing that invites fighting when, coming right down to it compared to Ohio and Wisconsin, there haven’t been many ideological reasons to fight?

Snyder has yet to articulate his view of the conflict, even as he’s now in the center of it. Democrats, moreover, could have forcefully opposed Scott’s recall on basic principle -- and their own self-interest, given that the targets on their own members’ backs now have to be larger. But they refused.

Why give up when you’re winning? That's a question Republican interest groups now have to be asking.

The question for lawmakers is why they would allow the institution they serve to be damaged by outside forces with their own agendas. No legislator should take delight in the ouster of a colleague for the sole reason that he was doing the job he was elected to do.

For all of Snyder’s campaign complaints about the culture of Lansing, little has been proposed to reform it. Campaign finance reporting is a joke. Term limits are a disaster. While the Michigan Constitution rightfully gives citizens the power of recall, it leaves it to the Legislature to define what an office holder can be recalled for. As interpreted now by the local jurisdictions that make the call, it’s much too broad.

Statutorily confining those reasons to actions that betray the public trust could be a healthy bipartisan response to Scott’s recall. Could it be viewed as an act of craven self-interest? Sure. Might a Democrat now have to lose his or her own seat before it can happen? Maybe.

But as it’s still the right thing to do, so what?