Another fine mess, Lansing

Government won't shut down, but maybe it deserves to. Lawmakers and Gov. Jennifer Granholm, after another sloppy budget process, are finishing up a spending plan that keeps the lights on in Lansing.

That might be considered a small victory, as long as you ignore the fact that this budget is not only an outright fraud, it sets up Michigan for a full-scale economic collapse.

First of all, it isn't balanced. Not even close. It may be $600 million or more short of that constitutional mandate, despite being propped up by $1.4 billion in federal stimulus money. That means Michigan will start a year that may turn out to be worse than this one already deep in the hole.

And it contains not one ounce of reform. Lawmakers chose to slash services and Gov. Jennifer Granholm still hopes to raise taxes to avoid making any substantive changes in how Michigan runs.

And once again, we're hearing, "Wait 'til next year."

You'd have to have a very short memory to buy that. Granholm is following her 2007 script to the letter. She promised reforms then, too, to scam support for a 20 percent tax hike that never delivered the fiscal stability she promised, largely because it allowed Lansing to maintain the status quo. Now, she's painting Republican senators as ogres because they won't be fooled again.

Reforms were said to be inevitable this year, too, and didn't come. Now we hear in 2010 Lansing will have no choice but to restructure government. Don't hold your breath.

The players in this tiresome game haven't changed, and until they do, the outcome will be the same.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, a Republican, and House Speaker Andy Dillon, a Democrat, made a real effort to break the pattern this year. For a while, they sang a fine bipartisan duet. But when Granholm's voice was added, the trio dissolved into disharmony.

The puzzle is that all three agree on the basic steps that need to be taken to save Michigan. On paper, they aren't all that far apart on the major issues. But they never act. As the song says, they want to do right, just not right now.

Maybe it's bad chemistry. Maybe a lack of trust. But these three can't get the job done.

The buck stops with Granholm. She is the CEO. It's her job to set the agenda and drive it ahead. Absent a strong leader, reform never becomes more than a conversation.

Even if Granholm found reform religion, radical change won't happen in 2010.

It's an election year. Every state office will be in play. Few politicians will be willing to confront the special interests that fuel their campaigns.

Instead, they'll grab the rest of the stimulus money and throw it into the budget hole and find tax hikes that hit the fewest number of voters to carry them into 2011, when this mess will come crashing down on a new governor and legislative leadership.

If reform was going to happen, this was the year. It didn't. And now we're hurtling toward an inevitable disaster.

Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The News. nfinley@detnews.com">nfinley@detnews.com or (313) 222-2064.