Stephen Henderson, who heads up the Detroit Free Press editorial page, hits it on the head with a column that says our state law makers are making chumps out us.
He particularly takes aim at the lawmaker's failure to fund road improvements, but rather put the issue before the voters. He also notes that some other key issues were never properly dealt with.
He writes:
In the Michigan Legislature, we have endowed a group of lawmakers so craven and self-interested that they kick the most important decisions back to us while acting zealously on a series of meaningless and bizarre ideological measures.
Road funding? We'll have to decide how to do that in an expensive election held too late to get things rolling for the upcoming construction season. Better set aside more money for car repairs next spring.
Charter school reform? Improvements to make teacher evaluations based on more than test scores? Sorry, maybe next year.
Sentencing reforms that could stop Michigan's foolish overspending on prisons? Forget it.
Lawmakers, after a marathon end to lame duck, slunk out of town for the holidays last week without making Michigan much better on any front. But take heart: They spent a lot of time wrangling over a pointless carve-out for religious bigotry in answer to a call for same-sex equality. They talked about a law to prohibit "coerced abortions," whatever the hell those are.
