THE LOCAL AREA WATCH

MICHIGANDERS TO PAY FILMMAKERS OVER $100 MILLION TO MAKE MOVIES IN THE WINTER-WATER-WONDERLAND

Last month Gary Olson, an official advisor to the Michigan State Senate on fiscal matters, advised the appropriations committee that the state’s new tax incentive program for filmmaking companies will cost over $127 million in tax credits this year in exchange for only $10 million in income and sales taxes that 22 film projects presently committed to the state will generate.

Under this hand-out pushed by Governor Jennifer Granholm and star-struck state legislators earlier this year, filmmakers get a 40-cent credit from Michigan taxpayers for every dollar they spend in the state to make movies, television programs, and even computer games.  This credit is applied against the amount a filmmaking company owes under the Michigan Business Tax.  But that’s not all.  That 40 cents is not just a tax credit, but a refundable tax credit.  That means if the credit exceeds the amount of the state’s MBT bill to the company, the taxpayers then cut the film company a check for balance of the credit.

That’s right!  We are paying the film industry to shoot movies in Michigan.  For example, if a filmmaking company spends $10 million in the state for a movie project, it gets a $4 million refundable tax credit.  If the company’s MBT bill is $2 million, then the remaining $2 million of the credit is directly paid to the company straight out of the state’s tax coffers.  In exchange for all this, according to Olson, the project will put back into the coffers about $790,000 in state income and sales taxes.  To add insult to injury, the film company won’t even pay those taxes.  The local employees and vendors of the company will.

Meanwhile Guv Jen is telling Michiganders to suck it up, because there will be no limit on this taxpayer giveaway to the film industry.  The governor along with the legislators who backed this boondoggle insist that we have to subsidize the film industry if we want it to take root in the Great Lakes State.  Of course, they say we must also understand this will be a long process that will not produce a robust film industry here overnight.  In other words, the current crop of politicians who are now paying for their fantasies of hobnobbing with the stars with our tax dollars will be long out of office when this idiotic waste of money does nothing better than drawing into our state a gaggle of weak businesses that can’t survive without a taxpayer handout.

The stupidity of these politicians is costly to us.  (By calling them stupid, I am being charitable.  I assuming that they are benighted and not bedeviled in what they have done.)  They throw away our tax dollars on film companies that will not do business anywhere unless they get generous subsidies -- because they cannot make money otherwise -- and pay for this foolishness by ratcheting up the tax burden on other companies that can and do business in this state without any subsidies -- until that burden either ruins them, restricts their growth, or drives them out of state.  Thus, Michigan becomes an economic wasteland.

Let’s be clear.  Lower taxes (as opposed to subsidies) are good for all of us, if they are non-discriminatory.  However, they will wreck an economy (especially as subsidies) if politicians pick and choose which businesses get their favor.  Call this Gresham’s Law applied to business.  Taxpayer subsidies draw in weak businesses and drive out strong ones.  Renaissance zones, bio-tech and ethanol subsidies, the farm preservation program, and the other targeted business tax breaks and subsidies all contribute to the same rotten result -- as this new filmmaker tax credit will -- of impoverishing us.

It’s long past time to say no more.  Cut taxes for all of us, not just those who catch the fancy of our elected officials.

PUBLIC MUSEUM NIXES CHRISTMAS AS WINTER HOLIDAY

Maybe it's about time for the taxpayers to put a lump of coal in the Grand Rapids Public Museum's Christmas stocking.

In a half-page full-color display in yesterday's Grand Rapids Press, the museum purported to educate us in the many ways in which West Michiganders celebrate "winter holidays".  The feature regaled us with the charms of Diwali, Hanukkah, St. Lucia's Day, Chinese New Year, and even that most ersatz of holidays (winter or otherwise), Kwanzaa.  It cajoled us to understand these celebrations of Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Swedes, Chinese, and allegedly African-Americans as part of appreciating the diversity of our community.

I say "allegedly" regarding the celebration of Kwanzaa by African-Americans, because the only December holiday I have ever known black friends and colleagues to celebrate is Christmas.  Now that brings up something rather interesting about the museum's winter holiday piece in the Press.  Nowhere does it make even the slightest acknowledgment that Christmas also happens to be a wintertime holiday, and I daresay not a particularly obscure one.  In fact it is the most important holiday of the season for that one-third of the world's population who are Christians.  Ah, but then, you wouldn't know that Christians even exist by reading the museum's winter holiday feature.  Hindus, Sikhs, and Jews do abound (apparently even in River City), but not Christians who outnumber them combined, both here and throughout the world.

Then again the whole notion of confabulating all of these disparate celebrations as winter holidays is misbegotten.  I doubt that snowflakes and horse-drawn sleighs are images that Hindus commonly associate with their celebration of Diwali, as most of India enjoys a tropical clime.  Similarly with most celebrants of Chinese New Year.  Winter is merely incidental to Hanukkah, as well as Christmas.  Both are international holidays and celebrated with as much gusto where it is summer in December as where the snow blows that time of year.

Surely, the museum's managers are not so ignorant as to not know this.  Therefore, it is safe to conclude that their rationale for lumping all of these celebrations together in the Press as "winter holidays", to the pointed exclusion of Christmas, is to diminish the prominence of Christmas.  This is especially evident when one considers the very small fraction of area residents who celebrate Diwali, Hanukkah, St. Lucia's Day, Chinese New Year, and Kwanzaa.  Moreover, their true aim is further exposed in that, if the Press feature merely sought to highlight the diversity of local ethnic groups by way of the current season, then they had a host of national Christmas traditions available for inclusion in that piece.

As the prominence of Christmas is the consequence of a plain demographic fact -- i.e., the overwhelming majority of West Michiganders are Christians and for most of them the birth of Jesus is second only to His resurrection as a celebration of their faith -- and hardly anything nefarious, its diminishment is driven by a multiculturalist ideology rather than the pedagogical mission that is properly that of a public museum.  Even so, I would not recommend that Christians as Christians get too riled about this bit of politically correct obnoxiousness that the museum's managers put on display in the Press (a piece which, by the way, was sponsored by the Press).  After all, Christmas is still what it is regardless of their snub of it in their list of wintertime holidays.

However, taxpayers might want to give some thought as to whether or not their hard-earned dollars should support a public museum being used to disseminate propaganda instead of facts.

BLOWING THE GREEN ON GREEN

To follow up on comments from readers B. Post and J.W.W. ...

Big Sister, a.k.a. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell, is pleased as punch with himself.  For two years he has been stumping for the city government to participate in Consumers Energy's "Green Generation" program after personally committing to it for his personal residence.  On Tuesday evening the City Commission finally gave Heartwell the thumb's up at their biweekly meeting.  So now he has the authority to negotiate a "Green Generation" agreement with Consumers Energy to supply "green" electricity to the city's water and sewer facilities.

Well, what exactly is "green" electricity?  According to Consumers Energy, it's electricity generated by renewable energy sources based in Michigan.  That means local wind power and biomass -- i.e., bird-killing windmills and gas-belching compost heaps.  Oddly, it doesn't include efficient, clean, and readily renewable hydroelectric power, but then since when did "green" mean good sense?  Even so, at the end of the day, what's the big deal with the city government using electricity from politically correct power sources?

A couple of things.  First city taxpayers have to pay a premium for "green" electricity from Consumers Energy.  The extra tab for the next year will be over $166,0000.  With his typical mendacity, Heartwell claims that the taxpayers won't have to pay this bill, but of course they do.  The snake oil Heartwell is selling is that the "green" premium will be covered by savings from other conservation measures implemented by the water-and-sewer department.  Heaven forbid that the taxpayers should get a reduction in the sky-high rates they pay for city water instead.  No, the savings must be blown on one of Big Sister's pet projects.

Second, the city government is already using "green" electricity, just like all customers of Consumers Energy.  Participating in the "Green Generation" program doesn't mean that Consumers will be stringing special electrical transmission lines from a compost heap in Farmer Jones's back forty to the water-and-sewer department.  All of these renewable sources of electricity are plugged into the existing power distribution network.  Whatever the source -- green, mean, or anything in-between -- it all gets dumped into the same system and comes out as plain vanilla electricity.

So, dear readers, what it comes down to is that Big Sister is going to spend an extra $166,000 of your hard-earned dollars to get the EXACT same electricity that the city water-and-sewer department is already getting.  To be fair to Consumers Energy, it doesn't make the claim that paying a premium for your electricity gets you "green" electricity.  What that premium does is subsidize Consumers' capital expenditures for development of additional renewable energy facilities.  Of course, there is no guarantee by Consumers that much will come from this development other than the ultimate capacity of renewable sources to replace conventional ones is severely limited.

Just don't expect Big Sister to 'fess up to any of this as he makes yet another grab for your tax dollars to spend on his personal political agenda.

TAXPAYERS STUCK WITH THE TAB FOR DEVOS PLACE

Kent County is going to stick residents with the bill in 2008 for bond payments on the DeVos Place convention center in downtown Grand Rapids.  The county government issued two rounds of bonds totaling $93 million for the convention center with the promise that the payments would be covered by the county-wide hotel-motel tax.  That promise was made by touting a long-term trend of 7% in the annual growth in revenue collected by that tax.  But that was a bit disingenuous because, by the time the bonds were issued in 2001 and 2003, that growth had stopped and revenues were in decline.

Now the hotel-motel tax can't cover the convention center bill.  So instead of out-of-towners, presumably flocking here to go to events at DeVos Place, we locals get to pay for the bricks and mortar that promoters get to use to turn a profit.  So remind me.  Why was this convention center such a good deal for us working and living in River City?  I see why promotors like it.  They get to pay a discounted rental rate for DeVos Place.  The taxpayers, whether hotel guests or local residents, are subsidizing their events by paying for the place hosting them.  When do we get our cut of the action?

HONOLULU SPENDFEST

Back in May I had this to say about the cost to taxpayers of our public pension officials jetting off to Honolulu for one of those conventions that industry groups routinely host as a money-maker for their coffers:

NCPERS is concerned that the public will see this Honolulu junket for what it is, and so attempts to arm its members with some disinformation to feed the taxpayers.  For example, NCPERS claims the per-person cost to attend a conference in Honolulu instead of Orlando (note, another vacation spot as opposed to Des Moines or Grand Rapids) is only a couple hundreds bucks more at around $1,400 including airfare, ground transportation, lodging, food, and beverage.  The idea is to pitch the Honolulu location as incidental to this most important event.  Hawaii just isn't that much more expensive, according to the NCPERS propaganda.  Yeah, right.  The hotel bill alone for NCPERS 2007 is nearly $1,600, and that's if your public servant gets the cheapest discount-rate room sponsored by NCPERS at the Honolulu Hilton.  Add on at least $70 for ground transportation, $300-$400 for food and drink, and the $595 admission fee into the conference, and the total tab is nearly double what NCPERS tells its members to report to the taxpayers.

So, NCPERS told it members to tell the public that the cost of the junket would be only $1,400.  I figured the cost to be about $2,665.  Yesterday, the Grand Rapids Press reported that the ten trustees from from local public employee pension boards who want to the NCPERS conference in Honolulu spent anywhere from $3,300 to $4,600 each to lollygag in Hawaii for a week on the taxpayers' dime.  The total cost to you was $37,692 so that your public servants for network and share information with their colleagues across the country.  (I wonder what the Internet is for then?)

However, Peggy Korzen, who went to Honolulu as one of the six representatives of Grand Rapids city employees pension fund, assures us that the taxpayers' money was well spent.  That's because, according to the Press, she says, "I don't know that anybody was unhappy with the conference.  I heard good comments from everyone who went."  No kidding.

HONOLULU WATCH, DAY 7

Only one more day and NCPERS 2007 is over!  That day is today.  As we have reported over the past week, our local public pension fund officials have had to put in a 25-hour week of toil at the Waikiki Hilton in Honolulu, Hawaii.  No doubt some of these worthy public servants put in even more time networking and information sharing with their colleagues from around the country.  I'm willing to bet they did so even in some unsavory circumstances like lounges and bars, where -- believe it or not -- they would have to pay for drinks out of their own pockets!

Now after doing all of this for us, the taxpayers, NCPERS 2007 still demands of them yet another long day.  Starting at 9:00 a.m. Hawaiian time, our people have a two-hour-long annual business conference to settle the affairs of NCPERS.  Then they have to ... hmm, well, I guess that's it for today.  But if you're thinking that wrapping up business by 11:00 in the morning is a sweet deal, you're not keeping in mind how long two hours can last when there's a warm sunny beach and a cool ocean breeze waiting for you just outside the conference hall.

HONOLULU WATCH, DAY 6

Dear readers, I know these reports of the trials our dogged local public pension officials are going through at NCPERS 2007 at the Waikiki Hilton in Honolulu, Hawaii, are getting to be old news.  But isn't it a matter of simple justice to acknowledge the dedication and sacrifice of these public servants?  If you thought the schedule for Monday and Tuesday wasn't tough enough, they got to do it all over again today.  Two-and-a-half hours with a guest speaker and another two-and-a-half hours in an educational seminar, with only a lousy thirty minute break in between, and no relief until the day ends at 1:30 p.m.  On top of all that, today's speaker, Prof. Charles M. Elson, is only confirmed as "invited".  He may not even show up, and so our pension officials at NCPERS 2007 might end up with half of their five-hour workday going down the crapper.  I for one am keeping my fingers crossed that everything will go well for them today.

RIVER RAT STUMPS FOR SECOND MILLAGE VOTE

With self-important chest-thumpers like Boss Logie and Big Sister as mayor, Commissar Kimball at the helm of the city manager's office, the string of duds who have presided as superintendent over the incredible shrinking Grand Rapids public school district, and a panhandling billionaire like Rich DeVos lauded as the epitome of community spirit, it probably isn't much of a wonder that River Rat Gary Schenk is the chairman of the Grand Rapids Community College.  We sure know how to pick 'em in River City.

Of course, a man who knows how to tell a tall tale is just the fellow GRCC needs to rationalize putting a millage request back on the ballot only three months after the voters had rejected it the first time.  Two weeks ago GRCC's request for a 0.56 millage hike was narrowly defeated, mostly on the no-vote from suburbanites.  Now GRCC is going back to the well with a new millage request in the August election which, curiously, will not have many primary races or other issues likely to bring a lot of suburban voters to the polls.  Schenk assured the Grand Rapids Press that the board had not even considered the likelihood of a low suburban turnout in its decision to put the new request on the August ballot.  Trust me, folks, a man who will lie to the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals will lie to you too.

But even if Schenk were telling the truth, he and his fellow board members are thumbing their noses at the spirit of democracy by forcing us to immediately vote again on a measure that was contested and decided in a fair election.  The fact that the GRCC's millage request on the May ballot was narrowly defeated makes no difference.  In an election, no means no, whether the margin was 10,000 votes or a single vote.  Would Schenk and the gang have given us a second chance in August to defeat the millage if it had narrowly won two weeks ago?  Of course not!

The recent election reform by the state legislature was supposed to put an end to these serial demands for new millages by our schools.  Apparently it is not enough to prohibit them from scheduling millage elections on oddball dates.  They need to be prohibited from going to the well more than once a year.  The voters are entitled to some finality when they make a decision on a millage.  If reprobates like Schenk cannot accord that respect to the voters, it's time our legislators in Lansing force him to.

HONOLULU WATCH, DAY 5

As if the grinding regimen of Monday's agenda at NCPERS 2007 weren't bad enough.  Our intrepid public pension fund officials must go through it again today!  Another two-and-a-half hour general session with speaker Bradley D. Belt, ex-Executive Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and then another two-and-a-half hour educational seminar.  Another day that just won't end until 1:30 in the afternoon.  (And, as far as I can tell, our people are not even getting con-ed certificates for going through these seminars for us.  That's sacrifice, folks.)

HONOLULU WATCH, DAY 4

Now the real work begins for River City's public pension officials attending NCPERS 2007 in Honolulu, Hawaii.  Bright and early at 8:00 a.m. Hawaiian time, our public servants will be in a general session keynoted by Gene B. Sperling, the Clinton Administration's National Economic Advisor.  The session will last until 10:30 a.m.  And then they only get a half-hour break before a two-and-a-half educational seminar begins.  So they won't even complete their day's work until 1:30 in the afternoon!  (And don't forget the children who have accompanied their parents to this remorseless regimen of work, work, and more work.  Think of the children!)