Michigan on course to be a ‘failed state’
Michigan is falling apart.
On March 1, the legislature approved spending a new US$175 million, most of the current budget surplus, to fix the state’s wretched roads. That may sound good to pothole-weary drivers. But to anyone who knows anything about the real condition of the state’s roads, that is just “a drop in the pothole,” as Candice Miller, Macomb County’s public works commissioner, put it.
The tough winter and years of neglect have left the state’s roads so bad that drivers have been known to lose fillings out of their teeth as well as tires, wheels and axles. (The first three have happened to this columnist.)
For perspective on how little the $175 million is compared to the need, Jeffrey Cranson, director of communications for the Michigan Department of Transportation, noted that more than a year ago, the governor’s 21st century infrastructure commission calculated that the state would need to invest $2.2 billion a year to get the roads back in decent shape. That would include $1 billion in state funds a year for U.S.-owned freeways and bridges, like I-75; $600 million a year for other state highways and bridges and a final $600 million for other highly used local roads and bridges. Today, those figures are almost certainly too low. The problem, and solution, in a nutshell, is this: Michigan desperately needs to raise taxes significantly in some way and use that money to improve not just roads, but the entire infrastructure, from bridges to broadband. Unless that is done relatively soon, Michigan will have no chance at being economically competitive for the future.
Amazon, the online mass market retailer, dismissed Detroit’s bid to provide a site for its second world headquarters, saying the area lacked adequate talent. But beyond that, it is hard to imagine that Detroit, America’s only major city with no mass transit from downtown to the airport, could meet Amazon’s infrastructure needs.
Two years ago, Gov. Rick Snyder commissioned a panel of experts to study the state’s infrastructure needs. In November 2016, they produced a comprehensive final report. By infrastructure, it meant not only roads and bridges, but “a larger and more complex picture that includes water and sewer systems, drains and stormwater systems, broadband and communications, and electricity and natural gas networks.”
It began by documenting the sober reality: 39 per cent of roads were in poor condition, and 27 per cent of bridges structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
Rivers that drain 84 per cent of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula tested positive for human sewage. In fact, an average of 5.7 billion gallons of untreated sewage flows into Michigan waterways every year. Ten per cent of the state’s septic systems are experiencing operational problems. Meanwhile, the Upper Peninsula has power plants that are wearing out, but there is little money to construct new ones. “Without intervention — including adequate planning, management and investment, Michigan will continue to experience infrastructure failures” that are likely to get ever worse, they concluded.
How much would it cost to get the infrastructure where it ought to be to make Michigan competitive? The commission came up with the whopping figure of $4 billion a year. Virtually every state hasn’t spent what it should have on infrastructure needs, and neither has the federal government. But Michigan was the worst. Nationally, states spent an average of 10.2 per cent of their budgets on capital improvements — infrastructure needs — from 2010-14. Michigan was dead last, with a paltry 6.4 per cent.
The governor suggested the legislature establish a new state infrastructure fund, and deposit $165 million in it, a tiny fraction of what is needed. But all the lawmakers would set aside was $5 million, about enough to fix one lane of a road for four miles.
All the lawmakers are term-limited. None will be around to see the full consequences of their inaction. There has been controversy over labelling certain countries “failed states.” But that’s what Michigan seems on course to be.