LANSING -- The camel, someone once said, is a horse designed by a committee. The dromedary that is Michigan's new state budget staggered out this week sporting a few extra humps and pleasing no one.
Business owners were unhappiest of all, thanks to a package extending Michigan's 6 percent sales tax to a seemingly random variety of services.
The businesses affected don't want to pay more taxes, but that is not the main reason they are opposed.
They see this "service tax," as one put it, "as the camel's nose under the tent." In other words, once it's established, it will be relatively easy for cash-strapped politicians to come back to the well.
Need money next year? No problem; just extend the sales tax to lawyers, or football tickets ... or lobbyists, for that matter.
Desperate lawmakers legally had to balance Michigan's budget by Oct.1. In the last days, somebody came up with the idea of enacting a small income tax increase and then putting sales taxes on certain services. Which services? Judging from the list, the ones that weren't being most strongly protected by lobbying interests.
But though the budget is a done deal, the service tax doesn't kick in until Dec. 1, and a gathering coalition of forces are launching a drive to repeal it.
Logically, the easiest way to do that would be to raise Michigan's income tax from the new 4.35 percent rate to 4.7 percent. That could have happened a month ago -- but politically, legislators are not inclined to vote for another general tax increase.
Instead, the newest idea would be to repeal the service sales taxes and "tweak" the Michigan Business Tax to cough up the needed revenue. So Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and a number of other officials are spearheading a campaign for repeal. They may have a good chance. All week long, legislators have heard from small business owners who said they feared they'd be put out of business by the tax itself -- or other burdens that come with it.
But business types weren't the only unhappy campers. Mark Dobias, a wry defense lawyer in the Upper Peninsula city of Sault Ste. Marie, was stunned that the lawmakers voted to close two state police crime labs that police rely on to analyze evidence.
His e-mail to me was labeled "Halloween in Lansing?" and suggested that what was going on was really a horror movie.
It may prove to be one for police, who now may have to wait a long time to get ballistics, fingerprint and DNA evidence processed
One of those labs is in Marquette, and serves the entire Upper Peninsula. The other is in Sterling Heights in bustling Macomb County. Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard was incredulous.
He said the delay in analyzing evidence would mean that some criminals would get more time on the street before the police had the tools to arrest them.
Nevertheless, that's the budget, balanced at last.
Or maybe not. In recent years, revenue projections have consistently proven too optimistic. In January, lawmakers will get a "revenue estimating" report on how much money is flowing in. It may well fall short of projections. That will be thanks both to the weak state economy and to difficulties collecting the new tax on services. If that's the case, the budget will have to be slashed some more.
The ancient Chinese said the worst curse you could lay on anyone was to say, "May you live in interesting times." Michigan has had some interesting times the last few years.
Contact Jack Lessenberry at Bucca@aol.com or write to him at 189 Manoogian Hall, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 48202.
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