By KEN WINTER
November 05, 2009 06:55 am When I look across my classrooms and see so many community college students financially struggle to get an education, I wonder how our dysfunctional state government serves them to become Michigan's future workforce and leaders. No Michigan Promise scholarships for them and some 96,000 college students, Michigan's already financially troubled 519 K-12 school districts getting yet a second cut of approximately $127 per-pupil in state school funding after just getting whacked $165 per-pupil on Oct. 1. Because of the same partisan bickering, Petoskey's North Central Michigan College has for seven years not received its promised state match to upgrade health and science facilities for biology, chemistry, physics and nursing. A registered nurse graduating from our college's two-year program can earn an estimated $84,000 annually in the Petoskey area. There is a waiting list for students to enter nursing and other allied health programs to fill open positions in a state exceeding 15 percent unemployment -- the highest in the nation. Why? Because politics has taken over good public policy in Michigan. There's more interest in advancing one's personal political agenda than helping everyone through the state's worse economy since the Great Depression. This is only a snapshot of what's happening across Michigan. Unfortunately, these stories hardly surface in today's news because news organizations have dramatically reduced newsroom staffs. A former Lansing-based state government reporter recently observed that state government coverage by Michigan's largest news organizations continues to diminish. "In the mid-1980s, for the example, the Detroit News Lansing Bureau had a dozen journalists -- a number now down to three (reduced more last month)," he wrote. "The Booth Newspapers chain (formerly eight dailies now seven) virtually eliminated its Lansing bureau. No Detroit TV station has staff full-time in Lansing. Michigan is part of a national trend in reduced state government coverage." Unfortunately, the general public is not aware of this because it continues to see what it believes to be solid news coverage in their local newspapers, broadcasts and 24/7 news cycles. Too often, news comes from press releases and blog sites created by politicians and lobbyists. For example, in the State Aid Fund debate, I rarely read that Lansing lawmakers have allowed tax exemptions from 1994 to 2002 that resulted in reduced collections of $85.7 million from sales and use taxes in fiscal year 2002 alone. If the public were aware of this, would there be more pressure to remove tax exemptions before cutting $54 million from the education budget and looking for additional tax increases to raise state revenues? Knowing that 38 current state senators and more than 70 percent of Michigan House members will be gone by January 2011, would this be a time for citizens to push for the elimination of those special-interest tax exemptions? The lack of press coverage goes beyond just the governor and state Legislature; it's vanished from state agencies and other organizations having impact on Michigan government and citizens. The lack of good enterprise and investigative reporting is a threat to our democracy. About the author: Ken Winter is a journalism and political science Instructor for North Central Michigan College and Michigan State University's Red Cedar National Writing Project. He is the former editor and publisher of the Petoskey News-Review and past president of the Michigan Press Association. About the forum: The forum is a periodic column of opinion written by Record-Eagle readers in their areas of interest or expertise. Submissions of 500 words or less may be made by e-mailing letters@record-eagle.com. Please include biographical information and a photo.
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