Throughout this year's budget battles in Lansing, Republican and Democratic lawmakers disagreed sharply over how to balance the books. But they seemed to strongly agree on this: Michigan voters would never approve any kind of open, across-the-board tax increase.
That was seen as the kiss of political death.
The governor talked of a need for "revenue enhancements," and Democrats tried to sneak by a tiny tax on physicians' fees, which was swiftly killed by the GOP-led state Senate.
So instead, lawmakers slashed revenue sharing to Michigan cities and made terrifying cuts in the support they provide to public schools.
They cut Medicaid payments to the poor and disabled, and went back on their promise to fund tuition scholarships.
Some knew that this would do terrific harm to the state's future.
But most of the legislators apparently thought voters would rather take these terrible cuts than pay for the services they've been accustomed to getting.
Yet last week's election returns may indicate that the politicians are dead wrong. Detroit is perhaps the best example.
The city is heavily impoverished, with an unemployment rate -- 29 percent -- at Great Depression-era levels.
Nevertheless, Detroiters put a proposal on the ballot to raise half a billion dollars to build new schools.
The city's main newspaper editorialized against the proposal on a number of grounds.
Yet the people voted by nearly two to one to build the new schools, via a bond issue that won't be paid off until the year 2039. They may be among Michigan's poorest citizens. But they seem willing to sacrifice to give their children a better future.
Two miles north of Detroit, the tiny city of Huntington Woods is in much better shape financially.
A nearly all-white community of professionals, lawyers and teachers occupy many of its mostly older homes. (Full disclosure: This columnist is one of its 6,000 residents.)
Yet unemployment is worse there, too, than since the Great Depression, and dozens of homes are in foreclosure.
Many Huntington Woods roads are in need of repair, and curbs are cracked and crumbling. The city asked voters for more money to fix the streets. The result: Eighty-five percent voted to voluntarily raise their taxes.
Based on what my neighbors tell me, if Huntington Woods residents had been asked the generic question:
Do you want higher taxes? the vast majority would have said: No way.
But when asked if they would pay taxes for something clearly in their own best interests, these middle-class white voters overwhelmingly agreed -- as did the poor black ones in Detroit.
There may even be a parallel in nearby Toledo, Ohio. In a close mayor's race, the candidates, two old high school classmates, didn't disagree on much.
Except Keith Wilkowski said he wouldn't raise taxes, no matter what.
Mike Bell said he didn't want to raise taxes, but would keep an open mind, and that it was conceivable that voters might want to raise taxes rather than give up services. He won.
For years, politicians have believed hinting at raising taxes is a prescription for political suicide. The famous example is Walter Mondale, the 1984 Democratic Presidential nominee. "I'll raise taxes," he said in his acceptance speech, seeking to win credibility through a bit of startling honesty.
He added, "(President Reagan) will too. He won't tell you (that he will) I just did," Mondale said. He went on to lose in a historic landslide. What few remember, however, is that Mondale would have lost by a landslide if he promised to abolish all taxes or even buy every child in America a puppy.
President Reagan was overwhelmingly popular -- and, in the end, naturally some taxes were raised. Most grownups know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. It might be a good idea if more politicians treated the electorate as if they were adults.
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Winning a Mandate: Detroit Mayor Dave Bing romped to an easy primary win over his rival, businessman Tom Barrow, last August, getting 74 percent to Barrow's 11 percent.
To his credit, the former pro basketball player then made a series of hard decisions that turned some supporters and the city's major unions against him. He announced that the city, which is facing a huge deficit, simply couldn't pay the kind of salaries it used to.
The city has fewer than half the population it once did, and is top-heavy with bureaucracy. Bing asked the major municipal unions to take concessions or face major layoffs. The angry unions switched their endorsements to Barrow and poured money into his campaign. The result? The margin narrowed, but Bing still won by a comfortable, 58 to 42 percent margin.
That's a clear mandate for his hard but necessary decisions, and what looks like an act of something like statesmanship.
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