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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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From the poorest to wealthiest counties, poverty spread throughout Michigan
Pat Shellenbarger | Bridge Magazine By Pat Shellenbarger | Bridge Magazine
on August 05, 2014 at 2:30 PM, updated August 05, 2014 at 3:46 PM
Tammy Shire’s views on poverty changed when her family lost everything. (photo by Pat Shellenbarger)
Tammy Shire had a good job in middle management making $64,000 a year, not enough to place her within shouting distance of the top one percent, but sufficient to give the single mother of three a comfortable seat in the middle class. If she thought about the poor at all, it was to assume they were to blame for their poverty.
She doesn’t think that anymore.
Not only did she descend into poverty, but she did it in Livingston County, the most affluent county in Michigan. She became one of the nuevo poor, dealing with the unfamiliar stress of poverty while, by all appearances, most of those around her were living in middle-class comfort, even luxury.
“It was devastating,” Shire said, “absolutely devastating. Until I started to research the true meaning of poverty, I didn’t realize I was in it.”
From cities to suburbs to small towns and rural areas, poverty is spread throughout the state. No place, not even Livingston County, is immune. Unlike other rural counties, such as Lake County, where poverty is chronic and intergenerational, in Livingston County it is situational, a lingering result of the most recent recession and an economy that has not yet fully recovered.
RELATED: Down and out in Lake County
Livingston County’s median household income of $72,396 is the highest in the state, and its poverty rate of 6.3 percent is the lowest in Michigan, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 estimate. But that still leaves nearly 12,000 of its 184,000 residents in poverty, defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as $23,283 a year for a family of four, $11,945 for an individual under age 65.
Michigan
Economics Median household income $30,390 $72,396 $48,471 Median home value $83,600 $191,000 $128,600 Poverty rate (%) 24.1 6.3 16.3 Children under 18 in poverty (%) 40.7 7.4 22.8 Education Fourth graders not proficient in reading (%) 46.2 15.6 31.9 Students not graduating high school on time (%) 47.5 16.8 23.8 Bachelor's degree or better (%) 8.2 31.8 25.5 Health Confirmed child abuse victims (per 1,000) 52.6 7.2 14.6 Teen birthrate (per 1,000 over 5 years) 48.6 11.5 30.2 Male obesity (%) 40.3 34.8 36.1 Female obesity (%) 45 32.6 38.9 Male smoking (%) 23.8 15 18.5 Female smoking (%) 22.1 12.6 16.1
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey; Michigan League for Public Policy 2013 Kids Count report, and the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Poverty jumps in affluent counties
Between 2005 and 2011, child poverty increased most drastically among Michigan’s more affluent counties, including Livingston, Lapeer, Oakland, Ottawa and Clinton counties. Even though Livingston County still had the lowest overall child poverty rate, its percentage of children living in poverty jumped by 60 percent between 2005 and 2011 to 8.8 percent, according to the Michigan League for Public Policy’s Kids Count report.
“I think there’s a misconception that there aren’t any poor living in Livingston County or Oakland County, for that matter,” said Ron Borngesser, chief executive of Oakland Livingston Human Service Agency (OLHSA), a nonprofit Community Action Program. “That’s not the case.”
The last recession officially ended in June 2009, although the financial and emotional distress for many families did not. After previous recessions, most jobs came back.
“That didn’t happen this time,” Borngesser said. “Certainly this last recession hit us harder than anything I’ve seen before.”
Many of the jobs that did come back were part-time and lower paying. Borngesser suspects the actual poverty rate might be higher than the 6.3 percent estimated by the Census Bureau.
“What we do know is every community in Livingston County was affected – Howell, Brighton, Fowlerville, Pinkney, Gregory,” he said. “It’s not in pockets; it’s spread all over the county.”
Before the recession, “these individuals had good jobs and didn’t need our assistance,” Borngesser said. “A lot of them didn’t even know we existed. A lot of them didn’t know who to turn to.”
Requests for food, rent, home heating and other assistance reached record levels. “We could have served a lot more if we had the resources,” Borngesser said. “The money doesn’t go far enough. We were at capacity, no question about it.”
During better times, many newcomers moved out from Detroit and its suburbs to small towns like Brighton, Howell and Fowlerville. New subdivisions with homes selling for $200,000 to $300,000 sprang up in what once was farmland. Shopping centers and chain restaurants followed. Many of the new residents commuted to jobs in Lansing, Ann Arbor and the Detroit area.
American dream slips away
Then the Great Recession hit in late 2007, and Livingston County’s unemployment rate soared from a low of 4.7 percent in May 2006 to 14.8 percent in February 2010. Many of those new homes went into foreclosure, and, for the first time in their lives, many residents could not pay their bills.
As a self-employed contractor, Robert Tyrer had painted many of those new houses in Livingston County. “I was never wealthy,” he said, “but I was doing OK.”
Heart disease and the recession changed that, and Tyrer, now 60, ended up living in his van, even when the temperature dipped to zero. With OLHSA’s help, he now has a small apartment in Howell and collects $700 a month in Supplemental Security Income.
“I’m grateful for the little apartment I have, but it’s not what I thought I’d end up with,” Tyrer said. “I was just counting the money I have left for the month – $200 and some cents –and I gotta go buy groceries. The last couple of months have been hell.”
Borngesser said that’s typical for many of his new clients, hit not only by a loss of income, but a loss of self-worth. Many descend into depression
“The emotional damage is huge,” he said. “That’s what we found a lot of times is that the emotional stress is as bad as anything else. It’s hard to think rationally that there is a way out. We’re here to show them there is a way out.”
Paralyzed by stress
Shire, 46, concedes she couldn’t always see a way out. For years, she had worked for a company that built retirement communities. As the recession set in and the housing market dried up, she was laid off in January 2009. Her severance money lasted until July of that year, and then, for the first time in her life, she began drawing unemployment.
“By October, I was completely paralyzed,” Shire said. “I hadn’t been making rent payments. I was juggling bills. I was extremely worried and stressed out. You go into survival mode. The weight on my shoulders was unbearable. Your physical health suffers when you’re not mentally well. I was living moment to moment. I cried every day. I was totally overwhelmed and lost in a system I did not understand.”
In 2011, she maxed out her unemployment benefits, and her income dropped to zero. Her landlord tried to evict her and then, with no rent coming in, he lost the house through foreclosure. The bank served her with an eviction notice.
For her three children, then in elementary and high school, the change in status was especially difficult, surrounded as they were by peers with their new clothing, iPads, iPhones and other trappings of middle-class childhood. She tried to shield them, but their behavior and performance in school suffered.
“I got my kids living in a middle-class attitude with a mom who’s in a poverty attitude,” Shire said. “To not have everything their friends had was hard for them to understand.”
Unlike many of the rural poor, Shire finally can see better times in sight. She got help from OLHSA and found a small house to rent in Pinkney. She is engaged now and is sharing expenses with her fiancé, who has a job.
With no job prospect herself, she went back to school and earned a master’s degree in psychology and is studying for her state licensing exam.
“I’ve made it,” Shire said, “and I’m doing OK. She said the last few years have given her a new understanding of what it means to be poor.
“I’m embarrassed to say I blamed it on them,” she said. “I think I was really quick to judge. Your priorities change. I have a new understanding of people in my position and what it’s like to be underprivileged.”
© Bridge Magazine, reprinted with permission. Bridge Magazine, a publication of The Center for Michigan, produces independent, nonprofit public affairs journalism and is a partner with MLive.
Last edited by untanglingwebs on Wed Oct 01, 2014 6:41 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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Wed Aug 06, 2014 8:29 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Number of rental properties in Grand Blanc spurs worries for some
A sign advertising a rental home stand in a Grand Blanc front lawn on Monday, June 23, 2014. Samuel Wilson | MLive.com
Dana DeFever | ddefever@mlive.com By Dana DeFever | ddefever@mlive.com
on August 03, 2014 at 7:00 AM, updated August 03, 2014 at 7:03 AM
GRAND BLANC, MI -- New apartment projects and a city study that found about seven percent of Grand Blanc's single-family homes are occupied by renters has prompted worries the city is becoming more transient.
According to the most recent U.S. Census date, 40.6 percent of the occupied housing units in the city are renter-occupied.
There are 12 apartment complexes – with a total of about 1,500 rental units – in the city. The apartment complexes range from Perry Place Apartments, which has nearly 500 units to much smaller complexes.
With a new apartment building under construction and another in the planning stages, Indian Hills subdivision resident Jason Poirer thinks rental numbers are too high.
"It's the whole, how many is too many? Forty percent is too many, but we're pushing 50 (percent)," Poirier said about the number of apartment complexes in the city.
Poirier said he doesn't have anything against renters, but worries they may not care about the property as much as they would if they owned it and have no long-term investment in the community.
But Grand Blanc City Manager Paul Brake said there's no evidence to support the notiion that a transient population brings problems.
Mayor Susan Soderstrom calls such notions a false perception.
"There is a perception that people don't care as much if they don't own. I think a lot of people hold that (idea) – if you're not owning, you're not going to take as good care," Soderstrom said.
Soderstrom moved into Grand Blanc in January 1980 and rented until she moved into a house later that year in September.
She said single-family homes that are being rented out are a sign of the times.
The economic downturn scared a lot of people, she said – not knowing how secure their job is or if they will have to move out of the area – and have found that it is better to rent, rather than purchase a house and have to sell it later.
Theresa Gonzalez owns three houses in Grand Blanc, including one on Old Bridge that she leases to people.
Her husband died in January and her daughter can't afford it, so she is renting it out. She has two other homes on Terrace Drive in the city that she also rents out.
"The house is a beautiful house in Indian Hill and I know I could sell it in a week. It's a very beautiful area in Indian Hill and there's a school there," she said.
But Gonzalez doesn't want to sell it, or at least not now.
"I want to find a loving couple or a family who will take care of it," she said.
Gonzalez said she and her husband didn't have much when they moved to Kings Pointe 20 years ago. Their neighbors were businessmen, doctors and lawyers. They weren't any of those, but Gonzalez said they kept up their home just as well as them.
"People have to realize it's good to have diversity and some of these people can't afford home ownership, but they can afford to rent and put their children in a better school district," Gonzalez said.
Mark Shotwell moved to Grand Blanc in 1991, renting for a few years at Thornridge Apartments in the township before he bought his house in Indian Hill in 1995. It's the same house he said he might potentially retire in, he even wants to add on an addition to the garage – but he wants to see where the city is going first.
Shotwell said he's rented in several different places before and said he took care of where he lived, but said early in his career, his apartment was merely a place to sleep and hang out with his friends. He wasn't committed to the community.
Poirier and his wife are invested in the value of their home and say that it's still a good neighborhood with a good school. But they want to know what the city's long-term plan calls for.
Poirier said they searched for years for a house in the neighborhood, noticing that there rarely were houses for sale. Now he sees houses for sale popping up and their selling quickly.
Gonzalez said she doesn't want to insult the neighboring homeowners. She and her husband put money into the houses and fixed them up – she would never become a slum landlord, she said.
"If you're going to have homes in Grand Blanc, as a landlord, you have to keep up your part of the bargain," Gonzalez said.
Estimated rented-out single-family homes in Grand Blanc's neighborhoods
Neighborhood Total homes Number of projected rental homes
Indian Hill 242 8
Bella Vista Estates 202 11
Bella Vista South – Kirkridge 285 5
Old town 471 61
Riverbend West 188 11
Riverbend East 147 9
Kings Pointe 195 7
Condominiums 303 25
*Figures were determined comparing the names of property owners with the names of voters registered at those properties. The figures are not official.
Dana DeFever can be reached at 810-429-3919 or ddefever@mlive.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @DanaDeFever or subscribe to her on Facebook.
Leah Fitzgerald
2 days ago
Grand Blanc has been in a death spiral for 10-15 years. From Buick Open leaving, Walmart opening, MTA and reaching 50:50 owner:renter ratio. Fenton/Twp is the last stronghold in the county. The affluent send their kids to Powers or Notre Dame Prep and flee when the kids finish high school. Grand Blanc will be Flint Twp 2.0 in 5 years.
getyokids
getyokids
2 days ago
With rentals if they are vacant and nobody keeps an eye on them people start stripping them. They take furnaces, water heaters and anything that's not nailed down. That should be a concern for landlords that live elsewhere and have the rent sent them. After people strip the houses the landlords stop paying taxes on them . The city then becomes responsible for tearing them down or fixing them up and that's a problem.
doinit4me
2 days ago
Oh where to begin with these arguments. First of all, I am a fan of Flint warts and all. I hold no illusions regarding its current state and the effect it has on neighboring communities. With that being said, this topic has everything to do with a small number of renters who create or cause a large number of calls or need for services from a community. Flint's schools are the worst. There is no denying that. With poor schools comes an exodus, there is no denying that either. Some who flee are respectable and some who flee are not. The larger the group fleeing the larger the group of non-respectable among them. The argument should be based on the phrase "similarly situated." How many of those fleeing to Grand Blanc schools are similarly situated as those already there? Some, at best. And I'm not talking about race specifically either. By similarly situated I mean married couples, working couples, college educated parents, students on aid, test scores, income levels etc. None of these factors are, in and of themselves, particularly significant but together they paint a picture that does not jibe with "traditional Grand Blanc." Just look at the Carman-Ainsworth district. They have already been transformed by Flints influence. There are many factors to a good community and the schools are certInly one of the most influential and so as long as people hold the Grand Blanc schools in high esteem there is nothing to suggest that renters are going to stop making it a destination. The fact the the "leaders" of Grand Blanc don't seem to even acknowledge these facts or they are afraid to mention them suggests that they are representative of typical politicians, which is no compliment. The southern end of Genesee County is heavily republican, neither here nor there, but as such a pro business attitude will prevail to the detriment of the whole, thus an increase of rental properties is sure to come.
suitcasesmif
2 days ago
Funny how the perception of Grand Blanc is one of $500,000 homes and well dressed people, Take a ride on the north end of Grand Blanc north of Hill Rd. Lots of poorly kept up houses and scraggly looking people. I suspect many are of the takin' and receivin' class. Not much difference in that area than in much of Flint.
getyokids
2 days
I wrote an article before talking about Flint being the core city and whatever happens to Flint was going to have a trickle down effect. I stated that when Grand Blanc Metal Fab closed that people were going to follow their jobs and walk away from the homes they owned. I questioned then why they were building more projects. A lot of the homes haven't been updated and are old. My sister bought one in Ottawa Hills that the kitchens and baths needed updating. The roof on the balcony was rotting. People can own a new house in a good neighborhood for the same price. No one wants to pay the high taxes so they would rather buy some where else. All I see is a new ghetto with old houses. The school district didn't want open enrollment in the high school to limit the black teenagers but what they failed to realize is they live in Grand Blanc.
@getyokids
Grand Blanc schools had to limit open enrollment to the high school to accommodate students who live in the district, who had been enrolled in private school and who now wished to attend the local high school for which their parents had been paying without benefit of use. It has nothing to do with racism.
If you can afford to live here, you can attend the school - and, frankly, 'afford to live here;' doesn't mean a home purchase. |
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Wed Aug 06, 2014 8:50 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Home owner occupied becoming rentals is a warning sign of decline in a neighborhood. The neighborhood east of McLaren Hospital between Beecher and Sunset was once a desired place to live. When home prices declined in Flint, these homes became rentals.
I remember being in a meeting at the North end precinct where I was told people didn't need to fix the large north end homes because there were so many nice rentals "behind McLaren". The end result is drug activity, murders, and increasing crime. The apartment complex in that area is advertising "no credit checks" for new tenants and no deposits. Do you think they re looking for the best tenants? |
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Wed Aug 06, 2014 8:58 am |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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| Title update. Entire nation poorer under Obama regime. |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Fri Aug 08, 2014 9:31 am |
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00SL2
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
untanglingwebs schreef:
Home owner occupied becoming rentals is a warning sign of decline in a neighborhood. The neighborhood east of McLaren Hospital between Beecher and Sunset was once a desired place to live. When home prices declined in Flint, these homes became rentals.
I remember being in a meeting at the North end precinct where I was told people didn't need to fix the large north end homes because there were so many nice rentals "behind McLaren". The end result is drug activity, murders, and increasing crime. The apartment complex in that area is advertising "no credit checks" for new tenants and no deposits. Do you think they re looking for the best tenants?
When the apartment complex at Bradley and Sunset became a "halfway house" for released prisoners years ago, crime in the area increased and property values began to decline. People got tired of home invasions and other crimes and moved out, suffering losses on hard to sell properties. Some residents were terrorized by attempted break-ins even in broad daylight while they were at home. |
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Fri Aug 08, 2014 11:04 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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WOW! Thanks OOSL2 that is important information. I either did not pay much attention to the half way house situation or I forgot that. I do remember a flurry of homes being placed for sale and discussion of half way houses. Violent crimes has increased in that area, such as the drive-by murder close to the apartments.
How much planning does the state do when deciding where to place these returning prisoners? |
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Sat Aug 09, 2014 6:51 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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News and analysis from The Center for Michigan
Down and out in Lake County
5 August 2014
by Pat Shellenbarger
Bridge Magazine contributor
Robert Traviss sits on his walker in the yard of his Lake County home. The camper trailer behind him is where he keeps the tools he once used. He lives in another old trailer in the yard. (photo by Pat Shellenbarger)
Robert Traviss sits on his walker in the yard of his Lake County home. The camper trailer behind him is where he keeps the tools he once used. He lives in another old trailer in the yard. (photo by Pat Shellenbarger)
Robert Traviss’s house, if you can call it that, is an old camper trailer he shares with two Chihuahuas named Spaz and Boots. The trailer is parked in the side yard of the home, now rotting away, where he grew up. A second camper trailer, even older, is in the front yard and is filled with the tools he used before a stroke left him disabled.
The detritus of his life – a lawn mower, an upholstered recliner, a couple of plastic buckets, an old car that hasn’t run in months – are scattered around the yard
From the camper’s door, Traviss, 55, can look across fields, where deer graze. If he steps outside with his walker and surveys the neighborhood, he sees poverty – rural poverty, the kind that is little noticed by much of the nation. He used to be a machinist and a tool and die maker, but now, since the stroke, his only income is from Social Security disability.
“It’s not enough. I can tell you that,” he said. “It’s hard to get by out here. For me it’s rough. There’s a lot of people in a lot worse shape than me.”
His mailing address is Chase, a wisp of a town in Lake County in West Michigan, by many measures the poorest county in the state. But it’s not the only county that is quietly suffering. While most of Michigan’s poor live in cities, the poverty rate in rural Michigan is higher, particularly in northern Michigan.
Fifty years after President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, 1.6 million Michigan residents – 16.3 percent of the state’s population – remain poor. And 11 of the 13 Michigan counties with poverty rates above 20 percent are largely rural.
“We’ve had a long history of rural poverty,” said H. Luke Shaefer, a University of Michigan social work professor and a researcher affiliated with UM’s National Poverty Center.
In 2013, he co-authored a study of “extreme poverty,” which estimated that nationally nearly 1.6 million households with children were trying to survive on less than $2 a day per person, the definition of extreme poverty. “There’s no reason to think Michigan would be any different,” he said.
Rural decline
In the coming months, Bridge will explore life in rural Michigan not seen from the decks of lake cottages or the tops of ski hills. It is a life of high poverty and low life expectancy, of bad health and few jobs. Today, Bridge examines poverty on the back roads of Lake County.
Although the last recession officially ended in June 2009, many rural areas still are far from recovered. For some people in Lake County, the recession was another blip in a long history of destitution.
“There’s just no economic opportunity,” Shaefer said. “A lot of the jobs we used to think of as unskilled are now skilled. A tractor is now a computer. Transportation is a huge problem. If you don’t have a car, it’s pretty tough to get around.”
Food pantries, social service agencies and other programs are harder for rural residents to access because they often lack transportation. Some federal anti-poverty programs, such as Community Development Block Grants and Community Health Centers, were designed more to help the poor in larger cities.
Chase
A large portion of Lake County’s poor are senior citizens, who require more services than younger residents, said Colleen Carrington-Atkins, a county commissioner, whose district includes Chase. More than 25 percent of Lake County’s residents are older than 65, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, compared with a statewide average of 14.6 percent.
“Our churches are struggling, our libraries are struggling and our businesses are struggling,” particularly after tourists load up their boats and go home at the end of summer, Carrington-Atkins said.
In counties like Lake, isolation is a way of life, and hardship passes from generation to generation – out of sight, and out of mind for many of the more affluent.
Political clout dims
Randy and Delores Libey moved to a rented trailer in Lake County after child protective services workers warned they could lose custody of her daughter, because their former home had no heat or running water. (photo by Pat Shellenbarger)
Randy and Delores Libey moved to a rented trailer in Lake County after child protective services workers warned they could lose custody of her daughter, because their former home had no heat or running water. (photo by Pat Shellenbarger)
“Rural poverty can be invisible unless you’re paying attention,” said Mary Truck, director of FiveCAP, a nonprofit Community Action Program that serves the poor in Lake and neighboring counties. “You drive into Lake County, and you say, ‘Something is different.’ You turn down a road, and you see a shack with all kinds of evidence that they can’t maintain it. There are people in Lake County who live in extreme poverty, and they are the most invisible.”
The elimination of general assistance payments for adults by the state Legislature in the early 1990s, cuts in home heating assistance by state lawmakers this past winter and Congress’s failure to extend long-term unemployment benefits all contributed to the problem, she said.
“The people who make decisions that affect the lives of these people don’t identify with them at all,” Truck said. “I sometimes wonder if they see them as people.”
Lake County Commissioner Robert Myers said he has talked with state elected officials about getting more help for the county’s poor, but the response he got was “all verbiage and no action.”
“I’m very upset with how the state looks at it,” said Myers, a former chair of the county Republican Party. “The point is they don’t take our problem seriously. It’s not a big deal for the politicians to ignore Lake County, because there aren’t a lot of people here,” fewer than 12,000 residents.
Myers noted, for instance, that he is critical of the state and the prison guards’ union for not allowing the reopening the privately owned prison in Baldwin. “There’s no income in this county to support what the needs are,” he said. “You gotta have revenue from business. We have no business in Lake County. We don’t have a stoplight in the whole county. We don’t have a car dealership in the whole county.”
From resort to last resort
In its heyday, Lake County was a resort destination. Throughout much of the 20th century, the tiny settlement of Idlewild drew black entertainers and their fans who found other resorts closed to them. As more overt forms of discrimination ebbed, Idlewild became little more than a memory with an historic cultural center. Most of the county’s 575 square miles are covered with state and federal forests. Its largest employer, a privately owned prison in Baldwin, closed in 2005.
More than 24 percent of Lake County’s residents live in poverty, nearly four times the rate in Livingston County, the most affluent county in Michigan, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Lake County’s median household income of $30,390 is less than half Livingston County’s $72,396.
Lake certainly has its rivals for poorest Michigan county. Clare County’s poverty rate (defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as a family of four earning $23,283 a year or less, or $11,945 for an individual under 65) is 24.8 percent, but its median household income is higher than Lake County’s. Officially, Isabella County has the highest poverty rate in Michigan – 32.1 percent – but the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the rate would drop to 18 percent if it excluded Central Michigan University students living off-campus.
The gap between the richest and the poorest counties in Michigan can be measured in more than dollars. Counties with higher rates of poverty generally have lower life expectancies, and higher rates of substance abuse and chronic illness.
In Lake, the average life expectancy for males born in 2010 is 75 years, according to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. In Livingston County, it is 78 years. In Lake County, 45 percent of females are obese. In Livingston County, it’s 32.6 percent.
Lake County has higher rates of cancer deaths, diabetes, teen pregnancies and low-birth-weight babies than the state average, according to District Health Department No. 10. Its residents are also more likely to suffer high blood pressure.
All this hardship is particularly tough on children, said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, Kids Count project director at the Michigan League for Public Policy. Researcher call it “toxic stress,” which is itself strongly associated with increased risks of lifelong health and social problems, including smoking, drug abuse, suicide, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, domestic violence and depression.
“We’re learning a lot about toxic stress,” Zehnder-Merrell said . “You’re always in this state of mind that I’ve got to fight or run away. It’s hard to think about the future.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lake also has the state’s highest rate of confirmed child abuse cases, the 2013 Kids Count report found, with Lake ranking worst in eight of the report’s 15 indicators of child well-being. In contrast, Livingston County ranked best in five. Forty-eight percent of Lake County children live in poverty, the report found, compared with nine percent in Livingston County.
Struggling to help
Michigan’s rural poor face challenges getting services, acknowledged Michigan Department of Human Services spokesperson Bob Wheaton. “One of the biggest challenges in rural counties is transportation,” he said. People who need help often live quite a distance from the closest DHS office, and they often don’t have a reliable car. And with a lack of transportation, it’s often difficult for people to access nutritional food.
Lake County is trying to address the transportation gap through a dial-a-ride service paid for through a county millage. DHS also offers tokens for transportation, but some of the poor live so far off major roads that public transportation can’t reach them.
DHS also offers Lake County rent-free office space for other social service efforts, such as a domestic violence center, housing assistance and a parenting education program.
That’s good, but what the county really needs is jobs, county and state officials agree. Lake’s county commission is working on an economic development plan, Carrington-Atkins said, though she bemoaned that such a plan was not created earlier. “One of the problems with economic development in Lake County is there wasn’t enough focus on it in the past.”
With no manufacturing and few job prospects, Wheaton said communities in rural regions like Lake County are drying up. “A lot of these towns are just a gas station and a bar,” Wheaton said.
Little hope for escape
While some see education as a ticket out of poverty, many children immersed in generations of hardship see little hope or motivation for rising above it, Zehnder-Merrell said. Fourth grade students in Lake County scored worse on standardized reading tests than students in all but one Michigan county.
Nearly half (48 percent) of Lake County high school students fail to graduate on time, the Kids Count report found.
The annual reports were started “with the premise that if people knew what poverty was doing to families and children, they would do something about it,” Zehnder-Merrell said. “The exact opposite is happening.”
That may be changing. Baldwin Public Schools received a $750,000 grant from the state to retrofit its schools to go to a balanced schedule, in which there are more breaks during the traditional school year, but a shorter summer break to lesson summer learning loss.
Baldwin Schools also has their own version of the Kalamazoo Promise – offering up to $5,000 per year for college and career training for Baldwin graduates.
“It’s all about education,” said State Rep. Jon Bumstead, R-Newago, whose district includes Lake County. “If we don’t have quality schools, especially in Lake County, the dropout rate will be high and the poverty rate will be high.”
Sitting in his yard in Chase, Robert Traviss shares that concern about the kids. “Yeah, this town, it ain’t got nothing for the kids,” he said.
Helping neighbors
A car pulled up in front, and Randy and Dolores Libey stepped out to give Traviss a bag of chips and a bottle of pop – not that they have much to give. The Libeys used to live around the corner, but moved after child protective services workers warned they would lose custody of her daughter, because the trailer they were renting had no heat or running water.
Down miles of barely passable roads, they led the way to where they now live: a mobile home in the woods they rent for $475 a month. She makes $7.85 an hour working 28 hours a week at Subway in neighboring Osceola County. He used to work at McDonalds, but lost that job after taking off work due to panic attacks. He’s on medication for schizophrenia and receives $740 a month in disability. At 35, she takes medication for arthritis, diabetes and glaucoma.
Both admit they’ve done time – she for writing bad checks, and he for accessory to arson and burglary – and say they once were addicted to cocaine, which temporarily cost them custody of her daughter. They got her back three years ago and say they have been drug free for five years.
“We get food stamps, but it never seems like it’s enough with a 14 year old who’s growing,” Dolores Libey said. “I worry about all kinds of stuff, my bills, my mother. I worry all the time.
But she added: “I’ve seen people worse off than we are.
“There’s always someone worse off than we are.”
Ron French contributed to this article
Pat Shellenbarger is a freelance writer based in West Michigan. He previously was a reporter and editor at the Detroit News, the St. Petersburg Times and the Grand Rapids Press. |
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Wed Aug 13, 2014 7:20 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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News and analysis from The Center for Michigan
Safety net
A day on the streets with a young panhandler
7 August 2014
by Ted Roelofs
Bridge Magazine contributor
A panhandler named Andrew, 22, at a Grand Rapids street corner
A panhandler named Andrew, 22, at a Grand Rapids street corner
Taking a break from his street corner, a young man named Andrew opened a box of take-out breakfast a motorist gave him. He peeked in warily. A few stale bits of egg, a soggy piece of toast, a couple sausages.
“I’m not that hungry yet,” he said.
Parked next to him, a cardboard sign that read, “Young Couple w/a Baby on the Way Anything Helps.”
Andrew, 22, said he had been panhandling at this Grand Rapids corner for about a month. Unlike many panhandlers, he had his own car, a 1993 Mercury Sable with just over 175,000 miles. And a girlfriend who was expecting a baby by the end of the year. He asked that his face not be shown in a photo.
He said he and his girlfriend were trying to save enough money to get their own apartment. For now, they stayed in a nearby motel which cost about $30 a day.
“Once we get an apartment, we can get ahead. We’re just trying to crawl out of this hole, slowly but surely.”
Andrew said he has been out on his own since about age 14, when he left a troubled home and dropped out of school. He crashed with friends, shared a house or apartment, and performed all kinds of odd jobs to make ends meet.
He ticked off a list, including maintenance, landscaping, construction, painting, even the odd job fixing someone’s computer. Along the way, he earned his GED.
He moved out west about two years ago to take a job doing maintenance work. He recently did a 10-day stint renovating a small discount store in the Grand Rapids area.
“I pretty much always worked,” he said.
Andrew said he resents news reports on panhandling that focus on drug addicts or alcoholics, who put their donations toward booze or drugs.
“They go out and interview a few drunks. Somebody that’s legit, that’s doing it for the right reasons, they ruin it for everyone else.”
He is aware that many cities in the Grand Rapids area ban what he is doing. He fully expects Grand Rapids to adopt a similar ban soon.
But he sees hypocrisy.
“You can hold a sign for a store but you can’t do this. If you’re not pestering people, if you’re not running out in the road, then I don’t see an issue. I think it makes people uncomfortable.”
Like any panhandler, said he’s had his share of unpleasant encounters.
“I had people throw quarters at me, throw food and trash at me. I had a woman throw a penny at me, and say, ‘Here you go, loser.’”
A few minutes later, stopped at the light, a woman in a Volvo station wagon handed him four dollars through the window.
“There are good people,” Andrew said.
Ted Roelofs worked for the Grand Rapids Press for 30 years, where he covered everything from politics to social services to military affairs. He has earned numerous awards, including for work in Albania during the 1999 Kosovo refugee crisis. |
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Wed Aug 13, 2014 7:23 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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News and analysis from The Center for Michigan
Safety net
A charter school for the rural poor closes
12 August 2014
by Pat Shellenbarger
Bridge Magazine contributor
Principal Victoria Simon packing up her office at the Threshold Academy in Orleans after Central Michigan University closed down the charter school, citing a lack of academic progress.
Principal Victoria Simon packing up her office at the Threshold Academy in Orleans after Central Michigan University closed down the charter school, citing a lack of academic progress.
When fourth grader Ian Matthews heard his school would close the end of the last academic year, he said he asked his principal, “Why do they want to break people’s hearts?”
For Ian and more than 150 other students, Threshold Academy, a charter in rural Ionia County, had been a refuge from the constant reminders in other schools that they were different because their families were poor. More than 90 percent of Threshold students qualified for a free or reduced-price lunch.
Central Michigan University, the charter’s authorizer, declined to be interviewed on its decision to close Threshold, but in a written response said the school was “unable to consistently deliver a quality educational program.” Declining enrollment has also been cited.
For Threshold Principal Victoria Simon, the answer is more nuanced. True, Threshold’s students had not achieved the academic standards set by CMU, but their overall scores on reading and math tests were improving each year. Expecting children of poverty to score as well as middle class children in other schools was unrealistic, she said.
“CMU’s goal is to have them college ready,” she said. “Even having our kids graduate from high school is an American dream.”
After announcing it would not renew Threshold’s charter, CMU administrators offered to help parents enroll their children in other traditional public and charter schools in Ionia and Montcalm Counties.
The closing highlights the often painful choices confronting education leaders, who must balance academic progress against more intangible factors such as the need to provide a safe, stable environment for vulnerable students. The episode also taps into a debate over the wisdom of keeping high concentrations of low-income children together in school, or whether they are better off learning alongside children from middle-class backgrounds.
“I think most of these children’s parents love them dearly, but poverty does lead to neglect. They’re not being read to, they’re not being nurtured enough. Unfortunately, some of our families are changing constantly. Instability is huge.” – Threshold Academy Principal Victoria Simon.
Students like them
EightCAP, the nonprofit that managed the school, founded Threshold Academy in 1997, offering kindergarten through 5th grade specifically for the poorest children in rural Ionia and Montcalm counties.
In Ionia County, 22.8 percent of children live in poverty, a 70 percent jump between 2005 and 2011, according to the 2013 Kids Count report. In Montcalm County, the child poverty rate is 26.5 percent, a 39 percent jump since 2005.
In pulling Threshold’s charter, CMU did not “take into account the social and economic factors,” EightCAP President Dan Petersen said. “These kids are supposed to be coming to school ready to learn, and they’re not ready to learn.” Many face varied obstacles before they can begin to learn, he said, including chaotic homes, emotional and physical abuse and improper nutrition.
That said, Petersen’s and Simon’s suggestion that Threshold performed well for a school with low-income students is not necessarily borne out by analysis. In Bridge’s Magazine’s 2013 Academic State Champs report, Threshold Academy scored 94 last year. A score of 100 would mean Threshold performed at a level expected for students in their income bracket. Threshold’s score suggests its students were falling short, even when compared with students in other low-income schools.
Difficult homes
Ten percent of Threshold students lived with grandparents, about twice the state average. For nearly a third of Threshold students, their transient living arrangements met the definition of homeless under the federal McKinney-Vento Act, which ensures homeless students have access to public schools.
One student slept on a trampoline so she would be off the ground, Simon said. Another told Simon her stepfather had beaten her mother, and added, “That’s why I’ll never get married.” For Simon, the comment spoke volumes about what her students considered normal in a family: husbands beat wives; therefore, I’ll never get married.
“It does have such a dramatic impact on them in a lot of ways,” she said. “In school you have to have organized thinking and structure. If your home is in chaos, it’s hard to have organized thinking.”
She’s had students who tested positive for methamphetamines, not because they were using it, but because it was being made in their homes, she said. Once or twice a week, child protective services workers were in the school investigating reports of abuse and neglect.
“I think most of these children’s parents love them dearly,” Simon said, “but poverty does lead to neglect. They’re not being read to, they’re not being nurtured enough. Unfortunately, some of our families are changing constantly. Instability is huge.”
She estimated that 15 percent of her students had a parent who was in jail or prison. Boyfriends and stepfathers moved in and out. Only about 6 percent of the students lived in a typical two-parent home, Simon said.
Such instability can profoundly affect a child’s ability to learn, research shows.
Poverty and the “family stress, negative social and environmental characteristics” that often accompany it can interfere with development of the parts of a child’s brain critical for memory, learning and language, a panel of the American Association for the Advancement of Science reported in 2008.
Add to that the challenge of growing up in rural poverty where fewer social services or even the support of neighbors are available, and the chances for academic success can seem insurmountable. Some of Threshold’s students were the second, third or fourth generation living in poverty. About 40 percent of their mothers and 60 percent of their fathers had dropped out of high school, Simon said, increasing the risk their children would not graduate.
“We tried really hard with these kids to build up hopes and dreams and show them that they can succeed,” she said. Simon said she understood that CMU has been under pressure to improve test scores of the schools they charter, but she said the authorizer should have considered not only where Threshold’s students ended up, but where they began.
While declining to answer specific questions, CMU officials released a written statement from Cindy Schumacher, executive director of CMU’s Governor John Engler Center for Charter Schools.
CMU had gone “to substantial lengths in the last several years to help the school make the improvement required for reauthorization,” she said. “These attempts have been unsuccessful… While it is a difficult decision, CMU cannot justify authorizing a school that is unable to consistently deliver a quality educational program and meet its student achievement goals… CMU believes the decision to not reauthorize Threshold Academy is in the best interest of the parents, students and community.”
Lagging scores
In the last school year, 47.7 percent of Threshold’s students were proficient in reading on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (or MEAP) test, and 25.8 percent were proficient in math. While that left much room for improvement, those reading scores were higher than in the Grand Rapids, Detroit and Flint public schools and 18 other CMU charter schools, but well below the state average of nearly 70 percent. Threshold’s math scores were higher than in the Grand Rapids, Lansing, Detroit and Flint public schools and 28 of CMU’s other charter schools, but below the state average of 40 percent.
Simon conceded her students’ test scores were low, “but they were good and getting better,” she said. “These are really challenged kids, and to think that they were doing that well is fantastic.”
By mid-June, she was packing up her office in the former elementary school building in Orleans, about 35 miles northwest of Grand Rapids. It’s a hamlet so small that you could miss it as you drove by on M-44. Desks, books, computers and other equipment were stacked in the hallways, ready to be sold.
Simon recalled the day this past spring when she went classroom to classroom, telling students they would not be returning this fall. She tried to put a positive spin on it, telling them they would attend schools closer to their homes and make new friends.
“It was one of the worst days of my entire life,” she said.
Parents, too, were dismayed. “I cried right along with my daughter,” Amanda Durham said. “The teachers there, they treated you as family.”
This fall, the former Threshold Academy students will be scattered through dozens of traditional public school districts and charter schools across Ionia and Montcalm counties. Some research
suggests they might be better off among middle-class students.
In 2012, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count project, warned that children raised in high poverty areas can develop multiple behavioral and emotional problems. There is little research, however, on whether the same can be said of children attending schools where most students are from poor families.
“It would seem to be good to mix kids of different economic levels,” said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, Kids Count project director at the Michigan League for Public Policy. While she was unfamiliar with CMU’s decision to close Threshold, she said having low-income children attend school with classmates from more-affluent families shows them that “there are opportunities, and it opens the world for these kids.”
But on the other hand, “I think another issue at play in all of this is stability for these kids,” she added. “As we open and close schools willy-nilly, I think we have to look at that component.”
Simon certainly doesn’t believe her students are better off at other schools. At Threshold, no one was teased because they were poor or their father was in prison, she said. School staff, she said, had become a surrogate family for many children. “I think it’s just another example of ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away.”
Pat Shellenbarger is a freelance writer based in West Michigan. He previously was a reporter and editor at the Detroit News, the St. Petersburg Times and the Grand Rapids Press. |
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Wed Aug 13, 2014 7:26 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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In the last school year, 47.7 percent of Threshold’s students were proficient in reading on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (or MEAP) test, and 25.8 percent were proficient in math. While that left much room for improvement, those reading scores were higher than in the Grand Rapids, Detroit and Flint public schools and 18 other CMU charter schools, but well below the state average of nearly 70 percent. Threshold’s math scores were higher than in the Grand Rapids, Lansing, Detroit and Flint public schools and 28 of CMU’s other charter schools, but below the state average of 40 percent.
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Wow a failing charter school had higher reading scores than Flint! |
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Wed Aug 13, 2014 7:30 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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News and analysis from The Center for Michigan
Along Michigan’s back roads, thousands of homeless children
12 August 2014
by Pat Shellenbarger
Bridge Magazine contributor
.
Brenda Greenhoe works with schools in four rural Michigan counties to find homeless children and get them on track.
Brenda Greenhoe finds kids living in tents. She’s found them sleeping in ball field dugouts. Last summer, she found a young couple living in an abandoned garage.
That’s her job.
Greenhoe is in charge of finding and helping homeless students in Montcalm, Ionia, Isabella and Gratiot counties – four largely rural regions in central Michigan.
Last school year, she found 1,550.
“It’s a little less obvious when you drive around rural areas, because you don’t see them,” she said. “The poverty is here, but you have to drive on some pretty rough, back roads to find it. You’ll run across people who are sleeping in their vehicle on state land or in a tent.
“I see the poverty. It’s right here in my face every day.”
A flood of desperation
Fighting poverty is an urgent priority for Michigan residents across all demographic groups, according to the Center for Michigan’s recent report, “Michigan Speaks: The Citizen’s Agenda for the 2014 Elections,” based on polling and community conversations with more than 5,500 residents across the state. It’s easy to understand why: 1.6 million Michigan residents now live in poverty.
No wonder homelessness is on the rise, notably among children. Last year, Michigan was listed as having the nation’s fourth highest increase (42 percent) in student homelessness over the past decade. There are more than 31,000 homeless students in Michigan, according to most recent state estimates.
For Greenhoe, whose territory spans 2,400 miles, finding destitute children is dispiritingly easy. The four counties where she serves as a liaison for homeless students have child poverty rates ranging from 23 to 27 percent.
One county, Isabella, has the highest poverty rate in Michigan at 32.1 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Those figures, however, are likely inflated by the number of Central Michigan University students living in the area.
Even without counting college students, Isabella County’s poverty rate of 18 percent is higher than Michigan’s statewide average of 16.3 percent and the national average of 14.9 percent. The rate among the county’s 2,143 Native Americans is 27 percent, the Census Bureau found.
Isabella is one of 32 counties in Michigan that have concentrated pockets of poverty, defined as more than 30 percent of a neighborhood’s residents living below the poverty line, a report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s National Kids Count Project found.
Only six states had more areas of concentrated poverty than Michigan, the report found, with child poverty skyrocketing 57 percent between 2000 to 2010. The 341,000 Michigan children living in these destitute areas are enough to fill every first-, second- and third-grade classroom in the state.
Low income, low expectations
Even rural counties, where low-income families are typically scattered, have pockets of poverty, including Alpena, Chippewa, Roscommon and Isabella. That matters because children growing up in low-income areas see little hope for success, said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, Kids Count project director at the Michigan League for Public Policy.
“Children from poor neighborhoods, even if their own families are not in poverty, are affected,” she said. “They struggle more with behavior and emotional problems, they are less likely to graduate, and they have reduced potential to be economically successful as adults.”
If all a child sees is poverty and hopelessness, the likelihood of escaping is remote.
“The poverty is here, but you have to drive on some pretty rough, back roads to find it.” – Brenda Greenhoe, who searches for homeless children in central Michigan.
“Without hope, you’re dead in the water,” said Greenhoe, whose work is supported through a federal grant. “Your priorities are based on how you were raised and where you live. It affects everybody in the community. It’s more healthy to see normal families doing normal things.”
The homeless students Greenhoe helps are often not just living in tents and abandoned garages. Under federal law, students are considered homeless if they are moving from couch to couch in one home or another, or otherwise have no stable, long-term housing. Some have run away or been kicked out of their homes.
The young couple she found in an abandoned garage last summer spent their days in a park, then returned to the garage at night. Greenhoe got them back in school and helped them find safer housing.
Beyond seeing to homeless families’ physical needs, Greenhoe said her greatest challenge is helping “children see and believe that they have a future and that they have hope and to see that they can do what they believe is impossible,” Greenhoe said.
“The first question I always ask is, ‘What is your hope for the future? What are your hopes for your kids?’” she said. “I ask them that, and I get this blank stare.
“One woman burst into tears, and she said, ‘Nobody’s ever asked me that.’”
Pat Shellenbarger is a freelance writer based in West Michigan. He previously was a reporter and editor at the Detroit News, the St. Petersburg Times and the Grand Rapids Press. |
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Wed Aug 13, 2014 7:33 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Snyder Dodges Accountability During Michigan Radio Program
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
News from Progress Michigan
September 5, 2014
Contact: Sam Inglot, 616-916-0574, sam@progressmichigan.org
Snyder Dodges Accountability During Michigan Radio Program
The governor tried to rewrite his record, blamed others for problems, showed no leadership
MICHIGAN — Governor Rick Snyder was on Michigan Public Radio’s Q&A program, Michigan Calling, this morning, where he dodged questions and tried to rewrite his record of standing up for big businesses and harming Michigan families.
“Gov. Snyder has consistently acted to put the well-being of corporations and his CEO cohorts above the interests of Michigan families and today he tried to whitewash that history,” said Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan. “Whether he’ll admit it or not, Gov. Snyder cut education funding and increased taxes on families and seniors so he could pay for a massive corporate tax giveaway. All the while, he’s attacked women’s access to health care, actively discriminated against the LGBT community and worked to dismantle unions that give people power in the workplace.”
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Sat Sep 06, 2014 1:48 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Connie JolesMARK SCHAUER FOR GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN 2014
from The Deroit News ~
"Snyder repeats successes he has promoted throughout his re-election bid against Democrat Mark Schauer, the former congressman from Battle Creek. They include eliminating a budget deficit, creating nearly 300,000 private-sector jobs, lowring the state’s unemployment rate and boosting education funding by $1 billion in his almost four years in office."
I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHERE THE 300,000 PRIVATE-SECTOR JOBS ARE? I KNOW OF MANY SHOPS THAT HAVE CLOSED...
See More
TV ad, Snyder says he's built 'strong foundation'
Gov. Rick Snyder aired his first television ad Tuesday for the final two months of the governor's race, emphasizing his accountant credentials as key to building a 'strong foundation' for Michigan's recovery.
detroitnews.com |
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Sat Sep 06, 2014 3:11 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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September 2, 2014 at 12:22 pm
In TV ad, Snyder says he's built 'strong foundation'
Detroit News staff and wire
Lansing — Gov. Rick Snyder aired his first television ad Tuesday for the final two months of the governor’s race, emphasizing his accountant credentials as key to building a “strong foundation” for Michigan’s recovery.
The Republican says during the 60-second ad that when the “numbers add up,” he can help more people.
Snyder repeats successes he has promoted throughout his re-election bid against Democrat Mark Schauer, the former congressman from Battle Creek. They include eliminating a budget deficit, creating nearly 300,000 private-sector jobs, lowring the state’s unemployment rate and boosting education funding by $1 billion in his almost four years in office.
In a key part of the ad, Snyder acknowledges that some Michiganians are still feeling the effects of a slowly recovering economy. He is dressed more casually than usual — in an uncollared shirt instead of his standard dress shirt — and talks throughout the commercial.
“We’re on the road to recovery for every Michigander,” he says in the ad. “You might not feel it yet, but you will soon.”
The Schauer campaign and Michigan Democratic Party jumped on that part of the ad,saying Snyder isn’t on the side of regular people and accusing him of “lecturing” voters about when they’ll feel a recovery.
Michigan’s unemployment rate in July was 7.7 percent, the latest data available. It is higher than the national rate of 6.2 percent for the same month, but down substantially from the state jobless rate of 11.7 percent when he took office in January 2011.
The commercial comes as recent polls have shown the race tightening. The Democratic Governors Association has run ads promoting Schauer’s candidacy, and Snyder weathered a tea party challenge to the renomination of Lt. Gov. Brian Calley more than a week ago at the state GOP convention in Novi.
More From Politics-State
Fri, Sep 5
Snyder defends tax on pensions, downplays $1.8B tax cut to businesses
Gov. Rick Snyder downplayed Friday the significance of the $1.8 billion tax cut he delivered to businesses in 2011 and defended his decision to levy the income tax on some pensions.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140902/POLITICS02/309020071#ixzz3CZIjQxbj |
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Sat Sep 06, 2014 3:15 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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September 5, 2014 at 5:29 pm
Snyder defends tax on pensions, downplays $1.8B tax cut to businesses
Chad Livengood
Detroit News Lansing Bureau
Lansing— Gov. Rick Snyder downplayed Friday the significance of the $1.8 billion tax cut he delivered to businesses in 2011 and defended his decision to levy the income tax on some pensions.
During a statewide public radio call-in show, the Republican incumbent tried to counter the talking points of his Democratic opponent, Mark Schauer, that his corporate tax overhaul was a giveaway to big businesses.
“Big business did not get a tax benefit from the tax changes we made,” Snyder said on the Michigan Public Radio Network’s “Michigan Calling” show. “That didn’t happen at all.”
Snyder said the 2011 elimination of the Michigan Business Tax and creation of a 6 percent corporate income tax ended a system in which state government doled out generous tax credits to large corporations. He said eliminating the MBT largely benefited “small and medium-sized” businesses by a ending a tax scheme that took into account sales and profits.
“That’s the tax reform that really happened. It wasn’t about big business,” said Snyder, a former business executive. “I wiped out their tax credits. They have a higher tax rate than individuals. That wasn’t a big win.”
The East Lansing-based Anderson Economic Group said in a report last month that Snyder’s tax law changes have boosted Michigan’s place in a ranking of states with business-friendly tax policies from No. 32 in 2011 to No. 28 this year.
“The fact is businesses in this state are paying $1.8 billion in less taxes now,” Schauer spokesman Zack Pohl said Friday. “I think it’s absurd that this governor would suggest that his tax cut didn’t benefit big business.”
About 95,000 small to medium-size companies organized as an limited liability corporation, S corporation or partnership are no longer subject to any state tax on business income, said Tricia Kinley, senior director of tax and regulatory policy at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.
Owners of those types of companies used to get taxed on their business income and gross reciepts through the MBT and its predecessor and then get hit with an individual income tax bill for their salary or profits, Kinley said.
“A lot of the Democrats’ claim that this was a big tax cut for big corporations is simply misleading and inaccurate,” Kinley said.
Mitch Bean, former head of the nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency, said it’s an “oversimplification” for Snyder to claim large companies didn’t benefit from the 2011 tax changes. Bean noted some LLCs can be as large as the Auburn Hills-based automaker Chrysler Group LLC.
“I don’t believe that,” said Bean, co-owner of Great Lakes Economic Consulting in Eaton Rapids. “That’s not true.”
Pension tax defendedSchauer and fellow Democrats have made Snyder’s changes to the way pensions are taxed a major issue in the election campaign, calling it a tax on seniors — a characterization the governor challenged Friday during the live radio show.
“That’s a misstatement when it says seniors,” Snyder told radio show host Rick Pluta. “It was really about essentially removing the exclusion on pension income.”
In 2011, Snyder first proposed ending all income tax exemptions on pension income. Previously, only retirees with large pensions from private employers were subject to the income tax.
The Republican-controlled Legislature scaled back Snyder’s initial plans, creating a three-tier system that continued to exempt public pensions from the income tax for 480,000 taxpayers born before 1946.
Retirees over age 68 with private pensions are exempt from income tax for the first $48,302 for single filers and $96,605 for joint filers.
The governor noted a new exemption of up to $40,000 was carved into the tax code for all forms of income for senior citizens.
“Now it’s fair between people who had retirement income and people who had working income,” Snyder said.
The second tier for residents born between 1946 and 1952 exempts the first $20,000 for single filers and $40,000 for married couples who file their taxes jointly. That exemption applied to 230,000 tax returns in 2011, according to a House Fiscal Agency memo.
Under the changes Snyder signed into law, all pension income is subject to the 4.25 percent income tax for residents born after 1952, affecting approximately 150,000 taxpayers.
“It’s still one of the top 10 most generous schemes in the country,” Snyder said of Michigan’s tax on retirement income.
Under Snyder’s tax law changes, some lower-income seniors saw their tax bills increase because the governor and Legislature made the homestead property tax credit less generous.
A retired couple born after 1952 with $48,000 in pension income and a reduced homestead property tax credit saw their income tax bill rise by $3,130 after the 2011 tax changes, according to the House Fiscal Agency.
Snyder reiterated his longstanding argument that making more pension income subject to the income tax was a matter of fairness to other workers.
“If you say retirement income isn’t taxed, you’re shifting your taxes to your kids to say ‘we want you to carry us,’ and that’s not a fair answer,” Snyder said.
Later in the day, Snyder was greeted by about 25 protesters at an event in Madison Heights carrying signs that read “Stop Senior Tax.” Snyder was attending a Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan announcement of an expanding program aimed at fighting childhood obesity.
Lonnie Scott, executive director of the liberal political group Progress Michigan, said Snyder is trying to “whitewash” his record of putting “the well-being of corporations and his CEO cohorts above the interests of Michigan families.”
“Whether he’ll admit it or not, Gov. Snyder cut education funding and increased taxes on families and seniors so he could pay for a massive corporate tax giveaway,” Scott said Friday in a statement.
clivengood@detroitnews.com
(517) 371-3660
http://twitter.com/ChadLivengood
Detroit News Staff Writer Charles E. Ramirez contributed.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140905/POLITICS02/309050088#ixzz3CZJoibXC |
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Sat Sep 06, 2014 3:17 pm |
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