Finally, A Report

For a very long time I have had the practice of not sitting on committees that do not get something done.  I do not need to go to meetings to just sit around and talk about what someone else is doing.  I have left committee positions when that has occurred.

This past May I had a meeting to talk about the possible default on debt payments by local communities with a member of the Senate Fiscal Agency (SFA) and the Executive Director of the Michigan Government Finance Officers Association (MGFOA).  The end result was the creation of a committee by the MGFOA to work with the SFA and look at the debt situation.

We made our presentation in October to the SFA and will present it to the MGFOA at their March meeting.  And finally, the written report itself will be issued today.

There have been many premature articles in Bloomberg and the WSJ since the project started.  Here is the one from the Bond Buyer on the final report.

Our committee will continue to meet to look at some legislative issues and come up with suggestions to alleviate future occurrences of the problem.  We need changes in Michigan and I am sure some of them will be unwelcome.  But what is obvious to me is that we cannot continue to conduct local 'business as usual' anymore.  Local government units cannot borrow their way to prosperity, anymore than local residents can.