By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Her comprehensive $6 billion plan to grow jobs ranks as the most aggressive of any state in the country, Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm told the Daily News Saturday in a 20-minute interview after her visit with the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians near Dowagiac.
Granholm said 99,000 more people are working today than when she took office in 2003, but because citizens are still being impacted by economic transition, there remains much to accomplish to diversify Michigan's economy.
Granholm highlighted a number of successes produced through her four-pronged Jobs Today, Jobs Tomorrow plan announced in her 2005 State of the State address.
She pointed to 331,000 jobs created or retained by administration efforts, $2 billion that will be invested to diversify Michigan's economy, 28,000 out-of-work residents matched with jobs through the MI Opportunity Partnership and more than $3 billion in infrastructure projects being accelerated over the next three years as evidence her plan is working.
Four specific steps her administration will take this year to continue the work begun by Jobs Today, Jobs Tomorrow call for:
Investing in our 21st century economy by “going anywhere and doing anything” to create jobs and fighting to protect jobs we have.
Investing in citizens' health by dramatically increasing the number of people who have access to affordable insurance.
Investing in education and the quality of our schools to insure all of Michigan's children have an opportunity for a quality education, access to higher education and that Michigan possesses the best-educated workforce in the nation.
Investing in family security and safety by calling for an increase in the minimum wage, giving every worker an opportunity to save for retirement, protecting seniors in nursing, demanding new standards of corporate accountability and ethics laws for elected officials.
Granholm pledges to continue traveling across the country and around the globe. She wants to make Michigan a national leader in development of alternative energies, attracting those growing businesses.
She also promises to continue efforts to force Washington leaders to partner with the state to help struggling manufacturers by creating a national health care plan, promoting fair trade policies and reforming pension laws.
Granholm proposed a “revolutionary” health care plan to provide access to affordable insurance to more than 500,000 uninsured citizens.
The Michigan First Health Care Plan will make affordable private health plans available to small business employees, the self-employed and the working poor without access to traditional employer-based health insurance or government-run programs.
The governor says cutting Michigan's uninsured population by half would create significant savings for businesses and citizens that subsidize uninsured health care.
To give every child an opportunity for a quality education and access to higher education and to insure that Michigan has the best-educated U.S. workforce, Granholm proposed a series of school-strengthening measures.
She called for quick action on her proposal for a tough core curriculum - legislation that passed and she will sign this week.
She also called for a new $4,000 Merit Award scholarship to insure that every student has the tools needed to succeed and the opportunity to continue their education beyond high school. In her upcoming budget Granholm proposed new investments in education, after-school programs and early childhood education.
As to where Dowagiac and Cass County fit in her vision, Granholm told the Daily News, “This area of the state is hugely important for tourism and agriculture. Both of those are two areas we're going to really emphasize, especially agriculture as it relates to ethanol and our alternative energy plans. Because of the proximity to the lakes and our ability to tell our story about why Michigan is a great destination state, we're going to be increasing by $15 million over the next two years. That agricultural base is a means of fostering renewable energy, so I think there's a huge opportunity here for that. We want to support the manufacturing base, but we obviously have to move into new areas. We have the largest concentration of manufacturing in automotive of any state in the country, so we have to invest a lot to diversify.”
Granholm noted the state received 505 proposals competing for a share of the $100-million 21st Century Jobs Fund. Awards are expected in July in four areas - alternative energy, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and homeland security and defense. “This first year there will be two rounds of funding,” she said. “We're accelerating infrastructure projects to put 37,000 people to work over the next two construction seasons. We're pulling in about 10 years of construction projects that were lined up. It's roads, but it's also bridges.”
Granholm said Dowagiac demolishing Central Middle School to make way for a $5 million development of a medical arts facility adjacent to Borgess-Lee Memorial Hospital and three-story, senior independent living apartments “is great, especially when you combine our aging population with health care. In fact, health care is really a jobs component, too, because health care is an enormous, growing area of our economy. Second, health care itself because of the cost on our small businesses and because of the uninsured, the more you can go to universal coverage to insure the uninsured, the cheaper it is for everybody. Those who are insured pay a small premium to get a no-frills benefit package, but at least they've got some coverage. That ends up reducing the premiums for everybody by about $700 to $800 a year. It's similar to what they did in Massachusetts. We submitted a similar waiver for Michigan. Since theirs got approved in a bipartisan way, we're hopeful we can convince our Legislature to accept the same kind of thing. We have to get permission from the federal government first, but it's really a shared partnership. There would be a small payment by individuals adjusted for income level. Then that money would be used to match federal dollars. We've identified $400 million worth of state money that is covering health right now, but it's not matched yet by the federal government in what would be an 80-20 match. If you can leverage as much state money as you possibly can - including individual money - to draw down federal money, we could provide about $1 billion worth of coverage for Michigan citizens, which is great.”
Granholm had not seen Time magazine's April 17 cover story concluding that a third of U.S. public high school students don't graduate, but “I know that many people attribute the large dropout rate to not being challenged enough. So you up expectations and make it more relevant and more vigorous. We have demanded that career technical-vocational skills be included in this high standards curriculum. If you've got an applied track kids can use, they're taking robotics … We're challenging every high school to have a robotics competition. If they don't see the relevance and they're not challenged, that's what causes dropouts. I've seen New York Times articles on this, that people who drop out have huge regrets. The new education model - the new ‘three R's' - is relevance, rigor and relationships. We want to challenge districts to create small high schools that are relevant theme high schools, such as a health care high school, a service industry high school or a high school for the performing arts, so kids see a career path related to the future, in a small setting where they can have a relationship with a teacher or a counselor. That's really the model for success.”
On the issue related to security from trucks hauling Canadian trash to landfills in Michigan, Granholm said a ban depends on federal authorization because it qualifies as commerce and is ruled by treaties such as NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.