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Michigan Governor Rick Snyder sat down with Michigan Chronicle editor Bankole Thompson Monday morning for an interview on why he deserves a second term.
MICHIGAN CHRONICLE: Give us your own rating of the gubernatorial town hall.
RICK SNYDER: I thought it was good. It was a good opportunity to talk about the future. I wish there had been more time. I think there could have been more focus to talk about career tech education initiatives.
MC: Explain “Snyder killing pension tax.”
RS: There was a benefit for a certain group of people, and (people) don’t like to see benefits go away. But it wasn’t fair. It was an exclusion of certain kinds of retirement income that you didn’t have to pay Michigan tax on. It started small and kept growing till it became a big deal. We replaced it with a senior exclusion in a fair way regardless of your type of income. Now we have a better system. We are not killing jobs at all. We are encouraging seniors to work more.
MC: Some see your involvement in Detroit’s finances as an indictment, a political albatross, but you see it as a vindication. Could you explain why?
RS: I’m the governor of Michigan. I work for every citizen and that includes the 700,000 people of Detroit. I also believe there is a bigger impact on our state. If Michigan is going to be a great state again we needed Detroit to be a positive part to being a great city again, and I think I’ve done a good job of getting that communicated in every corner of Michigan.
We saw that with the Grand Bargain. Step back from all the politics. Can anyone think of a four-year term where a governor has been more proactive to show positive improvement in the city of Detroit regardless of whether Democrat or Republican? I’m proud of that.
MC: If you were to review the process of Detroit’s entry into bankruptcy, what would you have done differently?
RS: It would be the same thing. I appreciate the retirees are taking some cut. The Grand Bargain worked out great in terms of the foundation community, the mediator to minimize those cuts as much as possible. That was incredible.
MC: Who has ownership over the facts in the education debate?
RS: I think he (Mark Schauer) is lying. It’s simple. It was $10.6 billion the year before I took office. The budget I just approved was $11.7 billion and each of those years in between, it has been going up. If you add the increase in those three years it was $1.1billion more than the first year. Here you have a case of a professional politician thinking that if he can tell a lie enough times it becomes true. That’s not a good governor.
MC: How would you respond to your critics that there is no empirical evidence that right-to-work has brought jobs to Michigan?
RS: First of all, right-to-work wasn’t just about business development. The main reason I believe in it is I’m standing for Michiganders. Shouldn’t hardworking people have some voice in whether they have to pay dues or not? If they see value they should pay dues. If they don’t see value why should they be forced to take their hard earned dollars for something they are not getting benefit from?
If anything, I think it makes the unions become more responsive and accountable. It can help the unions become more successful if they do it right because they need to respond to their customer base. It has brought jobs to Michigan. Our business development pipeline has significantly increased. We used to get screened off the list because we weren’t a right-to-work state.
MC: Can you explain the “rape” insurance law?
RS: Basically it’s making people buy a rider if they want to have insurance in the event they get raped. I vetoed that bill when it first went through because I didn’t think it had the adequate exceptions for rape and incest. The legislature didn’t agree with me but I vetoed it. What happened then is there was a ballot petition. They (got) signatures to go around me so it is done by citizens in Michigan. I stand by my veto letter.
MC: Should the law be repealed?
RS: I don’t see that likely happening because the legislature passed it. I just don’t see that happening because they will have to vote to do the repeal.
MC: If you are re-elected, what is the big agenda in the second term?
RS: One of the biggest things is helping people get career connected. Right now we have over 80,000 jobs opening in Michigan. You have people looking for work but they lack the skills, training programs. We could put thousands of Detroiters to work and we need to do a better job. We need to re-establish a better career tech track and that’s my top priority.
MC: Some GOP lawmakers want to change Michigan’s Electoral College in how the next president of the United States is chosen. Will you sign such legislation into law if it comes up in the next legislature?
RS: I generally said I don’t support that. In theory, you can make a good argument. It is more of a time and place, and I don’t think the time and place is in the middle of a Census. I don’t really want to do it during a period when it’s clear there can be winners and losers.
MC: What would you say to a senior in Detroit affected by the bankruptcy because of the cut to their pension to get them to support you?
RS: We’ve done a lot of great things for seniors. What we’ve done is increased funding for Meals on Wheels, under My Choice Programs so they can have more independence. We’ve done a lot for senior abuse, both physical abuse and financial abuse. I remember my mother got ripped off. The care worker forged checks from my mom’s checkbook and it took us two or three years to sort out that mess. My mom had no pensions. She had Social Security and was living on savings.
MC: Congressman Schauer at the town hall said in your accounting spreadsheet, you are missing a column called “People.” What do you say to that?
RS: I’ll give you a great illustration about helping people. Community ventures. We’ve got over 45 federal workforce programs to help the structurally unemployed. Ask Focus: HOPE, go to Flint where two wonderful nuns are helping real people, employing people that didn’t have the opportunity to work before.
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