Crain’s and Bridge Magazine Focus on Fixes to Broken Municipal Finance System

The Michigan Municipal League’s Dan Gilmartin has a warning for Michigan’s policymakers: The way the state funds its cities is squeezing them dry.

An in-depth article jointly posted by Crain’s Detroit Business and Bridge Magazine, extensively quotes Gilmartin, the League’s CEO and executive director, as well as the League’s Anthony Minghine, COO and associate executive director. Gilmartin  says that local governments across the state need to do a better job at sharing services and cutting costs. But cities also are limited in how much money they can bring in, even if residents were willing to tax themselves more – and that is something Lansing has to fix.

Gilmartin and other leaders are proposing an update to Proposal A, the voter-approved 1994 Michigan constitutional amendment that caps property tax increases. Read the Crain’s article here and check out the Bridge version here.

This is a great article and it’s fantastic to see Crain’s and Bridge tackle this complicated yet highly important topic of changes that need to be made to Proposal A and Headlee. It’s in-depth and definitely worth your time.