SaveMICity Session at Mackinac Policy Conference Gets Great Advanced Media Coverage

An education session involving the SaveMICity initiative at the Mackinac Policy Conference is taking place tomorrow, but it’s already generating a lot of buzz. There already have been some articles written about the session, including this week’s Detroit Free Press piece, this WDIV article and a related  story on WDET public radio.

The Free Press article by John Gallagher was particularly good and it got picked up by multiple other outlets. Here’s an excerpt:

Here’s a puzzle that will be considered, if not actually solved, at this week’s annual Mackinac Policy Conference.

Five Michigan urban areas — metro Detroit, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Lansing and Kalamazoo — produce more than $3 of every $4 of economic output in the state. To be precise, those five metros generated about $328 billion of the state’s $426 billion in gross domestic product as of the end of 2016.

Yet despite their enormous economic output and financial strength, these regions, like a host of smaller cities in Michigan, continue to suffer from shaky municipal finances, deteriorating infrastructure and a general sense of not getting their due from the state’s political leadership.

What gives? Why hasn’t economic power translated into political power?

The reasons could be many: A stingy state legislature prefers to cut taxes more than help cities. Conservative Republicans have gerrymandered districts so that urban issues championed mainly by Democrats remain underrepresented in the corridors of power.

And — not the least reason — metros like Detroit often find themselves divided among city and suburbs. Bickering leaves unresolved issues like regional transit and auto insurance reform.

An early morning panel  Wednesday at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s policy conference on Mackinac Island will tackle this puzzle, featuring some of the best thinkers on urban issues. They include U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat from the Flint area; Anthony Minghine, deputy executive director of the Michigan Municipal League, and Chris Coleman, a former mayor of St. Paul, Minn.

The League’s Anthony Minghine, COO and deputy executive director, has been leading our SaveMICity effort and he’s quoted in all the articles. He will be part of the panel happening tomorrow on Mackinac Island during the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference. Learn more about the panel here.

Here’s part of what Minghine had to say in the WDET news broadcast: “Most people probably think because the economy is strong that the communities are doing well. And we’re not, because the system isn’t built that way. And they’ve gotta understand and draw those connections between our broken funding system and the lack of services that they see. Whether it’s the baseball field isn’t cut or the roads are maintained to a level that they like. Those are all manifestations of this broken system” -Tony Minghine, MM. Listen to the full piece here.

We’re very excited about this year’s Mackinac Policy Conference because it’s at this event we will be launching the next phase of the SaveMICity initiative. This effort started at the Michigan Municipal League’s Capital Conference in March of 2016 and it’s done well in the last two years informing the public about our state’s broken system for funding our municipalities. But our next phase will take this message even further. Stay tuned to this blog for more details tomorrow morning, including the release of a brand new, three-minute animated video that explains the issue.