LANSING Saying the most that can be expected in new revenue through the end of the 2005 budget is $500 million, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema (R-Wyoming) said Wednesday that policymakers will have to come up with about $500 million in spending cuts to balance the budget.

One new revenue proposal expected to be thrown into the mix Thursday by Senate Appropriations Chair Shirley Johnson is a 5 percent tax on professional entertainment admissions, which would produce about $50 million.

The entertainment tax would apply to all professional sports teams in the state and other for-profit entities, with the revenue replacing general funds for arts and cultural programs. Johnson declined to reveal details of her proposal Wednesday, saying only that it would provide stability for arts funding, a frequent target for cuts. There was considerable uncertainty as to what entities would fall under the new tax.

“I’ve had tons of interest on my side of the aisle, the other side of the aisle,” said Johnson (R-Royal Oak) of her proposal. Sikkema said he “has an open mind” on the entertainment tax proposal.

State Budget Office spokesperson Greg Bird said the administration would wait until seeing the proposal to determine if it could support an entertainment tax.

With the state facing a combined deficit of $1.05 billion deficit in the current and upcoming years, Sikkema outlined to his caucus one scenario that sliced away at programs throughout the state in order to close the gap without raising the cigarette, liquor or other taxes.

The cuts include closing two prisons and releasing 2,528 prisoners, cutting higher education by 5.8 percent (for a cumulative cut over the past two years of 13 percent), cutting community colleges by 6.3 percent and revenue sharing 6.15 percent, implementing the threatened $28 per pupil school aid cut this year (on top of $74 already in place) and limiting the restoration of the foundation grant in 2004-05 to $6,652 rather than the full $6,700, laying off 170 State Police troopers and canceling this year’s planned trooper school, and cutting $180 million from the Department of Community Health in such ways as reducing reimbursement rates to hospitals and doctors.

“We’ve got people who think you can just cut your way through the budget,” Sikkema said of the outline of cuts that affect virtually all programs. But adding he would oppose the laundry list, he said: “Putting prisoners on the street, making additional cuts to the education system and a variety of other cuts would be a mistake.”

Sikkema would not address which of the cuts he would support.

The Republican-led House approved $266.6 million in cuts last week, and without signing on to that list, Sikkema said even that hotly-disputed move only accounts for about half of the cuts he sees will be required.

The Michigan Chamber of Commerce has been one of the staunchest advocates of a cut-only strategy, and Rich Studley, vice president for government relations, said the package released by Sikkema deserves a serious look.

“I doubt you’ll see the Chamber objecting to these cuts,” he said while noting he has not yet analyzed the entire list. “We are opposed to tax increases, period.”

Studley said businesses, which have been hit hard by the economic downturn, “have nothing more to give to the state.”

The list, he suggest, constitutes a message that “across the board cuts in incremental changes don’t make it any more and we may have to look at a dramatic restructuring of state government.”

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