LANSING – Local governments could be forced to layoff as many as 5,000 police and fire fighters if an all cuts solution to the 2007-08 budget is enacted, GoV. Jennifer Granholm said in a radio interview Thursday. But she also expressed confidence that the House will enact a total plan to resolve the budget issue and was hopeful the Senate would quickly move to agree.

Speaking on WILS-Radio in Lansing Thursday morning, Granholm said the only solution to the state’s budget problems was to enact a combination of program cuts, government reforms and tax increases. “It has to be a combination,” she said.

Enacting a proposal that cuts an estimated $1.75 billion in state spending is a recipe for disaster, she said. Since the largest potential cut outlined by the Senate Fiscal Agency was to statutory revenue sharing, Granholm said such a cut, in excess of $398 million, could mean 5,000 fewer police and fire fighters in the state.

Liz Boyd, Granholm’s spokesperson, said that number is a worst-case scenario estimate. Most communities that get revenue sharing funds spend at least some of it on police and fire fighters. If most communities spent most their revenue sharing funds on public protection then a loss of as many as 5,000 police and fire fighters across the state is not out of the question, she said.

But Summer Minnick of the Michigan Municipal League said a loss of 5,000 police and firefighters might in fact be a best-case scenario for the state if the revenue sharing were cut by that magnitude.

Using a figure of $60,000 to calculate average salary and benefits for law enforcement personnel comes out to the potential loss of more than 6,600 police and fire officials, Minnick said.

Plus, if the state does adopt an all-cuts strategy, “I don’t see how you won’t have several communities go into receivership,” Minnick said.

The potential cuts identified by the SFA were requested by Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester) as an example of the potential impact of an all-cuts budget proposal.

Bishop has said that simply cutting the budget is not his first choice, but that the option had to be on the table.

Matt Marsden, spokesperson for Bishop, said the document created by the SFA was only a proposal of potential cuts and did not mean all the proposals would be adopted. And given the high priority Senate Republicans have given public safety it was impossible to determine what the actual effect on police and fire fighters would be in the state.

In the interview, Granholm said that not only would police and firefighters be affected, but that the public would have to be wary of what restaurants they went to because of a loss of food safety inspectors and which bridges might be safe because of a loss of highway safety inspectors.

And she rejected another Senate proposal to call for an early retirement plan that could reduce the number of state workers by nearly 20 percent of the current workforce. The state is actually now in a position where in areas like child safety protection it needs more state workers, she said.

“How much farther can we go before it affects the quality of life” in Michigan, Granholm said. The Legislature “has got to bite the bullet and make the hard decisions,” she said and she was the confident the House would finally do that with Friday’s session.

This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com

a>>