LANSING – Governor Rick Snyder said during a radio call-in show Monday that, should voters reject the sales tax increase on the May ballot, he would work with legislators to craft a replacement plan, but he said including revenue increases in that plan could be difficult.

The response came to a question Snyder has fielded several times since the Legislature approved the plan late last year: What happens if the sales tax plan does not pass?

Snyder has acknowledged, and did Monday on the Michigan Public Radio Network’s “Michigan Calling” program that there is no backup plan at this point.

“I always like to have backup plans,” he said. “This was one of the cases where, because of the legislative process, there isn’t a good plan B. That’s why it’s critically important to pass this.”

Snyder said he would work with legislators to create another plan because the additional funds are needed. “The money we’ve been spending on roads is not enough,” he said in answer to another question on why the state has not followed some others, particularly Arizona, in changing pavement formulas to make roads more durable.

But he said voter rejection of this plan could make getting any additional funds (he stuck with $1.2 billion a year, though transportation officials have said the repair need has gone up since then) difficult.

“If voters go out and defeat a tax increase, individual legislators are going to be more hesitant to support a tax increase,” he said.

The state has put some General Fund into transportation, but he said that has only been about $100 million each year.

But, in answer to other questions he has also had before (Why did the Legislature pass this to voters rather than addressing it themselves and what exactly will the new funds do?), he defended the outcome.

“Why should I support childish, pass-the-buck behavior?” was the end of the specific question from one person about why the governor and legislators put the matter to voters.

“In a perfect world, it would have been nice to get a legislative proposal,” Snyder said.

But he noted, to both questions, that the current system is complex. “If we simply increased our fuel taxes, the price of gas could get too high,” he said. But taking the sales tax off fuels, which could be done legislatively “created a hole for funding schools and local government.”

And he noted that putting the issue on the ballot required a two-thirds majority in both chambers. “We had broad, bipartisan support in the Legislature,” he said.

He said there also has been too much focus on the process and not on the final policy development.

In addition to ensuring that all taxes on fuels go to transportation, Snyder said he supported the shift that would require university funding to come from General Fund instead School Aid Fund.

He indicated, though, that would mean putting all community college support into the School Aid Fund.

“I would be happy to see the community college budget in the School Aid Fund and universities in the General Fund,” he said. “Moving from K-12 to community college particularly in career tech ed is very similar, so I think that is a good use of School Aid Fund.”

He said, to the questions about adding funding for schools and about the shift of $450 million in spending to the SAF from GF, that he had planned to restore most of the cuts to the universities in the 2015-16 budget, but had to curtail those plans because of the projected budget shortfalls.

In response to a question on corporate welfare, Snyder said the shortfalls are a result of the Michigan Economic Growth Authority credits, and he said there was no way to project the effects of those credits.

“They’re a legacy hangover problem from the prior administration,” he said. “We didn’t know the full extent of them in terms of size because they were not capped.”

It was also essentially impossible to know when they would be claimed because the tax code keeps the returns on which they are claimed confidential.

On education quality, Snyder said he would continue to support the Common Core State Standards. While he acknowledged the federal government had gotten involved in the standards, “That was really done by our states coming together.”

It is also standards and does not mandate what or how courses are taught. He noted the state had recently adopted changes to the Michigan Merit Curriculum that ensures the standards can be met through career and technical education courses in addition to the traditional courses.

Snyder defended appointing new emergency managers for Detroit Public Schools despite having commented recently that they had not been working for the district.

“They are working, but not as effectively as I would like. My goal is emergency managers would come in, do their work in 18 months and leave,” he said.

In Detroit, though, “they (are) still in crisis mode,” he said.

He said he was backing the coalition that was working on plans to improve the district’s operations and performance. But he also hoped for proposals that could be adopted elsewhere.

“We need to look at broader answers beyond Detroit Public Schools,” he said.

One subject where Snyder did not have ready answers was on mental health care. A caller said that people in his area were losing their care because they did not qualify for Medicaid, but did not qualify for Healthy Michigan because they were on Medicare.

“There is some transition going on with some of the mental health services,” he said. “If there’s some gap or holes, I would like to know about that.”

But he also said, should the U.S. Supreme Court rule health care premium assistance is available only through state-run exchanges, he would consider urging the Legislature to look at the idea again. When the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act took effect, Mr. Snyder supported developing a state insurance exchange, but the Republican-controlled House balked. That led to Michigan having a federally run exchange.

He praised U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R-St. Joseph) for leading discussions in Congress on an alternative should the court overturn that part of the current system.

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