The governor remains on his crusade to reinvent the state by asking
county and city governments to combine their resources at a supposed
savings to weary tax payers. As with most of his idealistic ideas,
this stuff is easier said than done.
The newly installed Macomb County Executive observes, "Some of the
local leaders are very hesitant about these decisions because there's a
lot of public criticism." Yeah, there's an understatement.
Mark Hackel knows when you talk about combining your firefighters
and cops from one jurisdiction with another, "there is an emotional
impact…people get very very agitated. They get very upset."
And faced with that political fact of life, some local leaders will
opt for the status quo. The governor seeks to change that by
threatening to withhold state aid to those entities if they don't fall
in line.
In the world of carrots and sticks, that would be a club.
Hackel is on board with the governor on the combining concept
saying it should have been done years ago and he thinks he's found a
way for recalcitrant locals to get the back bone to do it.
His strategy is, blame the governor.
Hackel figures by making the governor the bad guy, local
politicians can say, I don't want to do this, but the governor will
take millions of dollars away from our government and I can't let that
happen, so we have to swallow this medicine.
The former sheriff says it worked in Mt. Clemens and no one was
laid off.
Mr. Snyder is probably more than willing to be the Snidely Whiplash
in this saga as he didn't take this job to win a popularity contest and
most certainly these days he is not.