EDITORIAL: A Message to Gov. Rick Snyder

MR. SNYDER your “reinvention” of Michigan has left too many behind. We did not hear you acknowledge this during your campaign, and would have more confidence had we heard a frank assessment from you of Michigan’s challenges. The research done by non-partisan groups, such as the Annie E. Casey Foundation, makes it clear that in Michigan homelessness, childhood poverty and hunger have worsened over the past four years. Michigan’s children are suffering because Michigan’s families are suffering. Unemployment is lower than it was in 2010, but Michigan’s unemployment rate is still among the five highest in the nation. A large portion of the jobs created over the past four years are those that pay minimum wage and lower.

We hope that over the next four years your reinvention of the state will focus on tackling not only the future of Detroit and its citizens, but the future of all of Michigan’s residents. At $45,981 (34th in the nation), the state’s median income is, again, among the lowest in the country. It has fallen from $47,064 in 2006.

Michigan’s spending on prisons has risen 146 percent since 2006 and its overall spending on education over the same time period has fallen by 9 percent. Ours is one of only a handful of states in which a 14-year-old may automatically be tried as an adult. Michigan has the second largest number of juvenile “lifers” in the country at 358. Incarceration of Michigan residents is at record levels. This is true despite the fact that crimes committed are, in many categories, at rates not seen since 1969. Mr. Snyder, resolving these injustices and inconsistencies and reforming Michigan prison system will take a kind of reinvention  of which you have shown yourself capable.

While the 6th Circuit three-judge panel chose to uphold Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage, opposing marriage equality sends the wrong message. Mr. Snyder, the economic value of social progressivism is indisputable. History will judge you ultimately, but like the segregationists of the ‘50s, your support of the state’s marriage ban is hurting Michigan. According to a 2013 Gallup poll, 70 percent of 18-29-year-olds said same-sex marriage should be legal. Thus, your stance is clearly out-of-step with the very same “talent” group you hope to retain and attract to the state with your economic policies.

You won with 51 percent of the vote. This is a majority, but not a mandate. We urge you to remember this as you craft policy.