president two weeks from today on may five the voters of michigan will be asked to consider proposal one on their ballots can't believe it's two weeks but the legislature has given us a complex question to answer with a simple yes or no the league of women voters of the holiday area presents this town hall meeting tonight in an effort to explain all of the facets of the proposal we are not advocating for any side of this issue but explaining the proposal so all of us voters will know what we are voting for or against following the presentation which includes a powerpoint questions about the proposal will be taken from you folks in the audience no statements for or against the proposal will be allowed in this program this presentation is devoted to informing voters about the proposal not persuading them which way to vote so please remember that when framing your questions our speaker this evening  is mrs judy korean jeff and she has an extensive background of public service she has served as executive director of the michigan women's commission for which she was inducted into the michigan women's hall of fame in two thousand and twelve she has also been the league of women voters of michigan vice president for advocacy and in may now the words in two weeks not quite it'll be a little longer than that but she will become the new president of the michigan league of women voters so please welcome judy you i'm going to use more technology than i'm used to but this is a wonderful room we've already heard about the league of women voters and we are nonpartisan and hopefully you can see the screens heard to we need t the overview will be first a little bit about the legislative history the ballot wording the revenue from the proposal the expenditures from the proposal other chart something i think all sides agree on and there is a problem with michigan roads there are been many sources of information but you can see here the green thirty eight percent  consider or forty five percent fair seventeen percent good from and this seems to be pretty commonly accepted during the last few years  revenue has declined and our revenue from roads goes into what's called the michigan transportation fund and that's been going down the money that goes into the michigan transportation fun comes from two sources your license your fees for registration and then the fuel tax so we'll talk more about that but you can see the revenue has gone down because we're driving less and we're also using cars that are more efficient michigan has one hundred twenty two thousand miles of public roads where the ninth largest in the nation and we'll talk more about the sources of funds from the transportation and later are current revenues for transportation also come in from the federal government and you can see there it's about thirty three  percent that comes from the federal government and it's been interesting in learning about because this isn't true for every federal dollar but we actually get more back from the federal government for transportation than we send and  get a dollar three for each dollar so this is an improvement and eighty three percent of this money goes to the state and local road and bridge programs you can see they're restricted fund is that michigan transportation from that's the fifty eight percent and thirty three federal eight percent from the general fund and then there's some miscellaneous it's interesting to note to me that our investment in roads we are dead last in the united states we rank number fifty at one hundred fifty four dollars a person controversy over how it's figured but i got the first figures the new repaired cost average per person from the michigan department of transportation and that is three hundred and fifty seven dollars here in michigan and you can see pennsylvania has a higher amount and so does new york but there's another source that just put out a publication yesterday and it's on live if any of you have gone to that website before if you want to see the whole i think it's about twenty three pages that they released yesterday they say it cost six hundred and eighty six dollars per vehicle and repairs now in michigan how this is money gets spent and this also came from the michigan department of transportation and i know it's hard to see but replacing a bridge deck that we see often costs one point seven million dollars to resurface the asphalt it's eight hundred thousand for  two lanes for one mile and for snow plowing we're talking about three thousand per mile and for buying an urban trance a bus were carsten between three hundred thousand to six hundred thousand so it's important to remember how costly this is from those costs have gone up recently as have three thing else has their legislative history didn't just start recently  governor granholm actually asked for the state to raise the motor fuel tax back in two thousand and nine so that it would generate one point five million at that time it was not an acted governor snyder started asking for an increase and two thousand and eleven then he presented a proposal and a state of the state into two  thousand and thirteen the michigan house the michigan senate started having committee hearings on it in twenty fourteen and neither one would agree to the other houses version so that's how we ended up with where we are today they reached a compromise and you probably i'm sure of all read about this in the lame duck session and december and they  compromise was actually a negotiation between the governor the leader of the house the leader of the senate and the minority leader for the house and the minority leader for the senate so the five of them met they met up quite a few days because we were all anxiously awaiting to see what was going to come out and they came up with this package that we're voting and has ten bills besides the one that we're voting on that tara is mending the constitution and if you want to read the bills this is the packet this is what we're voting on it's only four pages and about one hundred words all of these bills here though go into effect if this proposal passes and you can get copies of them and you can read them but what we're actually voting on is a very few less about one hundred words that are going to be added to the constitution bills listed here and i'll tell you where they are if you want more information later was ninety four to sixteen they have one hundred ten members they had to have two thirds in order to amend the constitution and put this on the ballot all of the representatives that i can find in your area voted yes roger victory amanda price and joe hagan the michigan senate also approved the constitutional amendment on the same day with a two thirds vote there it was twenty six to twelve fifteen republicans eleven democrats and i want your senator allen meek voted yes i forgot to mention in the house actually more democrats voted for it citizens research council which is an excellent resource and they have quite a long paper if you want to get more detail information but they said the proposed solution raises the tax on motor fuel and exempts motor fuel from the sales tax it helps lowers price at the pump and ensures all taxes that the pump goes to transportation but when you exempt the sales tax from the motor fuel then you have to make up the lost revenue to schools and local units of government so that's why they raise the sales tax from six percent to seven percent  proposal because they felt the sales tax is regressive they decided to go back to the earned income tax credit and raise it were at it it had been lowered i think the first year governor snyder came in his budget saving measures so the next slide gives you the wording and this is determined by the secretary of state board of canvassers and you've got it on your sheet so i won't take time to read it the first introduction which is that long paragraph you see now doesn't fall into the criteria of that it has to be one hundred words this has to be one hundred words and that's what they have and then you get and have about so i won't read it but we'll be talking about it as we go along and your answer is yes or no again this was approved by the board of campus and they people submitted language from various sides and they came up with the wording and had to reach agreement the board of canvassers are two democrats two republicans so there has to be some negotiation the thing we want to start with is revenues and this is probably a little confusing but hopefully with the sheet in front of you that will help there are different thinkers and we decided we're doing about twenty five of these presentations around the state we had to choose a source so we decided to go with what's called the house fiscal agency there's also  agency their numbers don't always agree they're close but all of them are estimates so we went with the house post school if you want to go back to the original resources the first thing to look at is what happens with our revenue for the motor fuel tax i think most of us don't know what happens with what we're paying at the pump now because when you get your receipt it's the total we don't know what our sales tax was like if i go to macy's i know what the sales tax that sat it shows up on my receipt but that's not true with the motor fuel you're paying eighteen cents on a gallon for everybody no matter what the price that goes to the federal gas tax that we get that back the dollar and three cents then we're paying if the retail price is a dollar ninety we're paying six cents on that six percent on that so that's thirteen cents then we're paying a gas tax of nineteen cents so we get a total of fifty cents that we're adding on to each price of fuel when we get our final price of two dollars and forty cents hopefully that makes sense because what we see at the at the gasoline stations to forty and it's pretty hard to find out what the wholesale prices  this again came from the citizens research council and we decided to use their figures have to or some after they came out with their materials then if it was three twenty five you can see what happens the federal gas tax stays the same the state sales tax goes up twenty one cents and then we're paying nineteen cents again so our gas tax at three fifths at three twenty five retail brings our final pump price to three eighty three now look at the proposal which is in a slightly different color what we're going to what they're recommending happen is that the federal gas tax there's nothing we can do that it stays that eight hundred cents you do away completely with the sales tax because that doesn't go to anything dealing with the roads and you increase the state gas tax and it's  figure that would be locked in once a year and this would be the bottom number starting in october forty two cents oh it's still there we're in that second column it sorry ok so it'll be forty two cents per gallon and it stays that way right now if the price goes up the sales tax goes up and this will not be true with the state gas to settle stay forty two cents for a year then they'll come back and they can go up no more than five percent the following year they can't go below forty two cents even if gas prices dropped so you can see if it was based on the two forty pump we'd be paying ten cents more under this proposal and you can see where if the gas was higher and the wholesale price was three twenty five those figures stayed the same the eighteen cents on the forty two cents regardless of the price for wholesale gas and so then we're only paying two cents more than we would have under the current proposal so hopefully you can see the difference we've got ten cents right there this this is what the increase would be per gallon and it's only two cents when the price goes up because thales tax has gone up so that that's what happens on the motor fuel tax the how will that compare with other states that is interesting to look at that one no i you can see right now we're kind of in the middle with illinois indiana michigan ohio and west some right now with about forty eight point sixty six cents we're going to be changing you know possibly to sixty cents so that would make us a little outta line with others but you can look at some of the other states like pennsylvania california and new york and see that their higher the national average right now is forty eight point two nine cents so hopefully that's not too much but we would become the sixth highest rate of combined state and locals taxes if this changed we are currently seventeenth out of the fifty so the next revenue is from your fees and we all do vehicle registration but i hadn't quite realized how this was done this lemonade the change in the discount on vehicles i don't limon right now we get a ten percent discount and as your car ages it's going to increase revenue when they freeze those to sixty t sixty two million but when you look at this next slide which we won't try to go through in detail but we're just going to take one car and it's valued at thirty thousand five hundred list price and you can see if it was brand new this year our if it was bought in twenty twelve and you're going to pay seventy three percent because it's down for you had it for four years you're going to be frozen out one hundred twelve so there's no change for you there but it was a newer model your discount would have gone from ninety to eighty one to thirty three so you could pay fourteen dollars to twenty six dollars more and if you had a twenty sixteen brand new car you're going to pay the full rate every year and that could average about fifteen to forty one dollars some more so this is just on the registration fee for automobiles they're also increasing registration fees for trucks which we've heard a lot of complaints about in different speeches they're raising the annual fees for heavy commercial trucks those waiting over twenty thirty six thousand pounds by thirty six percent but they're doing it over three years so if you're under twenty six thousand pounds you can see right now you're paying four hundred ninety one your brights not going up but if you're a heavier truck your rates are going up for example over one hundred sixty thousand you're going from three thousand one hundred seventeen thousand if you learned a little bit people in the audience know more about this but michigan calculates weight for trucks differently and we do it by axles and there's a lot of information on this if it's something you're going to rest in because i know people complain about the weight of trucks destroying our roads they do michigan does a different way with the axle weight and supposedly they argue this actually lowers the wear and tear on the highway by doing the per axle weight which is less than the federal weight which is based on the pound of the truck so i know that's complex and i don't know enough about it but there is stuff on him web site the legislature actually had a bill last year to change to the same way that the federal government house and they had hearings on it but it didn't pass so the legislature decided not to make that change that keep it the way they are you can see that raises a significant amount of revenue thirty almost forty million then the next thing they raise t so if you have an electric car and it weighs eight under eight thousand or less you pay seventy five dollars more if you have an electric car you pay i mean it weighs more than two thousand eight thousand it's two hundred dollars if you have a hybrid the rates are last it's twenty five dollars and one hundred doesn't generate that much more income at six hundred thousand but it is  an effort to say if you're using the roads you need to pay form two then the last one is raising the sales tax and the reason the proposal  because remember we eliminated the sales tax on gasoline the revenue that we get from sales tax on gasoline is eight hundred twenty nine million and the money from the sales tax actually goes into your school late fund and your revenue sharing money so that would be if we eliminate that without increasing the sales tax you lose a loved one percent of the fund so it's a significant loss so that's why they're recommending an increase from six percent to seven percent and that's one of the issues you're voting on with the constitutional amendment because legislature can't raise the sales tax without your approval they can do it on the income tax but they can't to it with the sales tax this is also true of the use tax but you know and you probably know what they use taxes it's a lot raises a lot less revenue but it's the motels or things she rent tax that comes from that so where do we rank when you look at other states on sales tax right now where thirty seven out of fifty and this you can look at it in different ways the way this are going to house fiscal agency got to this thirty seven  percent was they look for example a tennessee was seven percent but then they're also allowed to raise the local tax probably in nashville for two point five percent two point four  five percent for a total of nine point four five percent year sales tax that's the highest in the nation you can say michigan has attorney general grew up quite a few years ago that michigan is not allowed to levy a local tax so that's why we have zero indiana has the same thing if we raise it to seven percent will be the same as the indiana but we're going to be higher than them wisconsin four states have no sales tax but there have other resources and so that kitchen to your summary that i know was on your handout of how we get to two point one four six million you've got that your brace bar revenue from your sales tax you've got a lemonade you have what to wast from the gas tax and that gives an additional revenue of seven hundred thirty million dollars we've been increased the motor fuel tax for one thousand three hundred to stop here just for a minute because we all need a breath and i ask if anybody has any questions up to this point revenue i can repeat it if you want to start two billion it's two it's two thousand million but two point one bill fourteen point nine cents per gallon at the wholesale level then well at three bucks a gallon times let's roll it up to fifteen cents then to be forty five cents a gallon at three dollar  figure forty two cents there is not significantly off but still it's off now it's i would go with the calculation from the center for research i mean citizens for our way now i'm blanking on their research council and i would go with their numbers and i need to look on their hey good right here yes but i'm not going to argue with you but i just want to tell you that's where you need to go to check out their math because these people used to work for the house and senate and i trust their analysis and they gave let us choose their chart but even if it was forty five which i'm pretty sure it's not forty two is going to be that what you're talking about that fourteen per cent figure for a year old just for the first year and then it's going to increase and after that it can it's not automatic it can't go below but it can't it doesn't have to go up but whether it would or not we don't know i mean you've got to remember these are estimates and and i'd like to look back in five years and see how close that who gets to decide the power goes up who can't remember that i'll have to check and getting back to you i just can't remember there if there is a designation on the bill wholesale price before this is brand new it's been recommended by numerous organizations to do it if you look at that citizens research councils long analysis they prefer they asked for this a long time ago and they actually show a graph that if we had done it how much more revenue we would have had if we had based on the wholesale price there's another question  of these speeches and that's the first time it's come up i really haven't heard i'd like to check that out but i don't know  i don't know the answer i just i know about headley government because over a certain rate of taxes then it goes down but i don't know if that includes the motor fuel i would have to ask somebody who knows much more than i do but i would like to check it out really that's never come up so it's worth learning all right let's look at where this money is going to go well we're going to go back to where we were sorry ok again we've used most of our figures from the house fiscal agency and then if you ninety one million to the county road commission and then two hundred seventy three million to cities and villages this is locked in and public at fifty one on how the money is allocated here's an exceptional get to when we're using the expenditures i'm using the third year and i'll explain that when we get a little further along the road funds are allocated  different ways under public act fifty one that i just showed you those numbers thirty nine point one percent for i am done for the state thirty nine point one two the county road commission that's for about seventy five percent of the roads one of the things i've learned from to it working on this is we really need to know more about turning road commissions and make sure we know what they're doing because they've got a sizable amount of money and we don't always know who they're who's even on it there's twenty one point eight percent that goes to cities and villages for about seventeen percent of the roads there's some little amount of money comes from the general fund in the state budget that doesn't go into the spawn and it's actually divided by the legislators and last year they divided about one hundred fifteen million pulled out different counties and i'm just going to go to the page with the well and you can see it unfold right now the county gets seventeen point two million it would go up twenty three percent you'd get three point nine million going to the county road of commissioners if the past and then the other part of the law that's already in existence takes off a certain percentage it's pretty small but it amounts to one hundred sixteen million if this proposal passes that goes to public transportation this is that includes busses it includes passenger rail bridges and harbors that aren't covered elsewhere so that's a mound of money going into that fund then the next one a friend of mine here in town just showed me a newspaper article that you all probably saw but goes for the earned income tax credit what happened was when governor snyder came into office he cut back the earned income tax credit we had been and twenty percent this is money that goes to low income individuals when they file taxes and so it's a year late coming back to them but it reduces it gives them money back and you can see it's going to average right now they get about one hundred thirty eight dollars someone low income would probably get a credit of about four hundred forty six this is again for people that file their income tax there's a small homestead property tax credit but it's so small i'm just mentioning it and then the big another big expenditure is for the sales tax and that ruby place that that amount we talked about that's going away from the fuels and this we currently get about eleven million something's wrong with that but we're going to increase that two hundred million so the increase would give us about a little over twelve million twelve thousand million it's a two per increase that would be going to the school fund and then there's actually language to give forty million from two what's called at risk programs in schools and this is to any school that has the free lunch program there's a definition in the law that defines a risk program at turns out right now we're have about seven hundred and almost eight hundred school districts when you count the charter schools this is going to go to most of them because most of them have free lunch program but that's forty million dollars and then  changes in the constitution that you're voting on the universities could not receive money from the school way fund and bats kind of complicated but back in governor great in homes  period she has school aid money one year to pay for higher ed and community colleges because of the budget shortfalls then she went back to the general fund and took the money out of that  however governor snyder for the last four years has taken money from the general fund and used it for universities as well as community colleges this will keep and that's all the goal it's a part of the school aid fund the school aid fund right now in the constitution can be used for the k through twelve universities community colleges and teachers retirement and that's the money again from your sales tax and we voted on that one nine hundred ninety four with proposal all right so this is what we were voting on what a lemon and funding for universities only and that would decrease their budget as you can tell by that last sentence which is kind of small hire it gets about two hundred seven million from the school laid out of their budget which is one point five billion so that's fourteen percent and they're told community colleges right now get all of their money from the school a fund that just changed in march  the change we would be adding to the constitution is no money can go to higher ed from the six school aid fund but there's another thing that we've added and that's why i put that in a different color in red the new language that's added by the legislature is public community colleges public career and technical and chick a sion programs scholarships for attending community colleges or public career and technical education programs that's new language there is no definition for those ter we all know what community colleges are but there is no definition right now what the career and technical programs are i guess we'll just have to wait to see if that was adopted but that's the major change on school aid fund where that revenues go in just to remind you because we get asked this so most of our presentation what happed how much you know where does the money come from the school aid fund it's partly your income tax it's partly your sales tax your property tax and state wide the latter ie as you can see that we all talked about many years ago is about four six point five percent of the total the use tax and other so which is made up of things like tobacco tax real estate tax that are in there and that's what's goes into the school a fund and then another area of increased funding of the sales tax results in more money going to local governments through representatives sharing you're probably all aware in your local communities there's been cuts to revenue sharing over the last few years this would increase revenue sharing by one hundred an eleven million dollars that would go to local units of government and i did was  have already put out information on what this is so i pulled that hall in township and i pulled out the city of holland and i won't read those numbers but you can see i think what the state's trying to do as an eleven too to increase the revenue that had been lost to make it more palatable  does the eleven percent increase get them back to i mean how far down have they gone and i haven't been able to find them because i think it was last november and i may be wrong on the selection they're running together we increased what was called the personal property tax which increased revenue sharing them and i haven't been able to get up and up to date even from the midst of michigan municipal league so i can't tell you i don't think this gets some back from what i understand where they were but it is an increase sorry and then this is a small phone but some people and i know one of our board members here would care about this twenty million dollars is going into the conservation and recreation like that just like a scene found in the game this is determined by a formula as already in the law and it's used point one billion has been spent one point two five on the roads the earned income tax credit the school wade and the general fund the public transportation revenue sharing and the recreation and improvement and then if you look at some other things that are added in the legislation there is some bills that change hopefully to improve the warranties and competitive bidding process just in the lansing state journal the last two days or no sunday and monday they did articles on the problems right now from the attorney no auditor general's report showing that in dots not doing their very thing they can warranties and that the law doesn't require warranties of all the projects these laws are supposed to improve that i don't know if they go as far as making it one hundred percent improvement that was kind of what the state expanded warranties at the county level for projects over a million dollars and if you remember the costs for some of those projects you get up to a million dollars pretty quickly and the last bill allows townships to year figure is that the first two years and you probably heard this in some other people that are now for the proposal talk about in one thousand nine hundred ninety seven governor  point nine million dollars for a bill michigan road funding project where paying two hundred to two hundred sixteen million a year in interest and principal on the step it's not paid off so the first year the legislature and the splaying said we'd pay down that debt by eight hundred sixty million and if you remember back here the first year each year you're supposed to get about one point two million you can get billion sorry that would only leave you about four hundred for repairs remember these estimates but it's paying off a debt like so that's why they did it i've heard governor snyder in an interview say that he also doesn't feel that  dot and others will be ready to spend the money during this current season that warranties them all of the bidding that needs to be done and that also is why it's so high but the other side would point out it's not going to the roads and that some important a look at the second year that debt is paid off with four hundred sixty million and then that's when it all goes into the road funding in the third year so hopefully that makes sense there's quite a bit about that in bridge magazine the history of the as well as lansing paper clip the city pulse of the something you're interested in checking  and then the next thing is what is it going to cost the average person and i'm just assuming that at the pump today it's two dollars and forty cents so we're talking about a temp sun and increase in your gasoline per gallon your sales tax there's no way to predict that depends on what you buy if you bought a television for two hundred you're talking about two hundred two dollars more and then branches straight again the fees for cars you all so it's pretty complex but we're not talking about much it could range from thirty three dollars to about one hundred fifty five a person and then i don't know how to calculate the car repairs because of the difference but i use the three hundred fifty seven from per person per auto and then there's two reports out that i've seen that estimate the total cost the mackinaw center says the typical michigan household would pay four hundred seventy seven to five hundred twenty five dollars more a year great like second room a cold so going was quoted in city pulse in lansing saying if you earn seventy five thousand a year have two cars drive twenty thousand miles per year k about three hundred and twelve dollars per year but if you're earning under thirty thousand and you have children and you file your and you have two cars and you file your earned income tax credit your taxes will go down by four hundred and twenty seven million a year so there are different i mean twenty seven sorry billion a million four hundred twenty seven dollars a year so other issue that's come up that some of you probably sing articles about the anderson economic group came out with a report that you're not going to be able to deduct from your federal income tax if you itemize your vehicle registration fee the department of treasury at the state level and the i r s that the federal level there they cannot make that decision less this passes so that one is not for sure it's a possibility we don't know the answer but there have been articles about that and you had a hand up in the back  i don't know that i didn't see that in any and now since i have but that wouldn't that might not have been something i was looking for but those are the three bill numbers she could pull them out pretty quickly i know wage is another issue that's light years dealing with so you know that not in this proposal is there anything about the length of the warranty not that i know i mean i don't know warranties your cost your product goes up and it has no bearing on what we're talking about here no but that has that has been brought up by him dot and they have some information on their website that's what it was pointing out with the auditor general's report that they haven't had enough people with the cutbacks in state government even to keep up with the inspections so you know some of this is more than confusing so this is what happens when you vote if you voted yes somebody else you can say these are the things that are going in the constitution what that about one hundred ok so when you look at this they are things that are going in the constitution that cannot be changed by the legislature are you are going to allow a sales tax maximum going from six percent to seven percent your lemonade the sales and use tax on motor fuel the still be in the constitution the legislature couldn't change it and  dedicated to the school they fund you remove the inclusion of universities from the school laid fund you had that career took and you increased sales tax funds dedicated to revenue sharing so these are the things that are going in the constitution the other things that we've talked about are in the ten laws they can be changed by the legislature with a simple majority vote and they are what the wholesale price would be the sales and use tax would be set at seven percent by a bill that only gives the maximum here that sets that at seven percent down here it has the earned income tax credit the vehicle registration the at risk program using the first two years of combined fuel tax revenue to pay off the debt and the road warranties and competitive bidding so these are have the what's in the ten bills this is what's in the constitutional amendment that can't be changed by the legislature that would have to be changed by the voters increased we're talking a lot of years ago but it didn't get use for roads and he had the same problem that governor snyder and governor granholm had about getting the legislature to increase taxes so it is on the constitution up here it's had it so seven is the maximum here they could go back to the legislature can go a lot brace that seven or anywhere below they couldn't go above seven without coming back to the voters i know that's confusing but the constitution sets the maximum rate and then the likes legislature sets the rate somebody sorry oh so all of the things at the bottom of this slide that were sort of the tradeoffs back and forth in the legislature could be changed by a simple majority vote so they could reduce the earned income tax credit they could do a whole bunch of things and any of this can be changed because they're not in the constitution these are the only things that cannot be changed without a vote of the people remember it was a compromise and they had you know you saw the vote in the house they had to have more democrats because they didn't have enough republicans so they made tradeoffs it's kind of like headley prevents all those increases potential increases but by saying yes to this proposal you're saying to the legislators oh you can go ahead and raise all these things because the bill allows them i'm not convinced that's what hadley says but i'd need to get back to i'm sorry i don't know currently what's in the michigan constitution so i do have two questions regarding right currently does the michigan constitution currently have a cap of six percent as sales tax ok i think i have to if they had done it with an income you know an income tax increase we wouldn't be here ok and then the second question is does the michigan constitution currently have a cap on the state gas tax of nineteen cen isn't that where you were pointing that and that's not that's not i'm not in the constitution that ok so i mean tomorrow the legislature could raise it to forty two cents without us doing a thing oh yeah ok raised we vote yes on this but that doesn't mean that the legislature is going to necessarily even raise it they've already passed that bill and it's been signed into law to raise that seven percent but it's  is there any comment from the four year universities and colleges about this how much money is going out does that mean they're probably just going to have to increase the well when you look back here and  we aren't able to cross the south because it's not known i mean the legislature makes this decision every year there's actually an increase of money that's going into what's called the general fund general purpose budget and that is money that can be allocated to the universities that's where all their budgets coming from now that's not coming from the school they fund so there is an increase here they supposedly could up until four years ago it always came from the general fund whether or not the sled just they the legislature allocates money every year it happens usually around july fourth they determine how  general funds going to be spent so we don't know if they'll put the fourteen percent back in but they they will have an increase in revenues from what's called the general fund  there there's no cut til there's a now location it won't become an out of the school laid fund we know it wouldn't come out of the school laid fund but we don't know if the legislature would allocate it from the general fund so it's just one of those areas we don't know if you had a question thank you could you go to the slide that shows the definition or which schools will be receiving funding  this one yes thank you those terms the definition of schools is that and the proposal language or does that language come from the department of education this is what the legislature put in so mike my question is is it pop so if proposal one passes is it possible for the legislature to add a school definition into this language so they will not be adding it this will be in the constitution so they won't having it there but they already have been i know this because i follow the legislature and legislature on a daily basis there are already putting an allocation in for career and technical programs i long time ago  from sales and use tax and you're stopping higher education inclusion in the school laid fund and then it'll activate those ten other laws that we talked about if you vote ye the supporters for the yes say it provides funds to make roads safer for everyone i'm sure you've all seen the ads that guarantees all taxes paid at the pump go to transportation  guarantees constitutional funding for education programs french occasion goes where promised and doesn't take money from schools or local governments every stores the earned income tax credit for working  to twenty percent of the federal credit and it requires road builders to provide warranties on roads they build and affixes roads now saving money and reducing motorists repair cost and the people that are supporting it and this is just a partial list you can go to safe roads yes their website and you can see a complete list some of them are the f l c i o business leaders from michigan the detroit regional chamber of commerce business leaders from michigan the governor and some michigan legislators the michigan environmental council the michigan league for public policy the michigan municipal league the michigan sheriffs association sierra club small business association of michigan so those are some of just a few that are supporting it then if you our universities to be covered by the school they fund and it will stop activation of the ten bills tied to the package which provided funding for roads and other purposes and the opponents say it increases the sales tax which is regressive impacting middle class families and allocates only sixty percent of funding increase for roads  forty percent to other purposes and you all saw that with the you can see it on your hand it activates ten bills including several dealing with rates which can be altered by the legislature without a vote of the people it means that motorists mainly no longer be able to use it to may able to use their vehicle registration fees than i had in my on their federal income tax and the groups that are supporting it a no boat citizens against middle class tax increases coalition against higher taxes and special interest deals concerned taxpayers of michigan but national federation of independent businesses protect michigan taxpayers and attorney general bill shooting and some legislators didn't put that on the r i thought this summary from paul egan in the detroit free press kind of summarizes where we are the essence of the plan is to remove the sales tax which is not spent on roads from sales and impose higher fuel taxes which are spent on roads without sharply increasing the pump price of gas the sales tax hike with then replace and supplement the money schools and local governments would lose from having the sales tax removed from sales so that kind of gets us through and i know there's still things you could ask questions about it will come back to that but i just wanted to highlight some things that are on the ballot around here and case you haven't seen that local communities this is a special election in the legislature allocated ten million dollars for the selection because it wasn't in the budget and so local communities could add something onto the ballot if they wanted to holland the city of holland did not from what i could tell then there are walk hells public schools has a bonding proposal and the west to a public schools has an operating middle age renewable so you might want to check those out if they're in any of your local could be a little more informed and here's our sources for other information the house fiscal agency has a website if you just type in house fiscal agency of michigan and  up there's also the senate fiscal agency there's a citizen's research council and there's we have more information also on our website and there's a vote for one one in case any of you have ever use that where you can check to see where you're registered and more information about your ballot so that gets us to questions there any more anything else i mean is there a way that we could get a copy of those ten laws or whatever that are going to be yeah if you go to you want to find out you want to earlier you mentioned that the actual constitutional amendment that we're voting on is four pages long and you pointed toward to it over on the kellner now it is ok do you have a copy of that posted on the website as well no  i can tell you where you can get it though and it's i have to legislate michigan legislature website and when you go in there you actually have to pull up  don't have a question or an observation as i look around the room i don't see too many people in here rebuying diapers school clothes shoes hockey and sports equipment etc i question except for this young man over here where the heck are the families that will probably be most affected by this i think part of our responsibility is to help educate those people because they often don't get out to night meetings hopefully you can send them to web sites and places for other information am live has done a lot of analysis if you're familiar with that website you can certainly share it with others i know i shouldn't probably do this but since we have a minute show you said one question that comes up that i think is kind of fascinating and you didn't ask was why don't we have told rhodes and i was kind of an arrest in the spring because i go to ohio a lot to visit a son six told the states this was sumter president eisenhower that if you want federal money then you have to keep the roads open ohio are already had their toll roads year before you seem to know the story so michigan doesn't have told the roads because we took that money but what is interesting is if we could go to toll roads but you'd have to pay back like if we want to take i ninety six and make that a toll road first of all you'd have to wonder if the truck and people going through here would pay it because they can go south but we'd have to pay all of the money we've gotten back on that highway to the federal government and get an agreement from them to make that a toll road are we could buy new roads new land and build new roads without any federal assistance and then we can have told roads but there's an expense found there so him dot on their website says they decided that this was an economically feasible but i know this has come up and i thought it was interesting in then just one other before i get your question what happens if this doesn't pass and there is no answer to that we don't know but let's slate you could decide just to continue funding what they're doing now for roads which is about under about three hundred million a year which is well below that one point two but they could continue to do that they could change another tax we don't know what they're going to do various legislators have sort of the internet last week ok but see all the bills were passed last session in december nineteenth and signed by the governor so i'm not sure if we're looking at the same bill up but i'll check and find out i've got i see the public transportation is one of the lower funded under this proposal does the legislature have any plans for for expanding public transportation i wouldn't attempt  expectations of the lottery i'm numb money goes to the lot goes into the lottery and it's paid out you know for the benefits for the people in prizes and the rest goes to the schools but it doesn't pay the whole school s you know i think it's something perception when that passed it was going to raise a lot more revenue than it did and we don't know what will happen here and i think i asked i hope this is useful it's a lot of thank you judy i just like to make a couple announcement this program has been recorded in it was available live on their public access channel so you get on television they will be really running it on comcast twenty six or channel nine eighteen and eighteen teach channel ninety nine i don't know the dates when they're going to be running and you'll have to check with the tech department here at city hall and it's also going to be available on line on our website that's w w w l w v howland dot org go to that and you can watch it online or tell anybody that couldn't make it here tonight  it's it's going to be probably a couple days what's available now online at our website is the program that was done in ann arbor a few days ago and we put that on today so you can look at that same information the same slide show v i doubt org and you can get information there about this presentation some of you have asked questions and judy said she'd look things up for you and get back to you we have no cards if you want to write down your question and your email address and give it to judy before she leaves she can look double check what you were interested in and get back to you ok anybody else have any questions i think i covered everything kathy did in ok thank you all for coming in please tell your friends and relatives and whoever about the program