By Marianne Y (Marianne) on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 09:39 am:
Cindy, I still think you did a great thing for Mikie & Precious! Thank you!
And, thank you for clarifying that you still have your job, but that you might still have 20 unpaid days off in the new fiscal year, as I did not remember that you had actually been laid off. I do hope that if you have 20 unpaid days, that they are scattered & not all at once. I would think that would be a lot easier on your budget, paying rent, food, insurance, power bills, gasoline, et al, as you can cut back a little bit, but no paycheck at all would be a lot harder! Anyway, my thoughts are with you. And, "what goes around comes around", so may good things should come your way!
I think they robbed Peter to pay Paul in this short-term state budget game. They helped the K-12 schools, in the short term (but all of the schools around here are budgeting big cuts for next school year.) On the other hand, they robbed from Paul, as in higher education, like the big state schools; that will result in much bigger tuition increases for fall than we have previously seen. That's a great big ouch for parents of college kids, such as us--we have a son at Mich Tech.
This governor has made a number of budget deals over the years that have been very short sighted, trying to find money for the then current short term budget by taking it from income longer term. Case in point, trailer licenses: she got a lot of money for one short-term budget by making them permanent trailer licenses, but now she no longer has the annual trailer license fees coming in. That money is just lost for now & the future. And then there is her trick of moving up the due date of state property taxes; that little game is really hurting K-12 schools now, as they had to delay their property tax income, instead of getting it from the summer property tax bills. That did not help the state, and it hurt K-12 schools, overall. And, those are just the tip of the iceberg. Ouch!