Michigan’s Big Government central planners are at it again — disrupting and dividing another community in the name of whatever they misguidedly mandate to be “progress.”
Earlier this summer — over my objections and ‘no’ vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee — the state took steps to allocate $250 million in taxpayer money to develop a megasite near Flint. They want to have more than 1,200 acres, presumably for manufacturing, run by a large corporation that has yet to be identified.
While the site has been rezoned as industrial, it is currently used for residential properties and farmland — containing, within its borders, roughly 165 homes, a school and a church. Developing an industrial site here will cause massive disruption for hundreds of people.
Keep in mind what is proposed here could now happen in any Michigan community. Our state has learned nothing from how Marshall and other communities have been disrupted because of this heavy-handed approach from centralized planners.
The callousness of this strategy became clear during a Senate Appropriations Committee. Supporters of the Genesee County project acknowledged “some structures will be removed” — as if they were referring to abandoned tool sheds or dilapidated warehouses. In fact, they were referring to people’s homes — where families have celebrated birthdays, watched children take their first steps and go off to prom, and other such milestones in life.
These central planners will argue nobody will be forced to hand over their property — and I would say that is, at best, misleading. It is one thing to genuinely persuade a property owner to voluntarily sell their land for economic development. It is another to use taxpayer dollars to bankroll the steamrolling of an entire neighborhood. The choice becomes selling or watching the home’s value get destroyed. That is not voluntary — rather, it is a manipulative economic policy devoid of compassion and humanity.
Our economy should be a humane one that values the individual and the broader community rather than viewing people merely as social atoms under state tutelage. Yes, we need good jobs, but we must create an environment to attract them without destroying homes, schools, and churches. We cannot simply gloss over the negative consequences of our state’s current approach to economic development — the ends simply do not justify the means.
It is conceivable the people of Michigan might be open to the government spending their hard-earned tax dollars on these deals if the strategy worked — creating more jobs with higher wages. But this isn’t happening to a degree that justifies the human or monetary costs.
Not long ago, I was open to the idea of state involvement in economic development projects. I saw it as not the ideal, but a necessity in a world where many governments engage in it. I thought we could construct a process that applied prudence and sound judgment to investment decisions. But my optimism was misplaced, which is why I now want to disband the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve process entirely.
Simply put, big government planners are not good at making investments. They chase the deal — not the return. They overpay massively because it’s not their money. They make big bets on markets like electric vehicle batteries that very well may fall flat.
In Genesee County, we don’t yet know what corporations might come, what they might build, or how many jobs they might create. We are asked to blindly accept and trust in a deal without evidence.
Since Democrats have held the majority in state government, they have operated like a speculative hedge fund manager. That’s a mistake, especially when it involves money from state taxpayers — including families that are struggling with inflation sparked by out-of-control government spending.
What should we do instead? The alternative to this Big Government approach is not complicated or revolutionary. Lower taxes and let citizens keep more of their own money to build our economy from the ground up. End the practice of “overtax and squander” and instead return to the principles that transformed the United States from a fledgling startup to the greatest country this world has seen. Let’s keep our markets and our people free.
State Sen. Thomas Albert represents the 18th District, which includes Barry County and portions of Allegan, Calhoun, Kalamazoo, Kent, and Ionia counties.