The State of Michigan

Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1700 hrs

Over the weekend, the entire state of Michigan almost didn't have a government. Seriously.

On Friday, Michigan lawmakers had failed to settle on the state budget for the coming fiscal year, which started today. That meant, on Friday, all state employees received temporary layoff notices. Not having an operating state government would have affected a huge list of public services, including the courts, community health, corrections, education, transportation, and the state police.

Needless to say, it's good that this didn't happen. In fact, I didn't even know that something like this could happen! I mean, what would happen if the government just stopped working? Could state workers even volunteer to work if they wanted to? I guess our lawmakers doing their jobs is just something that we take for granted. But what about lawmakers who do other peoples' jobs?

And politicians wonder why we don't have any faith in them.