Government spenders use a common playbook to convince policymakers to open the public purse. In it, the multiplier analysis is the most commonly called play.

Residents expect demonstrable economic results from policymakers — especially with a 24-hour news cycle to account for their policies’ productivity. Thus, every state legislator is accountable to monthly employment statistics. Monthly employment fluctuations, however, are rarely caused solely by policymakers' actions, but rather by the complex interplay of economic forces.

Regardless, Lansing insiders hold policymakers to a higher standard: proof is required that a politician’s policies pushed the economic needle. This environment creates a market for abusing the multiplier analysis.

These analyses are manipulative because every economic action creates secondary and tertiary consequences. Your window gets broken so you buy a new one — your contractor makes some money, but maybe you don’t put as much on your next grocery list. This continues ad infinitum as you consider the contractor, the grocer, and all the people who would follow after them. Actions wind up encouraging and discouraging consumption, investment and savings well beyond their initial intent. You simply can’t drop a dollar on the sidewalk without it making an echo somewhere else.

Using the multiplier analysis like this creates synthetic statistics — they report economic activity as though there’s a tracking device on compensation, which is of course, implausible.

Sometimes the multiplier analyses look at job creation while others analyses look at government or private-sector spending. Here is a table of multipliers that have been used to justify Michigan spending and tax credits:

Many analyses suffer from the garbage-in, garbage-out problem. An infamous example would be the RASCO fiasco, which looked at an employment multiplier. The state awarded a refundable tax credit to a convicted embezzler who had promised to develop water and electrical modules for use by third-world countries. The MEDC’s analysis showed that there were going to be 1,048 jobs created in the surrounding area because of the project, which was used to justify state support. But the project was a scam; no jobs were created, and fortunately the state repealed its incentives. Multiplier analyses are inherently flawed when there is no project from which to generate the numbers.

While the results of multiplier analyses are the same, the methodologies are inconsistent from one study to another — sometimes to the point where the analysis isn't good for anything.

Earlier this year, a group attempted to show the impact of the state’s art subsidy program by counting the spending at the organizations that it supports. This created a times-51 spending multiplier, meaning that $1 in arts spending generates $51 of economic activity.

Thus, it acts as if the Ann Arbor Film Festival would only exist with subsidy, and it certainly has proved otherwise. The festival occurred without state support, indicating that the assumptions of the times-51 spending multiplier are faulty.

Despite these mathematical shortcomings, manufactured political effects such as these are often enough to warrant repeating in the media. Most people understand that spending $1 has an economic ripple effect, so any judgment from experts seems plausible.

As economist (and former Mackinac Center intern) Daniel J. Smith remarked, “The increasingly sophisticated reiterations of old Keynesian models still fail to pass the inspection of basic economics, and still fail to address the most basic question, ‘where is the money coming from?’” (Feel free to check out a paper he co-authored on the subject.)

All things being equal (and they never are), multipliers can show lawmakers which spending area will have the most economic impact, but it does not justify taking the money in the first place.

Warped figures do taxpayers interested in real accountability a disservice when they are abused to justify takings.

The highest paid city official in Dearborn in 2011 wasn’t Mayor John B. O’Reilly.

It was a police lieutenant who had a gross salary of $151,856 in 2011, or $17,233 more than what the mayor’s gross salary was, and $32,758 more than what the police chief earned.

Six-figured gross salaries are not unusual for police departments throughout Michigan.

A Dearborn police sergeant made $134,505 in gross salary in 2011, which was a $39,747 increase over the sergeant’s 2010 gross pay. Five police department employees had gross pay of more than $120,000 in 2011. In all, 29 of the 185 police employees listed on Freedom of Information Act request for gross salaries made $100,000 or more in 2011.

City officials say there were numerous reasons for the six-figured police salaries.

Police routinely get paid overtime, as is the nature of police work. For example, in 2011 Pastor Terry Jones made national news by coming to Dearborn to protest outside the Islamic Center of America. Those types of events generally trigger a lot of overtime in police departments.

Another reason is that some members of the police department received retroactive payments after their union contracts were settled. In some cases, the retroactive payments cover more than one year. Some police members also received retroactive longevity payments, supervisor bonuses, gun and clothing allowances and sick leave reimbursement. Some police employees also were allowed to “cash in” their banked extra time they spent on the job.

Mayor O’Reilly called the overtime “pattern and practice” that has been going on for years.

Mayor O’Reilly said many sergeants and lieutenants in the police department get big bumps in pay via overtime in their final three years of service. That allows them to increase how much their pensions will be since pension formulas include the last few years of gross pay in their calculations.

Mayor O’Reilly says he put a plan in place to cap the amount of overtime those employees can get before they retire. He also limited the amount of “minute time” police can compile. “Minute time” is the time police employees are on-the-clock after their shift for roll call as well as time spent during shift changes, for which they can be paid.

The mayor said he is working through negotiations to change some of these past practices. Seven of the city’s union contracts are open and the police and fire contracts expire in June.

“Step-by-step we are working to transform these contracts to something that makes more sense,” he said.

The city has also switched seven of the city’s unions from a defined–benefit retirement plan to a less expensive 401(k) type defined-contribution plan, Mayor O’Reilly said. Police and fire unions are still in a “defined benefit” retirement plan, but the city’s contributions to that plan have been renegotiated so they are the equivalent as if the city was doing a defined-contribution plan, Mayor O’Reilly said.

In 2011, the city of Dearborn raised its millage to the highest rate possible and then voter approved a measure allowing the city to increase it even more.

“Most residents will be shocked to learn there’s that many six-figure wage-earners in this department, especially when the city keeps asking citizens to pay ever higher taxes,” said Jack McHugh, a legislative analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, in an e-mail.