Grand Rapids Public School Superintendent Bernard Taylor wants to use money pitched by the Obama administration to halt teacher layoffs. But Taylor plans to use the cash to pay for health care costs for existing district employees.

In August, the U.S. House of Representatives had a special session to approve a $26 billion jobs bill that the politicians said would save teachers from being laid off. At the time, some Republicans said it was a "giveaway to teachers' unions."

Taylor said at a recent school board meeting that he would like to use the $3.5 million his district will receive from the jobs bill to offset an additional 3-percent payment employees had to make this year for retiree health care.

Taylor said there were restrictions on how the money could be spent and wanted to make sure it could be done properly.

"A 3-percent decrease in wages during these days and times, is something that people have to adjust to," Taylor said. "If it is something we can rectify, we need to look at ways to do that."

Michael Van Beek, the Mackinac Center For Public Policy's director of education policy, said Grand Rapids teachers were already paying 5.5 percent of their salary toward health care costs and the additional 3-percent pushed the total to 8.5 percent. Overall, Grand Rapids teachers made on average a salary of $56,035 a year.

"This bailout was sold to American taxpayers as a way to keep teachers in classrooms and prevent further cuts to school programs," Van Beek said. "I doubt they'd approve of spending it all on retiree health benefits for teachers, especially when benefits of this kind have become virtually extinct in the private-sector."

Taylor called the 3-percent payments a "right to work" tax.

"But I do know that we need to take into consideration the fact that all employees now are paying what I call a right-to-work tax," Taylor said at the board meeting. "I know it is for health care. But the way that I look at it, if you don't retire in the state of Michigan, you basically are paying for the right to work here. Whether that is fair or not, I don't know the answer to that."

Leon Drolet, chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, said the money was advertised to be used to improve the learning experience in the classroom. He said that could be done by using the money to retain teachers in danger of being laid off or by hiring more teachers to reduce the size of classrooms.

"That's not the response that leaps to mind for this superintendent or a great many government employees," Drolet said. "It's 'Let's take money and give us better salary and benefits.' That's what got us into this problem in the first place. And his response is what is going to make the problem worse for Michigan students and taxpayers."

John Helmholdt, spokesman for the Grand Rapids Public Schools, didn't return a call. 

President Barack Obama recently announced plans to spend $50 billion for transportation infrastructure. The plan would rebuild 150,000 miles or roads, construct and maintain 4,000 miles of rail and rehabilitate or reconstruct 150 miles of runway.

Here are the thoughts of two policy experts:

Tad DeHaven, budget analyst, Cato Institute

In a blog post, DeHaven argued that the private sector should be given a chance to satisfy the country's transportation needs. A sample of that:

In a speech to union supporters in Wisconsin, President Obama announced his intention to take the country $50 billion deeper into debt in order to finance more public infrastructure projects. The president defended his abysmal economic record by claiming that he has had to take on "powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for too long.

Instead of depriving the private sector of another $50 billion plus interest, why not allow it to play a greater role in funding and operating the country's transportation infrastructure?

For example, most policymakers act as if there is no alternative to government-financed highways. However, as a Cato essay on federal highway funding explains, the U.S. has a rich history when it comes to privately financed and operated roads. More importantly, new technologies not only make private roads more plausible, but ideal: 

Looking ahead, there are no technical or economic reasons why the highways of the 21st century should not be private toll roads once again. Modern GPS-based technology enables mileage-based tolls to be debited to road users, and the revenues credited to road providers, without vehicles having to stop, and without invading the privacy of road users... 

While payment for road use by fuel taxes involves paying into opaque government-controlled funds with no knowledge about how the revenues are spent, mileage-based fees can provide precise and transparent information on the payments being made for each road segment, and thus illuminate the costs and efficiencies of different road providers. Such information, which could be made available without revealing the identities of the road users, would be sure to be publicized, and thus help move the control and financing of roads from nonresponsive government funds to competitive suppliers operating in open markets.

 

Adrian Moore, vice president, research, Reason Foundation

Moore said that Obama's plan is a bit premature to analyze because it lacks so many details.

"It was all rhetoric without any substance," Moore said.

Moore wrote a blog of his own on the subject. Here are two of the points that he made:

We are still left wondering about a lot of details, and hoping the White House gets more specific soon.  For example, where is the $50 billion coming from? The plan does not address that. Is this a proposal to spend current federal fuel taxes in a new way? Or to spend new money? If the latter, then are we talking about more deficit spending? Which raises the question of where Congress is on this proposal. They have been pretty uninterested in working on a transportation bill, on more stimulus, or more deficit spending, so it is hard to see them being receptive to Pres. Obama's plan.

.....

So what is going to determine where this $50 billion goes?  Oh, yeah, Pres. Obama is quite clear this is all about jobs.  So the money will go where politicians say it will create jobs, not where the transportation needs are greatest, or where the projects with the highest value to mobility and economy are.