Seven years after then-Emergency Financial Manager Howard Morris left Inkster Public Schools with a balanced budget, the school district is blaming him for its current financial deficit.

Inkster submitted a deficit-reduction plan to the Michigan Department of Education when it fell into deficit in 2011-2012. On the form, the state asks what caused the deficit. Inkster’s response: “Management by an emergency financial manager, compounded by a formal dispute the district lost in arbitration.”

In fact, Inkster Public Schools’ financial troubles got better only when it had an emergency financial manager.

The school district ended the 2010-2011 school year $10.5 million in debt.

Morris served as the emergency financial manager for Inkster Public Schools from 2002-2005. He left in August 2005.

Finance Manager Kelley Howey said the emergency manager’s pay was based on whether the district showed a profit. Because of that, she said a lot of repairs to buildings were neglected and the fire marshal came in and closed several buildings. She said it was “several million” in repairs. Howey said the current deficit-reduction plan has been approved by school district and state officials.

When contacted, Morris said it was hard to see how he could be responsible.

“To say seven years after someone was there, they are responsible ... on its face, it doesn’t seem plausible,” Morris said.

Morris said he shut down schools due to dwindling enrollment and didn’t include maintenance to buildings among his budget cuts.

According to the state’s Center for Educational Performance and Information, Inkster spent $2.1 million, $2.1 million and $2.3 million on operations and maintenance in Morris’ three years as emergency financial manager. In 2010-2011, the district spent $2.6 million on operations and maintenance, or about the same as what Morris spent when the cost of inflation is factored in.

Inkster had $16.3 million in general fund expenditures in 2004-2005 when it spent $2.3 million on operations and maintenance and had $31.3 million in general fund expenditures in 2010-2011 when it spent $2.6 million on operations and maintenance.

Operations and maintenance include salaries and employee benefits, supplies, property and purchased services.

The district spent $4.8 million on operations and maintenance in 2008-2009.

According to the Michigan Department of Education, Inkster Public Schools was in debt in 1997-1998 ($1.4 million), 1998-1999 ($1.9 million) and 1999-2000 ($1.7 million).

In 2002-2003, Morris took over as the emergency manager. The next school year, the district was $135,186 in debt, but it was debt-free in 2004-2005 and the year after he left in 2005-2006. Inkster was back in deficit in 2006-2007 and has been in the red ever since.

Morris said he was surprised Inkster was in trouble financially because its enrollment is increasing.

Inkster’s student population has increased from 1,172 in 2004-2005 to 2,965 in 2010-2011.

With twice as many students comes twice as much operating funding. Yet Inkster still was in the red.

“You know what causes that?” Morris said. “Overspending.”

(Editor’s note: This is an edited version of a commentary that appeared in the Detroit Free Press on Aug. 26, 2012.)

A recent study found that Michigan’s car insurance rates are the highest in the nation.

When looked at as a percent of annual median household income, Michigan drivers spend 8 percent on car insurance, according to CarInsuranceQuote.com.

The next highest state was Louisiana at 5.5 percent. Michigan’s rates as a percentage of income were nearly double that of the fifth-most expensive state, Mississippi, which came in at 4.04 percent.

When looking at the median price of an annual car insurance policy, the result is the same. Michigan is No. 1 at $4,490, and by far the most expensive state for car insurance. Only one other state has a median price above $2,500, and that is New Jersey at $2,556. The District of Columbia has the second highest rate at $2,570.

The findings on 2012 rates are consistent with other studies of auto insurance. In a 2011 study, Professor Sharon Tennyson of Cornell University found that Michigan’s average insurance premiums grew 30.5 percent from 1997 to 2007, while national average premiums rose by 13.7 percent.

There are a number of reasons that Michigan has high rates for auto insurance. It is one of only 12 states to use no-fault insurance. Massachusetts was the first state to adopt no-fault insurance in 1971, and several states adopted it in the 1970s, but its popularity has waned.

In a RAND study examining no-fault insurance, the authors found that no-fault states have higher premiums than tort law states — where the driver at fault is responsible for paying medical expenses and other damages — generally due to higher medical costs in no-fault states.

Michigan stands out among all states in being the only one to require drivers to purchase unlimited personal injury protection. The state with the next-highest required amount of personal injury protection insurance is New York, where the mandated coverage is $50,000.

Another RAND study on auto insurance in Michigan found that it costs 57 percent more to settle a Michigan claim for person injury than the same injury would cost in another state. It also showed that Michigan injury losses per insured vehicle were 40 percent higher than in the U.S. as a whole.

The reason for this higher cost is not that the share of claimants who seek medical treatment after an accident is appreciably higher in Michigan, but it is that the mix of services is much more costly. Unlimited personal injury protection results in incentives to use the most costly procedures available, since insurance will pay for it, and it creates enormous uncertainty about what the cost of any accident might be. Both of these factors drive up premiums.

Conducting a study for AAA Michigan, Mitchell DecisionPoint found that the cost of the same medical procedure in Detroit was significantly higher if paid by no-fault insurance than otherwise. For example, an MRI on the neck was $3,258 when required because of a car accident and paid for in a no-fault insurance claim, and $483 under Medicare. Shoulder surgery was four times more costly when paid for under no-fault insurance than under Medicare.

Clearly, Michigan has very high auto insurance premiums, and there are economic distortions in the insurance market that result in loss of efficiencies. The Legislature should continue with its analysis of the insurance market, in particular the aspect of the market that sets Michigan apart from every other state — the unlimited personal injury protection requirement.

Gary Wolfram is the William Simon Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College and an adjunct scholar at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.