Let Saginaw “Keep the Vote” and “Keep the Cap”

Saginaw is a “home-rule” city with powers reserved to the citizens to set limits on the property taxes they pay to their local government authority.  This power of the ballot box gives citizens self-determination, sovereignty, and rightfully relegates the role of government to act as an agency of the people to carry out the will of its citizens.  It is the bedrock to our democracy.

City “government” is not our community; it is a public body with tax and regulatory authority in the boundaries of a jurisdiction. City government is operated by officials who own the city budget; they must not only pay the bills, but they pay the consequences if they make tough choices that disappoint high-end stakeholders like employees, unions, non-profits, government contractors, and other public bodies like the township, county, and school districts.

City officials have their own problems and are not automatically on the same page as our “community.”   The path of least resistance for city staff, and for what is essentially a volunteer city council, is to find more revenue by seeking higher taxes while constraining the official city budget by basically shifting essential service spending like police, fire, and waste removal off-budget with endless special millages and garbage fees. 

This focus on seeking higher revenue rather than providing essential services enables overspending on discretionary priorities and blurs accountability. The citizens voted in the Saginaw Tax Cap in 1978 to reduce the cost of government and protect us from overspending.

The City Charter amendment caps the property tax collections at 7.5 mills and $3.83 million. Since that time City Hall has tried 7 times to raise the Tax Cap, but the people keep voting no by overwhelming margins – more and more people voted no each time the city has tried to repeal the cap.

Taxpayers know they are already overtaxed and that they pay higher city income tax, trash and water fees, along with special millages including police, fire, library and STARs bus millages, all imposed since the city capped the property tax.

They know that repealing the cap would result in property taxes going up to the state's maximum 20-mill tax rate – that’s almost triple! In total property taxes Saginaw residents already pay more than other communities, and well over what the city regime talks about with its incessant posturing on the tax cap issue.

Last summer Saginaw’s mayor bravely announced she would like to put the tax cap issue back on the ballot in 2026, but she wisely observed that repealing the tax cap is a steep climb for city council given that the voters have consistently voted to keep the cap.

After the election last fall, a former councilman-turned-state lawmaker Amos O’Neal tried and failed to slip an obscure bill through the lame duck legislative session in a vain effort to repeal the tax cap under the cloak of special state legislation that would void the voter approved Saginaw tax cap and prohibit the voters from having a voice on the tax cap ever again. O’Neal’s ploy ultimately failed before the law passed the Senate when Democrat party internecine warfare broke out and the lame duck session abruptly collapsed into disarray and early adjournment.

Now the same legislator has announced he will re-introduce his ill-conceived proposal to prohibit Saginaw’s voter approved tax cap without a vote. His ploy to avoid the voice of city voters should die a quiet death in a House of Representatives no longer controlled by his partisan allies, but Saginaw voters should take note of this attempt to silence them and deny them their voting rights. When it comes time to vote for O'Neal again, voters should remember that he doesn’t believe you are smart enough to be trusted to “get it” - that your civic leaders just need more of your money (once again) to do the job right (this time).   

If council wants a pay raise, it should need to ask the voters for their consent. That’s called democracy. Keep the Vote!

If the Saginaw City Council does put the tax cap issue on the ballot, the community of Saginaw should prepare for another disinformation campaign designed to hustle more tax dollars from city residents (all paid for with taxpayer dollars!)

City Council should focus instead on fundamentals like public safety and learn to restrain and prioritize their spending habits. There are ways for city government to be part of the community and gain their trust – being trustworthy is one of them.

That means transparency – warts and all. It should not be an expensive and time-consuming project to investigate how city officials spend taxpayer’s money and who they give it to.  Try sending a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request for information to the city, and you may get sucked into a time-loop designed to delay you and make you stop asking hard questions.

Other public bodies in America have literally put their entire check books online so that the citizens can look at the details of spending online in real time for free without anyone knowing they asked – but not Saginaw. 

There is no reason why all government spending, procurement and contractor details should not be automatically public, including business and family connections between officials and recipients of government funds. 

Opening up to scrutiny would go a long way to showing accountability of our government and could cost almost nothing. If City Hall took reliable steps to give the citizens confidence, then if they needed more money the citizens would have reason to trust them. 

The government keeps important information behind a virtual firewall, and until the day comes when the city opens its books and demonstrates a restrained appetite for spending, there will be a disconnect between the community and City Hall.

Keep the Cap in place by voting no on any city charter proposal.

Editor’s Note:  If you would like to learn more about this important issue  and become involved with this endeavor to open the books you can contact Greg by emailing him at gregschmid@gmail.com