Nearly 30 years before the tea party first took the stage, a scene played out in Romeo where state senator David Serotkin faced a hostile crowd at a town hall meeting.
Weeks earlier, Serotkin had voted for a substantial increase in the state income tax just as Michigan and Macomb County were emerging from a deep recession. Taxpayers across the state were angry. But in Macomb County, they turned out in big numbers to demonstrate their outrage.
Serotkin, a Macomb Township Democrat, seemed genuinely rattled at the Romeo event as each time a pointed question was shouted out from the crowd, the room erupted with applause and the people rose up and bellowed with approval. As the crowd inched closer to the senator in that dark, dank hall, it appeared that he was eager to hit the exits.
A few months later, Serotkin did exit his job, courtesy of the first successful recall election of a state senator (along with a colleague) in Michigan history. Macomb County earned an outsized spot on the political map.
“Macomb County was the tea party (taxed enough already) before people knew what the tea party was,” anti-tax activist Leon Drolet told me recently. “Tea party values are in Macomb County genes.”
Before we were known as the home of the Reagan Democrats, we were the mavericks, the anti-tax hotbed of Michigan.
But no more.
County voters have now established a firm track record over the past six years of approving most millage hikes that appear on local ballots, particularly if they provide more funds for police and fire protection.
The first signs of change came in 2004, when the economy was still relatively stable, as the beleaguered city of Eastpointe requested and received a whopping tax hike of seven mills.
Yet, as the bad times hit with the housing market collapse followed by the Great Recession, voters who faced their own financial challenges stood by their communities.
From 2008-13, voters have backed property tax proposals in this manner:
A tax renewal for suburban bus service; a substantial millage for Harrison Township police, fire and general operations; an Eastpointe/Roseville recreation consolidation plan; a Warren streets improvement proposal; tax increases in Center Line and Chesterfield Township for public safety services; maintaining police and fire manpower in St. Clair Shores; a Macomb County record-setting bond proposal of $112.5 million for the Utica schools; a regional millage to preserve the Detroit Zoo; a small tax to upgrade the county veterans department; a regional levy to save the Detroit Institute of Arts; and a Washington Township Fire Department funding increase.
Perhaps most importantly, some of these ballot proposals passed by landslide margins. The zoo tax, which obliterated the old Macomb County aversion to regionalism, won at the ballot box here by a 70,000 to 35,000 margin.
The trend continued last Tuesday when tax hikes for basic services – police patrols, fire protection, street repairs – breezed to approval in Sterling Heights and Clinton Township.
What’s going on here?
The DIA campaign in particular revealed an illuminating change in the Macomb County electorate. In the days when Serotkin’s days were numbered, it would have been inconceivable that Macomb voters would approve a regional tax to fund a Detroit art museum.
Of course, it would have been equally stunning to project that the county would eventually support a liberal black Democrat for president – twice.
After all, the white Democratic governor who engineered the tax hike that led to Serotkin’s downfall, Jim Blanchard, trounced a black Republican gubernatorial candidate just three years later in Macomb County (and across the state). Bill Lucas was humbled; years later, Barack Obama was fired up.
Over time, demographics altered our politics.
In the south end of the county, a growing population of blacks and an array of immigrants have turned those communities a deeper blue – more Democratic and more willing to raise taxes than in the past.
In the north end, many of the old, crusty farmers are gone. In their place are upper-middle-class cosmopolitan families who live in tony subdivisions and often lean toward progressive politics.
Looking back, the county experienced a flurry of recall drives against elected officials based on taxes and spending from 1983-93. Conservatives – Republicans and Democrats – put our politicians on edge.
It all began when protests against double-digit increases in residential assessments led to the rise of the irascible Mike Sessa, founder of the Macomb County Taxpayer’s Association. Sessa, of Harrison Township, helped write the 1978 Headlee Tax Limitation Amendment which was approved by Michigan voters in 1978. He doggedly fly-specked every word of every local ballot proposal.
But the Taxpayer’s Association died a slow death about a decade ago. In its wake, the Michigan Taxpayer’s Alliance, led by Drolet, of Macomb Township, eventually arose. Yet, the MTA picks and chooses its battles, often without success.
Their attempts to derail the 2012 DIA tax failed. And their campaign against the Clinton Township police and fire millages on Tuesday’s ballot was a bust.
The hot-button issue of property taxes began to fade years ago. In fact, when the county Board of Commissioners was debating last year whether to put the Art Institute tax on the countywide ballot, those sessions were dominated by DIA members and advocates who overwhelmed the audience comments voiced by a few die-hard tax foes.
Perhaps a small sliver of voters understand that they have enjoyed years of growing tax cuts due to the dramatic decline in property values, and that the windfall has simultaneously created staggering revenue losses for the cities and townships.
More likely, voters appreciate that the municipalities have sincerely cut back since the housing crisis hit -- through layoffs, concessions, manpower attrition, fewer services and reduced hours of operation. Taxpayers are determined to maintain the bare bones, the basics that make a community a home.
So, does this mean that Macomb County is more liberal. Or more cosmopolitan? More metropolitan?
Or have the Macomb mavericks adopted a more realistic definition of conservative?
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