toledoblade.com --

THERE was a sigh of relief across Michigan last week when Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed the last package of overdue budget bills, meaning the state would not suffer another embarrassing shutdown.

But any feeling of relief is misguided; this budget, which passed a month later than legally required, is an embarrassment. It betrays a promise the state made to 96,000 students now in college, to help them with tuition via a "Michigan Promise" grant. It slashes funding bizarrely and irregularly for elementary and high school students, and cuts crucial early childhood development programs.

For months, the state's inept and ideologically polarized leadership struggled to complete the most basic task of government, which is to agree on a budget. They failed repeatedly, thanks to a $2.8 billion deficit, a GOP-controlled state Senate that insisted there would be no new revenues, no matter what, and a governor who dithered and seemed incapable of making decisions or sticking to them once made.

"This is the budget we have, but it is not the budget we need," the governor said, oddly enough just after signing it. "It is a budget I don't agree with and don't support."

Michigan's budget has been out of whack for a long time, even in good times. The revenue-producing mechanisms are those of an age when the auto was king, and even unskilled laborers made high wages. Those days are now over, and Michigan is more and more a service economy. Yet the state doesn't tax services.

The nation's most draconian term limits mean that nobody in public office will be in the jobs they hold five years from now, and hence won't be around to be blamed when the consequences of their decisions become clear.

Though this budget seems guaranteed to push some school systems into receivership, nobody discussed revisiting the now-broken way schools are funded. Nor did anyone even suggest raising the tax on beer, which hasn't been touched since 1966. Instead, students will suffer. Worst of all, if you think this was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. Or as Speaker of the House Andy Dillon remarked, "The real fight is next year. This is all child's play."

That's because next year's deficit is expected to be just as large or larger. This year, the state was still able to plug about half the deficit with the remaining federal stimulus money. Next year, that money will be virtually gone. What's worse, it will be an election year, when no politician wants to make hard decisions, and the entire legislature is up for re-election. And the governor, the speaker of the house, and the senate majority leader will all be lame ducks.

Michigan's residents deserve better leadership. They might do well to demand it, before the present lot drives their once-proud state off a cliff.