Another edition of Off the Record coming up.

And this week, it's Kevin Rinke in the queue, former Republican candidate for governor who's thinking about doing it again.

Our lead story, Michigan voters may have a chance to decide the education reform issue on a statewide ballot.

Around the table, Kyle Melinn, Jordyn Hermani and Craig Mauger.

Sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the record production of Off the Record is made possible in par by bellwether public relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much Welcome to studio C. Off the record, not one but two potential statewide ballot proposals on education.

Are you excited?

I mean it's it's quite a moment but I mean all these education proposals floating around, everyone's talking about education.

There's so much to say about this.

But one thing is it shows the disconnect, I think, between where people are voters and where the legislature is at the moment.

Everything in the legislature is can we get a roads deal done?

But all these other people, the people that are looking at the polls, the interest groups, they're talking about education.

I asked the pollster in Michigan last week, I said, what is more important to voters?

Would they'd rather see the money go to roads or schools?

And he said, without a doubt, schools, schools.

And that is a very significant thing, I think.

Here's one of the proposed ballot proposals that would sock it to the rich to pay for the schools.

Take a look.

Michigan voters in November of 2026 may be facing a statewide ballot proposal that would impose a 5% incom tax surcharge on those persons in Michigan earning over $500,000 a year with the $1.7 billion that that would raise earmarked for the schools.

The Michigan Education Justice Coalition filed the petition language with the state board of Canvassers yesterday and is awaiting approval as to form to that language so they can get it in the field, starting perhaps as early as July to collect 600,000 signatures to put this on the ballot.

They need 422,000 valid signatures.

The $1.7 billion would be earmarke for the state school aid fund.

However, the director of this petition drive concedes it's not a mandate that lawmakers not do what they call a shift shaft.

That is to say if the state now has 1.7 million of its money in this fund, they could simply take that money out for other programs and put the 1.7 billion back in that the voters approved.

The director of the petition drive says she's heard that complaint.

I've already heard some folks say, well, that means tha we could take money out of other you know, for other revenu streams, for roads or whatever.

And I will let the legislator know that our community members are very adamant that this is in addition to the existing revenue streams to grow the pie.

So can you restrict the legislature from reading this $1.7 billion if you put it in there, if there are legal ways to d that, I'm open to exploring it.

That language was not in your petition language that you filed.

Not currently, yes.

The coalition does expect opposition to this proposal, which will be controversial.

They looked at other issues like getting rid of the income tax altogether or a graduated income tax, and they found this proposal of the surcharge tax on the rich to be the most popular.

So, Kyle, does this thing fly or not, assuming they get the signatures?

Well, it's all possible.

I think it's important for the listeners to know a little bit about what we're talking about here with this group.

And this is a coalition that's coming off of Fund My Future, which is environmental groups, unions, social activists who have already put out a menu of things that they would like to do to raise money for various things in state government.

This just happens to be the one that is popping right now.

And there are other interest groups that want to get in on this to put in, like you sai in the piece, additional policy.

But they decided to pare it down.

Just the fund raising simple, keep it simple, because the more that you add to a ballot proposal, the more likel it will sink in various parts.

And so by keeping it simple, they create a possibility that it could pass.

You know, if they can get the ballot language approved in June, they can get all the petition signatures done during the festivals and during the the county fairs and everything and the early football games in September and October.

They can get it on the ballot.

It's going to be a har one to to defeat, which is why I think maybe our former governor is interested in his own ballot proposal, as you reported this week.

We'll get to him for a second after we get your response to this one.

I jus I think it's quite interesting that they don' include some level of mechanism.

You bring up the shift shaft sort of thing if you think the legislatur would pull something like that.

I have a bridge to sell you.

Yes.

You know, we've heard from we've we've heard for years, for instance, the legislature FOIA, FOIA.

We want to pass the Freedom of Information Act.

The second that you have a unified legislature doesn't happen.

It's still not happening this year.

It hasn't happened in decades.

Why, then, should I believe that if you are giving a billion plus dollars to the legislature, why would they not see that as an opportunity to the go use that on something else?

I know that there's a numbe of other policies and projects that they are avidly looking for, funding for education is among them also roads.

What you know, what do we have to say?

That this is going to be used for what it's used for.

That's that's a pretty hefty claim that they're going to have to undergo to to sell that to voters.

One of the X-factors here and MIRS has done a lot of reporting on this.

We had we saw a lot of the school millage just fail recently.

And this is different than a millage because it's not hey, taxpayer, you, the taxpayer are paying for this.

It's the wealthy people who make over $500,000 and the people are going to pay for it.

But you've had this lin from Governor Whitmer just over and over again, record funding for schools record.

Oh, another record for schools.

Another record for schools.

And it's created this idea among voters that I believe all of the schools have enough money.

But if you pull back, go back 20 years.

The funding for school has not kept up with inflation.

That is a fact.

And number two, the amount of funding from the school aid fund that's going to this teacher retirement system is getting devoured.

I mean, a lot of that money is going to pay for these old retirement costs.

And the legislators made a choice when the state had a larg surplus instead of really diving in, getting that retirement cost down, allowing more money to go into the classrooms, they spent it on other things.

And now we're at this moment.

I would say, though, as they're crafting the K through 12 budget right now, as Craig talking about, they continue to say we're investing more and more in education.

But some of these programs like this free school lunch and breakfast program they created, they were able to do that because of COVID money and the COVID money's going away.

So I think tha there is an argument to be said that there are existing programs also giving more money to at risk students, more mone for special education, language learners, second English, second language learners.

There's a lot of different programs that they want to continue into the future that maybe they don't have the money for right no because the Covid money's gone.

But the governor also said and surprised everybody in this town, in the state of the state where she conceded on the record in front of God and country that we're not getting more bang for the buck.

We're spending this additional money and our test scores are not keeping up.

And what idea for turning that around as she laid out?

Well that's that's a good question.

I mean, she said we need som transparency and accountability, but it's this kind of moment that we're in where Michigan has dropped from being in the top 20 for fourth grade reading scores to being 44th out of the 50 states.

We are now 44th for the proficiency level of our fourth graders.

And there is not at this moment, a very serious conversation happening within the halls of the Capito about how to turn that around.

And I think that should concern some people.

The director of this progra that we just saw on the piece, we will be on the show next week.

But let's turn to Governor Rick Snyder, who surfaces and says, I got an idea.

Why don't we do education reform?

And I'll get on the bus and I'll sell this around the state and you're smiling.

Well, I'm smiling because, I mean, that sounds like a great idea from the business interest groups that are catching wind of this and saying, oh, my goodness, the last thing we need is a big surcharge on a lot of our members.

And so why don't we put together an education reform program that we could mayb put out as a competing proposal?

I mean, I don't have any I mean, the sounds the two were linked and I don't think the two I'm not sure he knew this other thing was going on.

I think it's I mean, again it's the moment that we're in.

You have a lot of people that have come to the realization the voters are upset abou what's going on in our schools and we have to do something about it.

Talking to the candidates for governor, if you ask them uniformly what is the most important issue, they all say education right now.

John James we got to do something about our schools.

Jocely Benson is talking about schools.

They've all, Duggan, Duggan.

It was all about schools.

This is the topic right now of of this moment.

So can the governor put together this this band and take it on the road?

The band for what?

I mean, it seems like we're having a bunch of competing different interests.

Craig brings up, you know, the fact that all of these candidates, people outside of the legislature are talking about education.

You go into the legislature, all it is right now, road budget.

We are operating the head and the tail are pulling in two separate directions right now.

All this is going to result in, frankly, is a level of gridlock, inaction, and we're going to end up back here again in another two years saying, well, geez, we're now 45th in Readin and we still don't have roads.

What are we going to do now?

Someone has to step up.

When I talked to him, two things I said, you know, people are going to see you're getting on the bus, going around the state, You're running for something.

He said, No, I'm not doing that.

Okay.

So we check that off the list.

But secondly, he says we're willing to talk about money, but I'm not going to lead with that.

Okay.

We need to come up with a package, something we can sell to the people.

And then if we have to talk about raising new revenue, we will.

So these two competing petition drives are the complete mirror opposite of one another here.

This is the top priorit here.

It's the lowest priority.

You know, that is.

Sorry, go ahead.

I was just going to say, I mean, there's been so many studies on education.

I mean, studies how about commissions.

I mean, we have launch Michigan.

We had that one proposal and we were trying to figure out when Governor Whitmer was trying to figure out why are people losing, leaving the state.

So they had a population study that came out in late 2023 that's been firmly sitting on a shelf for two years.

You know, there's been no shortage of studies on what to do with education.

So the fact that the governor, Governor Snyder, is talking about collecting more information tells me they've got something in mind so that they're they want t at least put out the perception they're collecting information, but they have an idea on what they want to do.

And it's not raising money by taxing the rich.

Now, I mean, cynically, this sounds like they're shopping around.

They have an idea.

We don't necessarily know what that that idea would be if put to paper, but it sounds lik they want to almost focus group.

It sounds like they want to go around the state.

They want to see what the appetite is.

And then once they figure out whether or not someone's going to bite and that they have support for it, then they'll announce and then they'll say, this is our, you know, competing, so to speak, proposal.

Right.

And it was interesting, the first group did a statewid poll on options and they asked, should we eliminate the income tax?

And that did not come out favorable and neither did the graduated income tax, which in the past has been up in the sixties.

And people said, we're not so sure that lawmakers would apply that graduated tax fairly to everybody.

So what I mean, I thin one thing to point out on this is that Governor Snyder was in charge of the state for eight years.

He had a Republican Republican majorities in the state legislature for all eight years.

Now that he's out of the legislature, he's got a great idea to turn around schools, but he's not going to tell you what it is.

I mean, those are facts of what is happening right now.

Okay They will draft something.

Okay.

Why are you leading with what the proposal is?

I mean, that's that's the question.

I mean, the school budgets did not keep up with inflation while he was governor.

There have been a lot of I mean he sets and policies in place.

And then the Democrats repealed some of the policies.

We've had this back and forth that's that's happened since his administration.

This is bringing back third grade reading.

Maybe that's very likely a part of everything he mentioned.

I said if you could wave th magic wand, what would you do?

He said third grade reading, not doing too well worth it just seems like this is quintessentiall the issue that people have with politics is talk is super cheap.

It's so easy to say, I have a plan, I have a concept of a plan.

I have an idea of what I want to do.

And I'll tell you what it is one of our I figure out, if you like it or not, are reading scores dropped while he was governor our ranking compared to other states for fourth grade reading Mayor Duggan talked about this in his presentation went down during the eight years he was governor.

Former governo Jennifer Granholm used to say.

Stay tuned.

Let's call in our guest Kevin Rinke.

Mister Rnky, please.

It's good to see you, sir.

Tim, Good to see you.

Listen the last time you chatted about this issue, let's just cut to the chase on this governor thin and then get on to other stuff.

You said there's a 50/50 chanc that you would run for governor and you clearly are interested.

Has that number gone up since the last time you spoke to this issue?

Yeah.

Still 50/50, 50/50.

Why isn't it 75,/25?

Why isn't it 90/10?

I'm going through a diligence process and I want to do it right if I'm going to be involved in right now, I'm more interested in the issues affecting Michigan i finding out how they resonate.

Like you guys were just talking about education.

Wait a minute.

For a gu who's already run for governor, what kind of diligence is left?

Oh, there's plenty plenty to do.

You know, it's funny, the state of Michigan is at a point in my view, that it's got a decision to make.

Does it want to accept the status quo politics as usual, or does it want to truly transform itself and regain the position that I believe Michigan should have?

So I've got a vision for Michigan, where it's one of the top five states in America, not a laggard with the rest of the country where Michigan is significant versus insignificant.

And right now we're insignificant based on that speech, you are at 75.

50/50 Tim.

Yeah.

So what is the more important issue that folks should be focused on, education or more funding for roads?

Well, to solve the state's problems, it's not a single issue.

But when you have appropriate leadership, people that actually understand what leadership means, you can set several initiatives and work to get those accomplished at the same time.

One of the things the government is there to do is to provide education for its children in the state, and we have done a poor job of it There's no other way to say it.

There's excuses across the board from Republicans and Democrats, and it's time we fix it and we can fix it.

Does that mea raising more money for schools?

No, we don't hav a funding problem with schools.

Let me do a little quick math for you.

The average roughly income per student is 15,000 bucks per student in some people say it's closer to 12,000, but 15,000 simpler math.

So funding the funding per pupil.

And MEA just came out and said that there are 30 students per classroom and that the classrooms are too full.

Well, if you take 30 students times 15,000, that's $450,000 per classroom per classroom of revenue.

The average income of a teacher in the state of Michigan, 69,000 bucks right now.

Let's run it up to 70.

Where's the $380,000 per classroom per school of money going?

It's going to the teacher retirement system that is has a huge amount of debt that the schools continue in.

The state has to continue putting money.

It's going into transporting kids to the classroom.

It's going into running the buildings.

It's going in to lunches and breakfasts for the kids.

And so the solution for education, Craig, that you're proposing.

I'm not proposing anything you asked where it's going and I told you.

The people propose I'm sorry, is to keep raising funding for schools.

And I was driving by and we're spending all sort of money building new buildings.

How does that working for our kids, how does it work for our kids?

For years, we put in $2 million football fields to have kids read it less than 50% literacy rate.

Try taking away the football games.

I'm not talking about taking away the football games.

But we have to prioritize what's real in education and there's great ideas.

Does a new building help kids learn?

The answer simply is no.

Do iPads help kids learn?

Do you realize studies indicate that reading comprehension is 50% lower when you go off a computer screen or an iPad than when you use books?

And we've got people proposing that we should go to all computers to teach our kids.

We have solutions.

They're not fancy, but they require focus.

Phonics is a reading based solution.

It's worked.

It worked when it was implemented.

In fact, America's highest reading scores were when public education mandated phonics, purely phonics.

We've now introduced over the last ten years, five or six differen reading methods that don't work, and we continue to tank.

So why haven't we addressed the phonics issue?

It's simple.

They say they're going to.

If it's not funding with you.

I mean, I know that we just talked about phonics, but then you say there are there are plans out there.

I mean, what what is something that you are potentially proposing since it does admittedly sound like you may be attempting to run for office sooner or later?

Well, I'm attempting to propose solutions for the people of Michigan in lieu o whether or not I run for office.

So we have a program that actually was introduced in, I believe it was '21 as Shirkey was going out under a grant.

They gave $5 million to Beyond Basics, which is a fantastic phonics based tutoring program.

And they have put Beyond Basics into 17 different school districts.

Guess what?

Every single one of those school districts reading comprehension has gone up dramatically.

In fact, over a 40 month period of time, if we focused on phonics, Michigan could be 90 plus percent reading literacy.

And I think education starts with reading grade level literacy.

Would you favor vouchers?

Let parents make the decision where they want to go?

Absolutely.

Parents should have the righ to choose where their children go to school, but that doesn't take the accountability factor out of, I think, the state, through its oversight of public education, should demand in its curriculu that phonics is what is taught.

And if we have to use beyond basics or a third party provider to do that, then we need to put it in.

And by the way, I happen to believe tha it's damn near revenue neutral.

Do we need to raise more money for the roads?

Do we need to?

I don't know yet.

I can't tell you that I have a specific answer.

Obviously Gretchen ra on fix the damn roads and she's a little bit less than successful with it.

I don't know.

And I want to get in and look at how we break that down.

My biggest concern is i my lifetime, for instance, 696, which my businesses were along, it's been rebuilt now four times, five times, I think it's one of the most expensive roads in America.

Why do we keep rebuilding roads that fall apart?

How how could you be a candidate for governor who ran one for now, thinking about it now and not have a plan to fix the roads?

Where have you been?

I'm not saying that I'm not going to fix the bridges.

Asked you how you were going to do it.

Yes.

If I had the specifics on it in Tim, I'd want to sit down and to get the information on how we didn't get the information when you were running before, because they don't pass it out to you.

When you look at road building contracts, when you look at how roads are structured to be built, well, do you favor taking the sales tax off at the pump and putting that money into the roads?

I think that we should look a how the dollars are generated.

Okay.

And remember, wait a second.

Would you take the sales tax off at the pump?

It would be an option, yes.

Okay.

Well, so is getting up tomorrow morning.

Okay.

I hope for you It is.

I'm looking forward for me.

Okay.

Can I try a third time?

But you can try a third time.

I see this is part of the problem.

I want to take a very measure approach and I'm on the outside.

I'm a business guy.

I've got 30 plus years of proven track record of getting results for people, having businesses succeed.

And I've got a process that works for me, and I'm not going to get sucke into making this wild statement when I don't know, something I'd rather say, okay you know what, Lansing, open up.

Let me bring in my team of accountants.

Let me bring in my team of engineers.

Let me bring in my team of builders.

And let's sit down and DOGE our road program.

And that's what I would do.

So if I were in Lansing, you talked about education, you talked about roads, there's other issues.

What's your give us your third issue that you'd like to address?

Well, I believe tha eliminating the personal income tax is critical as a step for Michigan to move forward.

And I realize in $1,000,000,000 a year, if it does, we've ten it's actually closer to 12 and a half.

If you want to be specific, it might be more now, it could be up to 14.

Some people are projecting.

But you know what, It's funny because people say, how are you going to replace the personal income tax?

And let's take a look at the nine states in America that have eliminated personal income tax.

Hmm.

They're all growing.

They all have a similar or lower gross taxable impact than Michigan on its citizens.

Because when you take away the income tax, what do people do with that $2300 and it's roughly $2300 per person that's payin income tax that they get back, they spend it.

Our income tax is 4.25%.

It moved up to 4.5.

Michigan was the only state in America to increase income tax this last year.

And that is absolutely the wrong direction for Michigan, in my view.

We've now had two additional states repeal.

The income tax in those states will start to grow.

Michigan's got a problem and business as usual is going to keep that Michigan spiraling downward.

That's an idea you talked abou in 2022 when you were running.

I talked about education.

I talked about income tax and I talked about line five.

Well, let me ask you a question about this.

You did not win the Republican primary.

Tudor Dixon Yeah.

I've never asked you this before.

I don't think what did tutor Dixon do wrong in the general election?

And what would you have done differently?

Do you think you could have won that race against Governor Whitmer?

I would have loved to have had that race against Governor Whitmer.

And in fact, I think that the Democratic Part was more concerned about Kevin Rinke winning than wha they would do with Tudor Dixon, because we had people say that we needed a woman against a woman.

And I disagree with that completely.

Tudor didn't have the business background, tudor, didn't have the political experience Tudor, didn't have the vision for Michigan.

And that's not a criticism.

I commend her for getting in the race.

She got Donald Trump's vote.

Susie Wiles daughter was her campaign person.

She had an in and how did that work for Michigan?

How did it work for Michigan?

Our state is failing us.

Good people are leaving our fastest growing demographic is 65 and older.

And also, what would you have done differently?

You said that you were male, you have business experience.

What would you what would you have done differently than Tudor.

Again, we would have focused o education, which I spoke about.

It's nothing new.

I'm glad to see that the rest of the Republican Party's catching up to me about education and being an issue.

We'r not going to attract businesses if our kids are illiterate and that's where we stand today.

I would have eliminated the personal income tax.

And guess what?

In the states that have eliminated it, they've attracted younger, more affluent mobile income earners.

They also switched how taxes are generated to a demand based on the taxpayer.

Okay, well, you stay for overtime.

Sure.

Okay.

But here's the follow up question.

Your economic growth thing may sound good, but last time I checked, economic growth doesn't happen overnight.

So you've got a huge hole in your state budget while you're waiting for the economy to come back.

And in the meantime, the services aren't being paid for.

So here's the deal.

10 seconds, $2300 per person, they're not going to put it in the bank and save it.

You go from a 4.2, five or 4.5% to them spending that money at 6%.

There's not one state that had revenue go down when they eliminated personal income tax.

Every single state tax revenue went up.

It's called the Laffer Curve, Craig.

And you should go ahead and look it up.

It works for Donald Trump.

Steve Moore did it for.

All right.

We're going to take a pause for close credits.

We'll come back for more of this.

All right.

And by the way, it was Art Laffer for Art for Reagan and Steve Moore for Trump.

Thank you for clearing it up.

Let's take a look at the close credits, wkar.org and OT with Kevin Rinke production of off the record is made possible in part by bellwether public relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at Bellwetherpr.com For more off the record, visit WKAR.org Michigan public television stations have contributed to the production costs of off the record