Snyder discusses Flint water and tuition at MPA conference
Gov. Rick Snyder signs a $28 million finance package for Flint on Jan. 29 at the Michigan Press Association conference in Grand Rapids.
GRAND RAPIDS -- Gov. Rick Snyder addressed the press and state legislature about Flint water issues on Jan. 29 at the Michigan Press Association convention.
After his speech, he signed a $28 million supplemental finance package for Flint.
“Part of this is lessons learned,” Snyder said. “Let’s use Flint as an opportunity to address the hidden problem of infrastructure in our state.”
He said there needs to be a commitment to make Flint stronger in many ways.
Snyder usually attends the annual MPA conference to speak to journalists about the relationship between government and the press, but broke from tradition this year to dedicate his speech to the devastation in Flint and his plans moving forward to fix the water problem.
The governor also took questions from the crowd.
When asked why state appropriations aren’t allocated equally among universities, Snyder said there are a lot of politics involved.
“To be blunt, in some of the phases, every year it was more about politics and who happened to know who at what university than it was about having a method and an established way of (distributing funding),” Snyder said.
He said there is now a performance-based formula in place that assesses each university and how many degrees are granted, inflation rates and other categories. The formula recognizes colleges that are performing the best.
“We have been putting additional funding toward higher education; it is something I’d like to see continue,” Snyder said.
He said because of the deficit when he first took office, he focused more on funding early- childhood education.
“We took care of early childhood, and more work can be done there, but hopefully now we will have more (money) to allocate more funds toward higher education,” the governor said.
Speaker of the House Kevin Cotter (R-Mount Pleasant) said he understands the struggle of the high cost of attending college, as he is still paying off his student loans.
“CMU is on the very wrong end of the spectrum,” Cotter said. “It’s a very political process. Those who held positions in power favored their universities. Now that process has stopped, but the problem is how do we bring up those (universities) that were set back for such a long period of time?”
He said a use of constitutional language has been added, which prohibits the state from meddling in affairs of universities.
“If you raise your tuition above a certain percentage per year, then state funding will be held back,” Cotter said.
He said in recent years, Eastern Michigan and Wayne State universities both lost funding because they established higher tuition increases.
