Hitting the Road

Jarvis campaigns in Michigan

To the people of the Detroit factory suburb of Wayne, he was the messiah from California. They boosted Howard Jarvis last week onto the back of a blue pickup truck, handed him a microphone, and waited for him to say what they wanted to hear. He readily obliged: "We want a reduction in the taxes in this state and every state."

Dressed in a baggy brown tweed suit, Jarvis was barnstorming through Michigan on his first foray in support of a measure to lower taxes since the success in California of Proposition 13, which he cosponsored. His appearance was part of a drive to obtain the 266,000 signatures needed by this week to get a tax-cut referendum on Michigan's November ballot. The proposition, sponsored by Robert Tisch, the drainage commissioner of rural Shiawassee County in central Michigan, would cut property assessments in half, hold future increases to 2.5% a year, and permit the state income tax, now 4.6%, to rise no more than one percentage point.

Another proposal, originated by Farmington Hills Insurance Executive Richard Headlee, a former director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is backed by an array of conservative businessmen, Senator Robert Griffin and Economist Milton Friedman and has already received 415,000 signatures. Headlee's proposal would hold the combination of state and local taxes to the current figure: 9.7% of total personal Michigan income.

At the first of Jarvis' four stops, he peered through his thick-lensed spectacles and told an audience of 60 in Wayne: "I get a phone call every 30 seconds. They want me in 30 states. But I'm here in Michigan because Michigan is the most important." The crowd of blue-collar workers and women in bouffant hairdos roared their approval.

Jarvis ridiculed Headlee's claim that his proposal is the more responsible of the two because it would stabilize tax rates and allow for balanced growth and not require cuts in essential services. Retorted Jarvis: "One is a political petition and the other one a people's petition. Whom do you trust, the politicians or the people? They are not the government. You are the government. We want taxes to go down, not up and not sideways."

Again the crowd cheered lustily. Jarvis' entry into the fray on behalf of the Tisch proposition has led some of Headlee's backers to fear that the antitax movement could be splintered, causing both proposals to lose. Still, with state and local taxes up 142% in ten years, the voters of Michigan seem ready to send their politicians a message. Says Tisch: "With Howard Jarvis, we're going places. He's a hero, a father figure."

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