Meanwhile, others are chipping in on the spending battle as well.  According to the FREEP, Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Cliff Taylor is asking the Michigan Appellate Court to voluntarily give-up their state owned vehicles, a move SCOMI is already taking.  

As detailed in a Free Press report this month, the judges may use the vehicles for any purpose, including personal trips. Their cost to the state was about $423,000 in 2006.

Taylor said the state-provided vehicles are part of the elected judges' compensation -- Supreme Court justices make $164,610, appeals court judges $151,441 a year -- and cannot be revoked during their terms of office. But they can be surrendered voluntarily, he said.

Taylor said he wasn't sure the move would save any money at all; judges still would be reimbursed for travel on official business. But he said the vehicles have become symbolic of state spending that no longer can be sustained.

At least someone's willing to do the right thing when it comes to taxpayer funded vehicles.  It'd be nice if Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell had the same sense.  

But wait... Taylor's not done.  He'd also like to see the Appellate Court knock four judges off the payroll due to a lower population and a dramatically smaller caseload compared to fifteen years ago.  We'll see how that one plays out.  With the decrease in the number of cases before the court it might be doable.  At least it won't result in a massive release of convicted felons and a wholesale elimination of hundreds of corrections jobs.

Peter Luke over at Booth discussed (again) this weekend the governor's plan to cut a few thousand bad guys loose while firing some of the good guys.  

He runs down the debate pretty well but ignores one possibility.  According to Luke:

The Michigan Department of Corrections has dozens of prisons, a third of state government's work force and more than 50,000 inmates, so it's a pretty big organization to change. Even Gov. Jennifer Granholm's modest plan to finally begin trimming annual growth in prison costs may turn out to be overly ambitious.

Maybe her focus is just off a bit.  If beat reporters in Lansing are starting to discuss prison spending again it's a good bet that someone in the administration is planting the seed with them hoping the issue won't go away.  And, frankly, they're right in doing that.  No one argues Michigan's prison system isn't broken.  It's the solutions that we differ on these days.  

Some would like to simply release and fire.  But there's another solution out there.  Lets not forget the Rio Grande Foundation report that shows privatization of the care of only 5% of the state's prison population would lead to $192 million in annual savings.  Then again, privatizing jobs currently controlled by a union is often less appealing than just eliminating the jobs outright, isn't it, Governor?

Finally, I'd mentioned that the leading leftie rag in the state was banging the tax hike drum again.  The FREEP just won't quit.  And they don't say anything they haven't said before.  Raise taxes.  Raise taxes.  Raise more taxes.  Republicans suck.  Democrats are good and virtuous.  Raise taxes.  But now they're starting to move from sounding repetitive to sounding plain silly.  For instance:

It should not have come to this point, considering that Gov. Jennifer Granholm and everybody who had their eyes open in Lansing for the past year knew this crisis was brewing. But here we are, and unless Michigan wants its reputation further tarred across the country as it begins to shut down government services next month for lack of money, it's past time to do something.

Michigan's reputation further tarred?  Ron, (the big guy on the op-ed page) we're already wearing the feathers.  But somehow you think raising taxes will improve our standing as the chief laughing stock in the nation?  The sort of tax hikes the Senate's killed, the sort of tax hikes whose passing you lament in this same column would have set Michigan back another few years in our impossible race to mediocrity.  

You acknowledge the Senate's passed cuts.  You acknowledge the House passed different cuts.  You acknowledge the Governor is open to about a dollar fifty's worth of cuts herself.  Lets trim the fat before we sign the pink slip for another 19,000 Michigan workers, okay?