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Mark Hackel (Govt. photo)
Macomb County Executive will deliver a message this week at the Detroit Regional Chamer's annual policy conference in Mackinac Island: A Regional Transit Authority tax measure is dead to him, forever.
“It’s time to put it to rest,” Hackel says of the push to raise property taxes 1.5 mills regionwide to support a comprehensive transit system, reports Nolan Finley, editor of The Detroit News' editorial page. “It’s that simple.”
Finley writes:
Regional transit remains on the conference agenda — Wayne County Executive Warren Evans is expected to advocate for it in a speech Wednesday and there's an RTA panel on Thursday afternoon. RTA advocates still hope to use Mackinac as the final push to get it on the ballot.
But the $5.4 billion measure isn't going anywhere without sign-off from Hackel and Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, who have stood firm in the face of withering pressure to bless the plan. (Patterson is not attending the Mackinac conference, leaving Hackel to take the heat alone.)
Hackel knows this week he’ll be cornered, pulled into closed-door meetings, summoned to the woodshed by some of the state's most powerful executives. But he says he's done talking about the RTA.
