MARQUETTE — The challenges facing Michigan’s new governor, Gretchen Whitmer, are the ones facing her staff, one of whom is a Northern Michigan University alumnus and Champion native.

Mark Burton, a 1999 NMU public administration graduate and chief strategist for Whitmer, spoke at the invitation of the NMU Political Science Department on Thursday at Mead Auditorium.

Burton said he came to speak for a “personal experience” and not representing the governor in any capacity, but he addressed topics of crucial importance to Michigan.

Roads is a big problem, as many people would agree.

“We have the worst roads in the country,” Burton said. “Everybody feels it. Everybody knows it. Does not matter where you are in the state. We have over 3,000 bridges that are on the critical bridge list, which is really scary to think about.

“They’re not just two-lane road bridges. We’re talking about, in some case, six lanes of traffic, three going each way, that are held up by hundreds of these temporary supports they put under, and pray nothing bad happens.”

He believes the solution always has been present.

“You can’t build the roads if you don’t have money to build them, and by letting roads that are in good condition fall into fair condition, the cost of maintenance goes up dramatically, and then the phase the state’s been in now for about six years at least, has been, ‘We’re going to stop trying to keep fair roads from being poor roads.’ So, our poor roads are dramatically increasing, and you cannot repave a poor road because you will be doing it again in five years.”

The answer, he said, is to rebuild that road, which costs a significant amount of money.

The “disinvestment strategy” is a sign of the times, Burton said.

“There has been a failure of courage to step up and actually pay for the things that people in this state rely on government to do,” he said.

However, getting past this “courage gap” stems from term limits and gerrymandering, which Burton believes have led to primary elections being what people primarily care about because there aren’t that many competitive districts anymore.

“So if you’re a Republican seat, you’re most likely winning your races overwhelmingly, so you are worried more about a primary challenge, so there’s a courage gap when it comes to any issue that could potentially impact a primary election,” Burton said.

And no matter the strength of the solution and how many people agree on that solution, there always will be a politically funded group that will insist on a price being paid for doing the right thing — and sometimes even the wrong thing at times, he said.

Burton believes Whitmer will lay out budget specifics in the first week of March, and is “relatively certain” there will be near-unanimous support of every major business organization across Michigan, including the vested stakeholders involved in building roads and contracts.

For example, he said the business community supports user fees to fix roads.

“The hard part is convincing legislators that one vote can make a whole lot of difference over the course, long term, like 10 years,” Burton said. “Another problem is term limits. People don’t think long term anymore.”

Instead, he said the system encourages people to prepare for their next opportunity.

Michigan’s educational system also is in decline, said Burton, who noted per-pupil funding isn’t enough to properly fund schools.

One project he likes is the School Finance Research Collaborative.

“It demonstrates a path forward for the state in terms of how to begin to kind of crawl out of the hole we’re in,” Burton said. “There’s some solid guidance there.”

Brian Cherry, a political science professor at NMU, said he hoped the students in the audience learned something about their potential futures from Burton’s talk.

“Mark is not only an NMU alum, he’s from the Upper Peninsula, and what we tend to find with our students is when they get out of the U.P., they find out they compete very well with other people,” Cherry said. “They’re sometimes a little shy and timid getting out there, and when they’re put into situations, they tend to shine and tend to do very well.”

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.