Interview with U.P. State Representative Sara Cambensy

In this episode, David Haynes talks with Sara Cambensy, State Representative for Michigan’s 109th District. Prior to her election to the state legislature, Cambensy served on the Marquette City Commission, Marquette Planning Commission and was the director of adult and continuing education for Marquette Community Schools.

David and Rep. Cambensy talk about issues affecting the U.P. that both she and the legislature will be looking at in the current legislative session, including Federal infrastructure funding and getting funding into programming like schools and mental health, a bill to help communities capture more revenue from transient housing driven by tourism, and how people in rural parts of the state–especially the U.P.–can have a bigger voice in Lansing when decisions are being made that affect these rural areas.

Transcript

David Haynes:

Well, good morning, everybody. We’re pleased today to have representative Sara Cambensy of Marquette. Sara and I have known each other for many, many years. She serves in the hundred ninth district and she is only the second woman to serve from the upper peninsula in the state legislature. First one was in Baraga, Clara Anderson. I think if I have that right. Welcome, welcome Sara. Thank you for doing this early in the morning.

Sara Cambensy:

Yes. Thank you.

David Haynes:

What are some of the issues that you think people in the UP ought to pay attention to. You’re in-session now in August, and between now and December. What are some of the things you think that will be happening, that’ll be of importance?

Sara Cambensy:

I think right now the biggest chance we have to make a difference, and this is a once in a lifetime chance, is just the influx of federal dollars to the state budget. People that have been around Lansing for a long time have said, they’ve never seen a budget where you have an extra $10 billion plus hopefully a federal infrastructure package that’s going to insert even more money into our budget this year.

What we are trying to do is be very strategic with that money. We’re trying to plug as much of it as we can into our regular budget, free up some of those general fund dollars and look at projects boring, but important roads, bridges, water, and sewer, do those big projects that we typically bond for. So that for the next 30 years we have more money to put into programming, mental health things that it doesn’t matter what community you go to in the UP people want more, they want to see us do more with these programs. Right now there’s a lot of negotiating, a lot of planning for how we’re going to do this. But really if you see us focusing on kind of that boring, typical infrastructure stuff, it’s because we’re trying to get more money into the programming, whether it’s schools, again, mental health, things that the community is really want to see as well.

David Haynes:

Those are important issues throughout the UP. We hear regularly from local officials concerned about bridges and issues like that in the UP. I suppose that’s also, from what I read, true downstate, so those are important. I understand that you and the UP’s Senator, Senator Ed McBroom, are working on some tourism related bills. Could you tell us a little bit about your work in this area?

Sara Cambensy:

Yeah. With the influx of tourism that we’ve seen pure Michigan has been extremely successful. It has helped plug holes in our economy as we see some of the traditional jobs go away, whether it’s mining and the timber industry. It’s allowed a lot of our small businesses to grow. With that, we’ve seen kind of an exponential growth in some of our waterfront communities, that these are counties where you might only have a population year round of 10,000 people. But when you have an influx of 1.2 million, this year there’re expected to be about 1.4 million in Ulster County. It creates a problem in managing people, so the bill package we’re working on really is to allow some of our locals to capture some tax money off of transient housing.

We’re looking at where does Michigan compare to others? Great Lakes states around us and in the UP, our tax rate is actually low on transient housing. The hotels, the highest they collect, it’s the 6% sales tax. They’ve got a 5%, if you’re in the CVB district, our convention and visitors bureau, you might be at 11%, but if you’re not in that district, you’re just paying that 6% sales tax. That’s it, with our short-term rentals, they aren’t paying anything more than that 6%. We’re looking at this saying, gosh, when you go to Minnesota or you go to Wisconsin, you’re paying 12, 13% sometimes in taxes with a good chunk of that going to the locals. We need that here in Michigan, so, him and I have been working on how do we do that? What does it look like? Does it go to the counties or does it go to cities, townships, villages as well. We’re working through the structural details, but just trying to get our locals that public safety guarantee.

David Haynes:

On our rural insights website, we’ve done some research on the hotel tax and others. I think this is really an interesting area. Currently they collect it and it’s spent on promoting tourism.

Sara Cambensy:

Right.

David Haynes:

Would you change that, would this money be used for infrastructure or public safety, spent by the counties and cities, or would it be controlled by the hotels?

Sara Cambensy:

Because they do an assessment, it can’t be used for government. What we’re proposing is something alongside of that, that’s an excise tax that allows it to be used for government purposes. Again, we don’t want to step on their toes. We think they’re doing a great job. It’s a good problem to have when people want to come to your state and want to come spend money, we just need to manage it. That’s what we’re looking to do is again, trying to allow our local municipalities, just the resources to manage the people.

David Haynes:

It would be an excise tax that government could collect and spend locally, would it replace the current hotel tax, so they’d still be collecting their CVP tax?

Sara Cambensy:

No. Yeah. They would still be collecting it, doesn’t interfere with them at all. It would just be this additional tax, again that has to be voted on. Right now the bills written at the county level, you have to take it to a vote of the people. They have to approve it. Within that language, we’re hoping that they can work out: X amount stays with the county, X amount goes to cities or certain projects and kind of manage it locally rather than having Lansing tell them, “Here’s your one size fits all.”

David Haynes:

Also it seems to what you’re doing, it seems to me is if I’m hearing correctly, that people should be for this because they wouldn’t be paying a tax. What we’d be saying is all the people coming in to our community using the roads and facility and policing and safety would pay this tax, right? This wouldn’t be a tax on you and me and our neighbors.

Sara Cambensy:

Right. When you think about it, you have these small counties that again, maybe have 10,000 people, but when you have that influx in and they’re pulling your ambulance or your search and rescue, or your sheriff’s department out for rescues or whatever, it’s leaving that community and that taxpayer vulnerable. We just want to make sure that we have the resources or the staff for whatever it is for public safety, to keep everyone protected and safe.

David Haynes:

That’s fascinating, very fascinating. Some of the original legislation goes back a long time. It’s really what Detroit at the time wanted to do.

Sara Cambensy:

Yes.

David Haynes:

Make it a tax that the government would spend. The UP wanted to make it sort of a fee that could be collected by hotels and spent on promoting. That’s the two differences.

Tell us a little bit about, we wrote something about it and got more response than I thought we’d get about this, the state looking to control short-term rentals versus local municipalities. If I understood it correct, it’s sort of confusing. Could you explain that for us? How it would work?

Sara Cambensy:

Yeah. This is one that basically we’re in a no-win situation. I think locals, are in a no-win situation because we’ve been doing this kind of thing where you rent out your cottage or your camp in the UP a few times a year, to pay the taxes or whatever for decades. Now, it’s grown into, this is how people want to travel and live and stay.

We’re looking at other states and how do you balance the private property rights with that local control and keeping your neighborhood feel and your certain zoning districts that, again, it’s really a local thing that I agree, not many people or communities want to give up. We’re at a point where it seems the biggest question is, should we allow them or, or shouldn’t we, and if we allow them, how do you in the same zoning district, tell one property owner that they can have something, maybe you put an arbitrary number or a cap on it, or a distance factor in there. And the person next door says, gosh, I’d really like to do that too, why can’t I? I live in the same zoning district and I have the same rules and regulations, but I don’t qualify.

That’s the dilemma I think that the locals are in and certainly even state legislators, in terms of how much do we get involved. The bill you saw this spring was really saying that we must allow them, if you’re in a single family district.

David Haynes:

Good so anybody, if you want to camp on your home and you want to rent out part of it, you could do it under the federal legislation, and your local municipality couldn’t say on these six blocks you can do it, but on these eight blocks, you can’t is basically.

Sara Cambensy:

Yep. The feds, they have a 14-day rule, so for those 14 days, you can rent it out. They did that so that if you wanted to rent it to family, or if you needed to rent it for a few weeks to help pay the taxes, we’re not going to hammer you on that. After those 14 days, that’s where you get into this local control and is it a business versus a residence and all that kind of stuff.

David Haynes:

We recently, all of us read this beginnings of the census report and the UP has lost, depending on how you count, six to 10,000 citizens. Urban areas and metropolitan areas have gained, rurals have lost. The UP in southeast Michigan, Detroit, in particular, have lost.

How do you see the legislature viewing rural areas? Do they, not just the UP, but they, we have what 20 counties below us that are declared below the bridge down to Lansing, that would be considered rural. Do they understand the need you think, or do we still have work to do about making sure that the legislature understands the uniqueness of cities and the urban centers and uniqueness of rural areas?

Sara Cambensy:

I think this is the most important question facing not only the state, but certainly our country. That is how do you make sure that rural America, rural Michigan, the UP has a voice and our needs are certainly at the table. This is why I think you see such a vast change, even in who’s getting elected. I’m the only Democrat left north of Saginaw. It used to be entirely blue about 12 years ago, and that’s a big change, but it signals to me that as my party gets and puts out and promotes more of that urban message, rural Democrats like me are kind of left saying, gosh, the issues I’m facing really are a lot different than those in a larger city.

The work that Marty Fittante is doing with InvestUP, these organizations in the UP and these people that are really trying to solve that problem of, how do we take a long view, a 20 or 30 year view and say, what do we need to do in rural Michigan to reinvest in these places so that they’re not ghost towns? So that when some of the larger industries contract or go away, we have something that’s there for the people.

I think attracting people to the area for our beauty, Traverse City, we joke about it, everyone in the UP says we don’t want to become that. They are now, I think, starting that next step of attracting those small businesses, medium-sized businesses that want to move there because people want to live there. I think that’s coming, but I think the groundwork and we need to get that network of people, not only to do it in the UP for our communities, but really to be the sounding board for Lansing and help us carry that message down here.

David Haynes:

I think that’s really interesting. I was saying to some folks locally that I don’t, I think our competitors these days may be for what we want to do and bring especially young people, technology people, cyber people to the UP, as well as small business growth and others. Tourism is Traverse City down to Grand Rapids is who’s attracting them. We want him to come the additional five hours up to us, three to five hours depending where on the UP. I think that is a test, Grand Rapids had a statement out where they’ve spent years tracking the young people from west Michigan who moved to Chicago.

Sara Cambensy:

Yes.

David Haynes:

Very sophisticated study. Now they’ve reversed that, they’ve seen they’re keeping people in west Michigan all the way up to Traverse City, but specifically Grand Rapids. There’s a lot to learn from in a way our competitors are building coalitions. That’s really interesting. Those are all interesting things.

Are you, am I correct, you’re term limited this year?

Sara Cambensy:

I’m already term limited.

David Haynes:

You are already. Wow, that went fast.

Sara Cambensy:

Yes. Yes.

David Haynes:

Always amazes me when I talk to somebody in the legislature, I always forget it’s six years in the house and it’s like, God.

What’s the next chapter for Sara Cambensy? Lieutenant governor, governor? You want to run for Congress? What do you want to do?

Sara Cambensy:

No, no plans to run for any further office right now. Again, that kind of plays back into, could a Democrat even get elected after we saw Bart Stupak step away in 2010, we haven’t had another democratic congressional person. In the Senate, same thing when Mike Prusi left and was term limited out in 2010 we’ve now, we’re on our second Republican state Senator.

I’m not quite sure the demographics are there for someone in my party to get elected. I think because I’ve shown I can work together, I love the bipartisan group. Even in Congress, when you’ve got the group that sealed the deal really for the infrastructure bill that we’ll hopefully see. Those are the people and the type of person that gets things done down here. At this point, I hope I’m inspiring some more Democrats, certainly for my seat, to get in the game and try and make a difference and show that there’s still a common sense Democrat out there.

David Haynes:

I think people, regardless of your party, want their elected representative to solve problems. I think you said it, you’re absolutely correct. They look for that now. It’s my life I want to working people are concerned about and you all, you’ve done a lot of bipartisan work with Senator McBroom and others. There’s a tradition in the UP legislators, a working bipartisan and you’ve continued that.

I want to say thank you. I promised your staff I wouldn’t keep you too long so they let me talk to you again.

Sara Cambensy:

Yes. Yes.

David Haynes:

I know not to get staff angry at you. Thank you very, very much. I’m sorry you’re not up here enjoying the beautiful weather that we’re currently having in your home, my home. I hope we can do this again soon.

Sara Cambensy:

Absolutely.

David Haynes:

Thanks Sara.

Sara Cambensy:

Yeah, thank you.

David Haynes:

Have a great day.

Sara Cambensy:

You too, all right, bye bye.