This article originally appeared in The Detroit News April 7, 2026.
There’s a fight in Grand Rapids. The city’s financial watchdog raised concerns about spending at city hall. The response? The officials, whose spending he reviews, gutted his office.
Grand Rapids Comptroller Max Frantz is now suing to protect his office’s independence, staff and budget. This case, no matter the outcome, will influence how cities across Michigan manage their finances.
Workers for Opportunity is joining a broad coalition to oppose the Faster Labor Contracts Act. This legislation would remove democracy from the workplace and empower government bureaucrats to mandate arbitration for initial contracts between unions and businesses.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News April 21, 2026.
In Michigan, you need a license to cut hair, roof a house or operate a polygraph machine. But you need no training at all to write the laws that govern those professions.
Elected officials make important decisions for their constituents, appropriating billions of dollars of taxpayer money and designing state programs that affect millions of people. Lawmakers would do well to learn and remember basic economics.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News September 25, 2025.
Data centers are facilities that house computing and telecommunications infrastructure. They have been around for a long time, but demand is skyrocketing thanks to the rise of the internet, crypto currency, artificial intelligence and cloud data storage. More data centers are being built around the country.
Michigan received a $125 million federal grant that it will share with school districts to cover the cost of buying 322 electric powered buses and 54 propane powered buses. The grant was designed to replace older diesel fueled buses with lower emission vehicles. With the grant ending, school districts will need to make their own purchase decisions about which vehicles are best.
As Michigan lawmakers consider cutting and limiting property taxes, it’s worth checking out some facts and trends about Michigan’s property tax.
State and local governments collected $21.6 billion from property taxes in 2025, up from $20.3 billion in 2024, a 3% increase above the rate of inflation.
I wrote an op-ed for Bridge Michigan about a year ago that explained the benefits of direct cash subsidies compared to conventional government welfare programs. I highlighted Rx Kids as an example, but not as a blanket endorsement of the program. Rx Kids is a promising alternative to the state’s welfare programs, but it is too early to tell if it is a good use of taxpayer money.
New reports from the state’s actuaries show that Michigan is $3.6 billion closer to paying off its pension debts than the previous report showed. Unfunded liabilities for the state-managed school pension system decreased from $28.0 billion in 2024 to $25.1 billion in 2025, and unfunded liabilities for the state employee pension fund decreased from $4.7 billion to $4.1 billion. Both changes represent an improvement on a problem that the state should never have had to begin with.
This is a transcript of the interview with Dr. Alexander Tokarev for Mackinac Center’s “Chasing the American Dream” series in celebration of the 250th anniversary of freedom in the U.S.
I’m Alexander Tokarev. I am a professor of economics and classical liberal philosophy at Northwood University here in Midland, Michigan. I grew up in Bulgaria under socialism.
Michigan has a fertility gap, Warren Anderson says, and regulations on childcare facilities may be making it worse.
Anderson, a professor of economics at University of Michigan Dearborn and member of the Mackinac Center’s board of scholars, joins the Overton Window Podcast to discuss how easing up on regulations could make it easier for moms and dads to have children.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News March 5, 2026.
What can you say about a representational public body that silences dissent and conceals information from the public? That question lurks in the background of two lawsuits against public school boards in Michigan.
The Michigan Economic Development Corporation should be put out of its — and our — misery. The state’s jobs agency is mired in a misuse-of-funds scandal, has presided over costly development failures, and has little to show for decades of promises about growth.
This article originally appeared in The Washington Times February 23, 2026.
President Trump is trying to make homeownership more affordable for families. If he wants to make lasting progress, then he should take an example from my home state of Michigan, where lawmakers unveiled a bipartisan package this month to lower the costs of building and buying homes. The plan rests on the time-tested principle that government simply needs to get out of the way.
“Local control” sounds like a conservative principle. But it is not a conservative principle unless it protects liberty. And the groups fighting for the power of cities don’t seek to protect liberty. Typically, they fight for more government control over our lives, at least at the local level.
Workers for Opportunity, a project of the Mackinac Center, celebrated a big win May 19 when Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed SF 472 into law. The measure strengthens a requirement that unions periodically gain their members’ trust to continue serving as bargaining agents.
By Molly Macek
This article originally appeared in Bridge Michigan March 4, 2026.
Standardized test scores for Michigan students are on an alarming downward trend. Yet high school graduation rates are rising. These conflicting trends raise serious questions about the standards public schools use to measure academic success.
It is hard these days not to encounter good news about Detroit’s fiscal profile. According to Detroit’s 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, the city’s basic governmental funds have moved from a $363 million deficit in 2016 to a $326 million surplus in 2025. This is a major positive swing for a city that emerged from bankruptcy in December 2014.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News April 26, 2026
Everyone loves Michigan. Just listen to them.
We’re “Pure Michigan,” a “Winter Water Wonderland” with “Great Lakes, Great Times.” Michigan is the home of Motown, Beer City USA, Tree Town, Vehicle City and the Cherry Capital of the World.
This article originally appeared in the Lansing State Journal February 16, 2026.
As winter tightens its grip on Michigan and temperatures plunge below zero, electricity isn’t a luxury - it’s a lifeline. Keeping houses warm and the lights on during brutal winter weather depends on reliable, affordable power. Yet just as residents need electricity the most, Michigan’s energy policies are driving up electricity rates while pushing nuclear and other dependable power plants off the grid.
At a Mackinac Center event on how states can improve healthcare coverage and reduce costs, a panelist mentioned using dental therapists to expand access to dental care and make it more affordable. These midlevel providers practice under the supervision of a dentist but provide more services than a dental hygienist. Michigan law lets them practice, but the required regulatory changes are being implemented at the speed of bureaucracy.
Michigan, long an oasis of decent homes at attractive prices, is feeling the national housing squeeze. Costs are skyrocketing, and the supply of units is not growing fast enough to meet that demand.
Alex Cartwright, a Mackinac Center Board of Scholars member and former economics professor at Ferris State University, has a plan. As principal at HotelShift, Cartwright converts former hotels into multifamily housing. The business substantially boosts the number of homes in an area, but many zoning bureaucracies, local politicians, and community activists resist expansion of the real estate market. Cartwright joins The Overton Window Podcast to discuss the promise of new housing, the prospects for a hotel shift in Grand Rapids, and the challenges posed by NIMBY opposition.
You only have one shopping day left until Michigan Manufacturing Day. Michigan lawmakers in 2004 designated the Friday of the second full week in May as a time to encourage manufacturers “to open their plants and facilities to young people, teachers, and parents and encourages visits to manufacturing plants and facilities.”
A bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced a package of bills that would help increase the supply of homes by making it easier to build. This, in turn, would lower housing costs.
But the legislation is meeting opposition from local governments, because part of the package sets limits on local regulation of home construction. The argument from local officials leaves out some important information. Municipalities should realize that by limiting new construction, they are curtailing the property taxes that are their largest revenue source.
Homes in Detroit now sell for prices seen elsewhere in the state, a big change from where property values were during the Great Recession of 2007-09. That’s a sign of the city’s recovery. But a law meant to protect taxpayers has unintentionally penalized people who move to the city, and it treats some property owners unfairly. This can be an issue throughout Michigan. But with the recent trend in Detroit’s property values and tax rates that are the highest in the nation, it’s more of a problem in Detroit.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News February 19, 2026.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s new executive budget combines a worthwhile goal with bad economics. The governor says she wants to lower costs for Michigan families, but her plan to create targeted tax breaks and subsidies for certain goods and services or certain groups of people will produce few savings even for its beneficiaries. And the costs of several new tax hikes also included in the plan swamp whatever small benefits the subsidies might produce.
