Executive Vice President Mike Reitz told The Detroit News that “Any reform bill on FOIA faces a buzz saw of opposition from local government entities,” for a recent story about the lack of transparency at all levels of government.
Reitz has written previously about transparency and was the architect of a series of town hall meetings the Center hosted over the summer in conjunction with the ACLU and Michigan Press Association discussing Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act.
According to the news reports on the Detroit bankruptcy proceedings, Judge Steven Rhodes is interested in the legality of the state’s emergency financial manager law.
Unfortunately, neither side seems to be making the plain case about why the state reverted to the emergency financial manager law following the rejection by voters of the emergency manager law, nor are they acknowledging the differences between the two.
While there have been many positive responses to the stories of the teachers from across the state fighting to get out of the Michigan Education Association, there also are naysayers.
And a common complaint about the educators who want out of the union is wrong.
Statewide media are reporting on the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation’s clients who filed unfair labor practice complaints against the Michigan Education Association. The teachers are claiming that the union has kept information from them about how to exercise their rights under Michigan’s worker freedom law.
Senate Bill 307, Let more cities impose additional public safety property tax: Passed 37 to 0 in the Senate
To allow cities with less than 70,000 residents impose "special assessment" property taxes to pay for police and fire services. These taxes would be imposed over and above regular property taxes, and require voter approval. According to the Senate Fiscal Agency, this could allow 278 cities to impose these additional taxes.
In 2009, we released a Viewpoint detailing the average cost of benefits for public sector employees compared to those in the private sector in Michigan. Now that time has passed, we decided to explore whether this has changed. It turns out that it has. The gap increased very slightly to $5.8 billion.
It isn't much, but at least it's something.
Senate Bill 612, sponsored by Sen. Hoon-Yung Hopgood, D-Taylor, would "reduce from 2,000 hours to the 1,800 hours the number of hours of instruction at a ‘licensed barber college’ that an individual must accumulate before he or she is allowed by the state to earn a living at this trade."
Education Policy Director Audrey Spalding was a guest on “The Tony Conley Show” on WILS AM1320 in Lansing this morning, discussing her newest study that points out flaws in the Michigan Department of Education’s “Top-to-Bottom” school ranking list.
WOOD Radio in Grand Rapids and MLive also covered details about the study.
Former Mackinac Center intern Josiah Kollmeyer is one of just 34 people — out of 112,000 who took the test — to receive a perfect score on the Law School Admissions Test in the past year, according to The Hillsdale Collegian.
Kollmeyer was a fiscal policy intern at the Center during the summers of 2011 and 2012, helping conduct our annual school privatization survey.
Back in 1971, a racehorse named Canonero II surprised the racing world by winning the Kentucky Derby.
Before the race, few were even talking about Canonero II. A few so-called experts suggested he might have an outside chance because he'd been racing in Venezuela. At times racehorses do well in the states shortly after being shipped in from South America because the altitude change can have a positive effect.
Michigan’s current budget increases the amount of money going toward funding higher education. This increase in funding has been pushed for by some of the groups representing those in the business community as well as, of course, the universities themselves.
Senate Bill 542, Allow more generous government employee health benefits: Passed 38 to 0 in the Senate
To increase from $11,000 to $13,455 the “hard cap” on the amount the state, a local government or a public school district can spend for an "individual-plus-spouse" health insurance policy under a 2011 law which either caps these benefits or else requires public employees to share some of the cost. The Senate Fiscal Agency reports this could increase state costs by $19.4 million annually; since there are seven-times more school and local employees than state employees the overall cost to taxpayers could be much higher. (The statutory caps also increase each year with inflation.) The bill would also revise some factors in the formula used to set the caps in ways that generally permit granting more generous benefits.
In 2005, the Michigan Employment Relations Commission inappropriately allowed and administered a union certification election for home-based caregivers, despite them not being public employees.
Unfortunately for those 40,000-some workers, who primarily are family members and friends caring for the state's most vulnerable residents, MERC made the decision in April not to correct its own mistake. For that reason, the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation this month filed an appeal in court, on behalf of people like Patricia Haynes and Steven Glossop, to have even a portion of the dues returned and the union certification declared illegal.
Senior Investigative Analyst Anne Schieber was a guest on “The Tony Conley Show” on WILS AM1320 this morning for a two-part interview on her story and video package in Michigan Capitol Confidential about residents in Genesee County’s Davison Township whose taxes went up after they refused to allow assessor’s into their homes.
Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman was a guest on “The Frank Beckmann Show” on WJR AM760 on Monday morning, discussing the history of the Center and Monday night’s 25th anniversary gala, which was held at the Kellogg Center on the campus of Michigan State University and featured John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods.
Who Voted "Yes" and Who Voted "No"
House Bill 4787, Increase CON health facility rationing fees: Passed 23 to 14 in the Senate
To increase from $1,500 to $3,000 the “base” fee for a hospital or other health care providers seeking government permission to open or expand a health care facility, or add certain capital-intensive equipment (like MRIs), under an existing state “Certificate of Need” rationing regime. The bill would also authorize additional fees of $12,000 for large projects, $3,000 for “complex” projects, $500 for “letter of intent” reviews, and more.
Published reports indicate that the state fairgrounds — once home to an iconic Michigan State Fair — may finally be sold to an investment team that includes former NBA star and Michigan native Magic Johnson.
The state, however, should have sold it to the highest bidder immediately when it had a chance.
In Bridge Magazine, author Ron French argues that teacher certification requirements should be increased to keep ineffective teachers out of classrooms.
Hasn't Bridge heard? Apparently Michigan's teaching pool is doing quite well. After all, 99.6 percent of Michigan teachers were rated effective or better in 2012. Some school districts claim they don't have a single teacher who isn't doing his or her job.
As part of the federal government's slowdown, the Library of Congress has been pulled offline. Users hoping to browse the Library's digital collections or search its online catalogue were greeted with the following message this week:
Due to the temporary shutdown of the federal government, the Library of Congress is closed to the public and researchers beginning October 1, 2013 until further notice.
Senate Bill 397, Expand a corporate/developer subsidy regime
To authorize creation of a sixth “Next Michigan Development Corporation,” which is a government agency that gives tax breaks and subsidies to particular corporations or developers selected by political appointees on the entity's board for projects meeting extremely broad "multi-modal commerce" criteria (basically, any form of goods-related commerce). The new entity would be in the Upper Peninsula.
Harry Hutchison, a law professor at George Mason University School of Law and a member of the Mackinac Center’s Board of Scholars, puts a new twist on the old argument of racial preferences being used in college admissions in a Detroit News Op-Ed today.
Michigan media reports are full of happy talk related to information released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on individual insurance rates available on the Obamacare “exchange.”
Specifically, the law’s cheerleaders are boasting that rates here will be “less than the national average.”
The legacy media is finally getting around to covering a story Michigan Capitol Confidential reported 15 months ago.
The Detroit Free Press and MLive, among others, are reporting that recipients of corporate welfare have come up short of expected job creation numbers and an audit found that the agencies doling out the money did not accurately keep tabs on the program.
The Michigan Coalition for Open Government blogs about the Center’s lawsuit filed Friday against the city of Westland over improper FOIA fees. A representative of the group participated in a recent town hall meeting hosted by the Center that focused on government transparency.
Senate Bill 276, Require community service work by welfare recipients: Passed 27 to 9 in the Senate
To require cash welfare recipients to perform community service if they are not already in a welfare-related work or training program.
