In a unanimous ruling, the Michigan Supreme Court has determined that the union-backed "Protect Our Jobs" amendment should appear on the Nov. 6 ballot. Now it will be up to voters to determine whether union leaders will have the chance to bargain away state laws.
Voters have a very difficult decision to make now that the Michigan Supreme Court has approved the so-called “Protect Our Jobs” Amendment for the Nov. 6 ballot.
“Right now, it’s with the voters,” Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio told Reuters and CNBC. “They can vote for it and give Michigan to the special interests … or against and leave the power where it should be, with the state’s elected representatives.”
The Wall Street Journal says Michigan is the new battlefield in organized labor’s national campaign to preserve political power.
In a Labor Day editorial, The Journal discusses the so-called “Protect Our Jobs” amendment that would enshrine collective bargaining in the Michigan Constitution. The editorial reflects the work of Mackinac Center analysts, noting the effect of the proposal: “The amendment would reduce the ability of Michigan lawmakers to change labor laws and end-run efforts to give workers a choice about whether to join a union.”
Michael D. LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Center, explains in this Lansing State Journal Op-Ed why Michigan should consider a right-to-work law.
Recently, many Ann Arbor parents received a letter informing them that there was a relatively large gap between high-performing and low-performing students in their child's school. They could, the letter said, choose to transfer their child to another school with a smaller achievement gap.
F. Vincent Vernuccio, labor policy director, was a guest today on “The Paul Miller Show” on WPHM AM1380 in Port Huron, discussing the “Protect Our Jobs” ballot proposal. For more information on this and other ballot proposals, please see www.miballot2012.org.
While the story of 13-year-old Nathan Duszynski and his struggles to open a hot dog cart in downtown Holland captured national and international attention, the issue of restrictive zoning ordinances that can harm people on the bottoms rungs of the economic ladder and put up barriers to prosperity is a much larger issue in cities across the country.
The director of elections for the state of Michigan has released the wording for most of the proposals expected to be on the ballot in November. The proposed constitutional amendment relating to home-based caregivers shows how groups can push innocuous-sounding language to do something extremely damaging.
A proposed ballot initiative is a radical constitutional amendment that would make union bosses the most powerful people in the state, according to an Op-Ed by Labor Policy Director Vince Vernuccio in the Downriver Sunday Times.
The “Protect Our Jobs” Amendment would make union bosses a sort of super-legislature, allowing them to overrule state and local laws and ordinances past, present and future.
Car insurance rates in Michigan are the most expensive in the country because drivers here are required to buy unlimited personal injury protection, a Mackinac Center scholar explained in the Detroit Free Press Sunday.
Dr. Gary Wolfram, an economics professor at Hillsdale College and an adjunct scholar with the Center, urged the Legislature to consider the data, saying that there are “economic distortions in the insurance market that result in the loss of efficiencies.”
The House and Senate are in the midst of a summer break, so rather than votes, this report instead contains several newly introduced bills of interest.
Note: There will be no roll call report in the next two weeks. The next report will be Sept. 14.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
As reported earlier this week, 13-year-old entrepreneur Nathan Duszynski is now free to sell hot dogs in downtown.
Though the city shut down his business in July just minutes after it opened, the Holland City Council voted Aug. 15 to extend him a special permit to operate through the end of October. In the video below, Nathan and Ken Vos, the sporting goods store owner who originally helped Nathan start his business, reflect on Nathan’s new opportunity.
Just 10 weeks before an election that could place Obamacare on a very different trajectory, The Detroit News reports that Gov. Rick Snyder has chosen to bypass the Legislature and enter a “joint partnership” with the federal government to create the “exchange” through which the law’s mandates and subsidies will be administered. A spokesperson for the Snyder administration told The News that the governor is concerned with meeting timelines mandated by the law.
The wealthy are always taking hits from those whom they patronize — often from arts journalists who think the wealthy are philistine, stingy or some combination of the two. Enter Matthew Power, a Brooklyn-based scribe, who in the September issue of GQ authors a sneering, condescending and downright elitist article on Grand Rapids in general and its ArtPrize specifically.
After the Kent County Land Bank Authority came under fire for buying more than 40 vacant, tax foreclosed properties to block developers and individuals from purchasing them, Kent County has set up a subcommittee to study the issue.
The committee will consist of four county commissioners, and will look at how other land banks choose to buy property. It remains to be seen whether they will give a critical look at the practice of government using taxpayer dollars to buy property. The committee may alternatively be nothing more than an attempt to placate Kent County residents upset with the land bank's actions.
It took a national spotlight, but Thursday morning on the corner of River and 11th in Holland, 13-year-old Nathan Duszynski is scheduled to open his hot dog cart for business.
Nathan made national headlines last month after the city of Holland shut down his downtown hot dog operation, which he had hoped would help support him and his family.
A story in Monday’s Michigan Capitol Confidential about the Detroit Water and Sewer Department employing a “horseshoer” due to antiquated union job classifications has garnered national media attention and nearly 180,000 readers.
Fox News, John Stossel on Fox Business News, The Wall Street Journal, the Drudge Report (top item in right column), MSN, The Blaze, Reason, The Washington Times and Neal Boortz (last item) all covered the story.
Though I’m a huge fan of both The Wall Street Journal and its esteemed drama critic Terry Teachout, the Aug. 17 edition featured a story more befitting a propaganda piece than real journalism. According to Teachout, property millages are a reasonable method for funding public arts institutions such as the Detroit Institute of Arts.
In a recent Mlive.com article, W.E. Upjohn Institute economist Tim Bartik says that school choice is an ineffective tool for improving education. The arguments he uses, however, ignore inconvenient truths that would render his arguments meaningless.
First, he states, “[T]here's no evidence to suggest that choice works very well” to improve academic outcomes. One must ignore a lot of research to make such a broad generalization. There are several studies of charter public schools that show students making significant learning gains. For example, Harvard economist Thomas Kane found “large positive effects” in a study of Boston charters, and a study by Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby showed charter school students in New York City making huge academic gains compared to their peers.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 1040, Revise school pension system: Passed 21 to 16 in the Senate
To no longer provide post-retirement health benefits to new school employees, and instead give them a 401(k) contribution equal to 2 percent of their salary. Also, current retirees who are over age 65 on Jan. 1, 2013 would have to contribute 20 percent to the cost of these health benefits, up from 10 percent now. The bill would also authorize “prefunding” these retiree health benefits (despite them being optional and not an enforceable obligation on the state). In addition, current school employees would have to contribute more toward their pensions, or else receive benefits calculated under a less generous formula. The original Senate-passed provision to “close” the school pension system to new hires was not adopted.
Forty-six years ago, Chippewa Valley Schools began borrowing state money to help make payments on its debt. As of June 30, 2012, the Michigan Department of Treasury estimates that Chippewa Valley owes the state more than $143 million — almost $9,000 for every student enrolled in the district. And the district's state debt is growing. Last year, the district owed $120 million.
The city of Holland has reportedly granted limited permission to operate a downtown hot dog cart to Nathan Duszynski, the 13-year-old who received national attention for his efforts to open the cart to help his troubled family.
The Holland City Council voted Wednesday to allow Nathan to run his hot dog business until the end of October on the sidewalk adjacent to a downtown sporting goods store.
Online learning continues to grow in Michigan and around the nation. The International Association for K-12 Online Learning estimates that public school students took 1.8 million courses online in 2010, and another 250,000 students were enrolled in full-time online schools in 2011. A recent survey of Michigan school districts conducted by the Mackinac Center found that about 90 percent of them offer students some form of online learning opportunity.
A radical ballot proposal that would make union bosses more powerful than elected representatives was rejected Wednesday by the State Board of Canvassers, and is unlikely to find relief from the Michigan Supreme Court according to one Mackinac Center expert.
Joshua Smith is obviously a caring young man. The 9-year-old Detroiter recently set up a lemonade stand in front of his house with the purpose of raising money.
For what purpose? A charity perhaps? A neighboring family down on their luck?
No. The city of Detroit. The actual municipality. The one with a $200 million budget deficit.
