A Viewpoint commentary by Michael Van Beek, director of education policy, on “flipped” classrooms appears today as an Op-Ed in the Shelby Township Source. A flipped classroom is one in which students watch or listen to pre-recorded lectures outside of class time, and then classroom time is used by the teacher to mentor students as they do homework or projects.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 1040, Adopt school employee pension reforms: Passed 20 to 18 in the Senate
To close the current "defined benefit" public school pension system to new employees hired starting in 2013, and instead give them 401(k) accounts with employer contributions equal to 4 percent of salary. New hires also would no longer be eligible for retirement health insurance benefits, but instead would get extra contributions into their 401(k) accounts. Current retirees would have to pay 20 percent of the cost for their health benefits, up from 10 percent now. Current school employees would have to contribute more toward their pensions, or else receive benefits calculated under a less generous formula.
Mackinac Center analysts have been pretty tough on Senate Republicans who in recent days progressively watered down proposed school employee pension reform.
However, when the time came to stop talking and start voting, the Senate made a respectable down payment on desperately needed reforms. Referring to one major reform provision added late in the process, Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, said to reporters, “Tell the Mackinac Center that, OK?”
The Michigan Senate today approved an amendment that would offer school employees hired after Jan. 1, 2013, a defined-contribution retirement system instead of a defined-benefit plan. If enacted, this will limit Lansing’s ability to defer the costs of pension benefits to future generations.
Jack Spencer, capitol affairs specialist for Michigan Capitol Confidential, was a guest on “The Frank Beckmann Show” on WJR AM760 this morning. Spencer discussed his latest story, which outlines how the SEIU is paying for a shell corporation to remain open after it was defunded by the Legislature. The Michigan Quality Community Care Council that was set up as the dummy employer in a scheme to skim millions of dollars from Michigan’s most vulnerable families operates three hours a month. In short, the union is paying the employer of the people it is supposed to represent so it can continue to operate and funnel dues money back to the union.
Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, told reporters “Tell the Mackinac Center that, OK?” on Wednesday in announcing his support for legislation that would put public school teachers in Michigan hired after Jan. 1, 2013, into a defined-contribution 401(k)-style plan, according to The Detroit News.
Senior Economist David Littmann is heavily cited in a Detroit News story today about Michigan’s declining unemployment rate.
“Signs are trending upward at this point at a relatively slower pace than in the first quarter,” Littmann said of the announcement that unemployment in the state fell in April from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent. “We’ll get some improvement with some of the reductions in gasoline prices to restore a little bit of purchasing power, but the great uncertainties are still out there getting worse.”
(Editor's Note: Attorney General Bill Schuette ordered on May 26 that state agencies stop withholding money from home health care worker checks and handing it over to the SEIU as union dues, thus ending a union scheme that took more than $30 million from workers.)
From today's Wall Street Journal, "Saying No to State Bailouts," by Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina:
Michigan's policymakers have at least recognized we have a problem, but already the issue is in doubt given how almost every day brings new reports of politicians watering down a proposal to reform unaffordable and unsustainable public school retiree health insurance benefits and pensions.
According to Gongwer News, Gov. Rick Snyder will propose some $500 million annually of “pre-funding” for the optional health insurance benefits that are now provided to school retirees, all or most of which would come from taxpayers for the next 25 years.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 1069, Cut tax imposed on manufacturers' tools and equipment: Passed 23 to 14 in the Senate
To eliminate (starting in 2015) the so-called “personal property tax” on tools and equipment used by manufacturing firms (including things like assembly lines), starting with new equipment acquired from the start of 2012. The bill would also phase out the tax on existing equipment over a seven-year period beginning in 2015. Senate Bill 1072 would earmark tax revenue that now pays for previously-granted “corporate welfare” tax breaks and subsidies to reimburse local governments for the proposed reduction in revenue caused by this tax cut. The “personal property tax” currently costs businesses statewide around $1.2 billion annually, which would eventually be reduced by around $470 million.
A group calling itself “Occupy the Tri” from the Tri-Cities area of mid-Michigan plans to protest the Mackinac Center’s headquarters during non-business hours Saturday, according to The Saginaw News.
Michael Jahr, vice president for communications, told The News that the “Occupy Movement should find a lot to like in the Mackinac Center’s work,” in reference to the protestors’ dislike of bailouts.
Michigan Capitol Confidential documents more waste from the federal “stimulus” package passed in 2009: “Federal ‘Stimulus’ Spent $34.5 Million In Michigan For Only 183 Total Jobs”
The whole article is a good read, but one thing stands out specifically: The state and companies receiving these subsidies all defend the program by pointing out that they lay the groundwork for alternative energy and the “greening” of the energy sector.
Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, was a guest on “The Frank Beckmann Show” on WJR AM760 Thursday, discussing his new book, “The Road to Freedom.”
The Mackinac Center will host Brooks on June 12 and June 20 to talk about his book and free enterprise.
This Michigan Capitol Confidential story by Jarrett Skorup about the folly of central planning for energy policy has since run in Crisis Magazine, The Blaze and Catholic Exchange.
Michigan Capitol Confidential today is reporting that a major teachers union in Michigan claimed an online charter public school operator made $522 million in profits in 2011, but the company actually had revenues of that much. The state chapter of the American Federation of Teachers made the claim in a legislative update opposing Senate Bill 619. You can read more about the expansion of parental choice and educational options that lifting the cap on cyber charter schools offers here.
Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, released his new book today titled “The Road to Freedom.” He wrote about it yesterday at Brietbart.com.
The Mackinac Center is pleased to welcome Brooks to Michigan for two events, June 12 in Grand Rapids and June 20 in Birmingham, to talk about the free enterprise system and why it aligns with the morals and values Americans hold dear. Tickets are $30 and attendees will receive a copy of the book.
Crime is just one of many factors that impair a city’s ability to attract economic development, a Mackinac Center analyst told The Saginaw News recently after the city of Saginaw was named as the most dangerous place for women in the country.
“If we want more business activity in the city, we have to avoid raising the cost of living and working in the area,” said Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative. “Having high crime rates or even the reputation of high crime raises the cost of living and doing business in Saginaw.”
Here’s a prediction: Expect to see some school districts quietly launch campaigns urging parents to enroll “almost” 5-year-olds in kindergarten, even though they are considered too young under a bill passed unanimously by the Senate last week. Here’s how MichiganVotes.org described it:
Research and analysis by Mackinac Center education policy experts featured prominently in the Detroit Free Press Sunday.
Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek wrote in an Op-Ed about conventional school districts that are potentially breaking the law by trying to cherry-pick academically talented students who want to enroll via a schools-of-choice program.
By Jack McHugh
During a three-month period ending last September, 190,661 Michigan jobs disappeared. That’s nearly one out of every 20 jobs in the state.
So why weren’t there headlines about an employment apocalypse? Because during the same period 227,785 new jobs were created here. This “job churn” is typical of the dynamic U.S. economy and labor market, and it goes on continuously.
Among other actions this week, the House and Senate in effect rejected all the budgets passed by the other body the previous week, which is a procedural means of getting these into conference committees to work out the differences. The goal is to complete work by June 1 on budgets for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
If you’re a culture vulture as I am, you don’t often associate Michigan with poetry, and when you do it’s either fairly dreadful stuff like Edgar Guest or far removed from personal experience such as Thomas Lynch or Philip Levine. It is true several transplants have wound up in Michigan by happenstance, including academic hires such as John Ciardi and Richard Tillinghast. Homegrown Jim Harrison is a poet, but is better known for his fiction and essays.
Jason Clemens, director of research at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, Canada, and a Mackinac Center adjunct scholar, explains in this commentary that Occupy Wall Street protesters “offer policies that assume the people who face low income today are the same ones who encounter it tomorrow,” and fail to recognize the income mobility that exists in a free society. The piece appeared in the Financial Post on May 1, 2012, and is based on Clemens’s recent paper titled “Income Inequality: Oversimplifying a Complicated Issue.”
For every dollar of wages that school districts pay to employees covered by the state-run school pension system, they must kick-in an additional 25 cents to that system. This is up from around 10 cents in 2000, and without major reform the figure will only grow. The chart below breaks down the different components of this assessment.
