In a recent newspaper article, the superintendent of the Fowlerville school district said: “There are no employees are [sic] getting raises. Every position in the district, from mine on down, has taken concessions.”
To those not familiar with the public school bureaucracy’s jargon, this may sound like no employees in that district will get an increase in their salary. That’s not the case. The tip-off comes in the next line: “We do have contractual obligations that have step increments that occur at various times.”
James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy, writes in a Detroit Free Press Op-Ed Sunday about how to fix the school employees' pension system. An editorial in Friday's Detroit News also cited a recent study by Hohman showing legislators how to fix the underfunded MPSERS while potentially saving taxpayers billions of dollars. The editorial also agreed with an earlier analysis by Hohman that charter public schools employees should not be targeted as a way to shore up the unfunded liabilities of the pension system.
(Editor's note: This article was previously published on Apr. 14, 2012 in the Washington Examiner "Opinion" section.)
As gasoline prices edge upward, consumers and politicians are looking for someone to blame. Some say it's Iran's fault, while others are blaming the Obama administration. The president, who has a habit of demonizing the oil companies, says there's no silver bullet to solve the problem.
The House and Senate are in the midst of a two-week break, so rather than votes, this report instead contains several newly introduced bills of interest.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 943: Authorize extra punishment for threats to politicians and judges
Introduced by Sen. Darwin Booher (R), to authorize additional prison time for threats made to state elected officials and judges, over and above the penalties authorized for making a threat to non-politicians or judges. Specifically, the bill would authorize an enhanced sentence of up to an additional year in prison for threats made in relation to an elected official’s official duties. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
With Detroit on the threshold of literally running out of cash to pay its bills, a consent agreement has been signed shifting the city’s governance to a small team led by Mayor Dave Bing. The city has traveled a good way further down the road to ruin since the Mackinac Center published an article in 2007 called “Flashy Projects Have Not Helped Detroit.”
As spring blooms, the president addresses the nation on energy. He tells us, “Without our planning for the future, it will get worse…The oil and natural gas that we rely on for 75 percent of our energy is simply running out.”
Unless profound changes are made in the next decade, the president warns, the world will demand more oil than it can produce. He calls for “strict conservation” and switching to “permanent renewable energy sources like solar power.” Because they promise future energy independence, his administration is spending billions of taxpayer dollars on wind, solar and biodiesel, plus offering massive “clean energy” subsidies.
If you think smaller class sizes are important to student learning, you should support expanding the number of charter public schools.
That’s the conclusion suggested by the most recent data available from the Michigan Department of Education, and it directly contradicts claims made by defenders of the conventional public school status quo, many of whom would rather limit or eliminate their charter school competition.
(Editor's note: This blog entry was updated to include a link to the Court of Appeals Opinion brief, which specifies MSU ordinance 15.05 is the alleged misdemeanor.)
People may laugh when they read that a parking ticket violation went before the Michigan Supreme Court last week. But strangely enough, what seems like a petty conflict merits further scrutiny.
Thanks to a new law increasing the powers of emergency managers appointed to reform the finances of fiscally failed cities and school districts, the city of Pontiac is now in the midst of a fiscal policy revolution. With the exception of Detroit, there may be few Michigan cities in greater need of a financial makeover.
Unions may tout the value of defined-benefit pensions, but a new survey of multi-employer pension programs shows that union pension plans in particular are more and more dangerously underfunded.
The consequence of this underfunding is pension failures, and workers who were told their retirements would be provided for being forced to live on much less than they had expected. The defined-contribution retirement savings programs programs that are common outside of government and in non-union workplaces are not without their challenges, but they leave workers with much more control over their retirements, and that may prove to be a much better deal over the long haul.
The latest update of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s widely cited index of state competitiveness released at 2 p.m. today, the “Rich States, Poor States” report, shows that Michigan rose from 25th to 17th place in the report’s forward-looking “economic outlook” index. As recently as 2009 Michigan was in 34th place. This year, Utah tops the charts, and (not surprisingly) New York comes in dead last.
A scheme that has diverted nearly $30 million from the neediest Michigan residents to the SEIU over the last six years should come to an end now that Gov. Rick Snyder has signed legislation clarifying that home health care aides are not public employees, according to the Marquette Examiner.
In a recent Mlive.com article, Michael Rice, the superintendent of Kalamazoo Public Schools, places the blame for skyrocketing school employee pension costs on policies enacted by current and past state Legislatures. In particular, Rice disapproves of policies that encourage privatizing noninstructional services, expanding charter public schools and authorizing early retirement incentives for school employees. He’s right to target the Legislature, but does so for the wrong reasons.
Senate Bill 1040, which would increase teacher contributions to their retirement system, won’t help reduce an unfunded liability in the fund of more than $17 billion, a Mackinac Center analyst told The Detroit News.
James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy, recently authored a study explaining to legislators in very clear terms what actions they could take to close the fund and remove the liability burden from taxpayers.
In an earlier post I noted how union officials were unwilling to accept any limitations that the Legislature might want to put on them, and in particular how the Michigan Education Association was willing to resort to litigation to thwart a state law that said it would have to collect union dues and agency fees on their own. (Again, teachers can still be placed in a position where they must pay dues or fees to keep their jobs, but the school district will not collect dues for them.)
A Michigan Capitol Confidential story about Pfizer receiving corporate welfare from the city of Ann Arbor is the basis for a story today at AnnArbor.com.
Pfizer received an $84 million tax abatement in 2001 after implying the company would leave Ann Arbor, but six years later the company left anyway, taking with it 3,000 jobs.
The Lansing State Journal today cites Mackinac Center research about the lower costs of privatized prisons. In 2007, Fiscal Policy Director Michael LaFaive found that entry-level guards in state-run prisons and at a privatized facility in Baldwin both made about $14 an hour, but those working in government facilities had “far superior benefits,” the State Journal reported.
A recent commentary by James Hohman, assistant fiscal policy director about forcing charter public school teachers into the statewide public school employees’ retirement fund ran in the Dearborn Times-Herald today.
Michigan Capitol Confidential’s coverage of failed electric car battery maker A123 continues to garner media attention.
The Washington Examiner recently reported on a video CapCon discovered that included President Obama and then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm praising the company in 2010 at an announcement about the company opening a plant in Michigan. A123, which received hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate welfare, has laid off several employees and is being sued by stock holders.
Anyone who is particularly surprised by the MEA's decision to file a lawsuit to block implementation of HB 4929 really doesn't understand the character of the union establishment that has developed in this state. The legal details are a little novel; the basic thrust of what the union is doing is anything but. As we've explained before, the MEA in particular has benefitted from a labor law that empowers government unions at the expense of taxpayers. Meaningful reform means limiting or reducing their power. One can expect government unions to fight back aggressively against any attempt to rein them in, and as I said months ago, no limit on union power is modest or reasonable enough to gain the unions' acceptance.
MichiganVotes.org sends a weekly report to newspapers and TV stations around the state showing how state legislators in their service area voted on the most important or interesting bills of the past week. Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
The House and Senate are in the midst of a two-week break, so rather than votes, this report instead contains several newly introduced bills of interest.
Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, took part in a panel discussion about right-to-work laws, explaining that the 23 states currently providing such protections for workers are “more attractive” to businesses, according to The Saginaw News.
You can learn more about the right-to-work issue here.
Columnist Tim Skubick doesn’t like term limits, and a recent column suggests he also may not appreciate lawmaker attempts to openly rein in the bloated spending habits of Michigan’s government universities:
Here’s where terms [sic] limits fits in. Years ago university honchos and house budget writers had what’s called a relationship. Sure, they had their disagreements, but an unseemly public back and forth, such as this, would have been worked out in the back room, not center stage.
The Wall Street Journal reports that tightening state budgets and declining state funds are forcing public universities to make choices in funding priorities.
Ohio State University is considering leasing their university-run parking lots and privatizing other assets “including two 18-hole golf courses, a small airport and a power grid.” The University of Kentucky and Portland State University are also instituting plans that would partially transfer dormitory operations to a private company.
On their article on Detroit unions facing challenges in the proposed consent deal, cnbc.com cites the Mackinac Center's Director of Labor Policy, Paul Kersey, in regards to collective bargaining for government employees. The financial stability agreement, being debated by Major Dave Bing and Gov. Rick Snyder, would "nullify recently ratified pay, benefits and pension concessions."
