Michiganvotes.org tracks every bill and every amendment introduced each year in the Michigan Legislature. It also tallies the number of roll call votes each legislator misses every year. Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh, who has put together the annual count since 2001, said the information should not be used to jump to any conclusions about a particular legislator. Several votes can be missed in just one day, for example, and extenuating circumstances can be involved that cause a legislator to miss session days, such as a severe illness or military duty.
Last year, a legislator that the authors have known for many years asked for our opinion on a new state "incentives" program targeted at a specific industry. His response to an expression of skepticism was slightly shocking:
"So you don't think we should use the tax system to get people to do what we want them to do?"
(Editor's note: This is adapted from an article that originally appeared on Industrialpolicy.org.)
As Detroit and the rest of Michigan look forward to 2010 and beyond, it might be wise to look back at what economics lessons the experience of the past half-century may provide to guide our future choices.
(Editor's note: This entry is adapted from an article that originally appeared on Industrialpolicy.org.)
Reams of empirical evidence indicate that when it comes to increasing the prosperity and opportunities of the people in a state, nation or society, government "economic development" programs fall far short of what their proponents advertise. Here are three of the reasons this is true.
A recent Gongwer story (subscription required) paints a dreary portrait of Michigan's education funding over the last decade, or what they term the "lost decade." The article states that since 2000, education "was one of the first budgets hit with cuts and freezes." When it comes to K-12 schools, a broader perspective reveals a different story.
During our 21-year history, the staff and adjunct scholars of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy have been honored with the opportunity to associate with more than a few intellectual luminaries. Of these, perhaps none shines the light of intellectual gravitas more brightly than Mackinac Center adjunct scholar and supporter, Paul J. McCracken.
(Editor's note: This is an edited version of a recommendation that originally appeared in The Detroit News on Nov. 24, 2009.)
Michigan pays twice when high schools and community colleges overlap services and offer the same courses. In addition, studies estimate that community colleges spend one-third of their time providing remedial education, essentially doing the job that high schools are supposed to do. Allowing students to skip some high school extracurricular courses and move on to college earlier would lessen this redundancy and give many students a jump start on job training or a four-year degree.
By Jack McHugh
Three similar proposals introduced in the Michigan Legislature this year — House Joint Resolutions Z and CC, and Senate Joint Resolution K — would place recognition of a "Right to Independent Medical Care" in the Michigan Constitution. Specifically, they would establish that "every person has a right to provide for his or her own health care" and prohibit any law or rule that would directly or indirectly "compel any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system." (SJR K and HJR CC only apply to federal laws or rules, while HJR Z applies to any government mandate or ban.)
Focus on the Family's weekend news program highlighted the Mackinac Center's legal fight against the DHS's forced unionization of 40,000 day care providers in Michigan.
Mackinac Center President Joseph Lehman was interviewed for the segment. He commented:
It's the 200th anniversary of William Gladstone's birth. Though Gladstone is the namesake of a small Michigan town, that was not, in fact, his biggest contribution to the world. As a British parliamentarian and prime minister, Gladstone pursued policies to uphold individual freedom and personal responsibility. Michigan could use more statesmen like that.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a neat story about a meeting between two typical Americans with something in common: tea.
Bruce Richardson is a Kentucky resident, author and host of tea parties — the kind where you sit down and actually drink fine tea. The article also reveals that he is concerned about the alleged damage being done by humans on the environment due to global warming. He was in Lexington, Ky., on a book tour and visiting a business owner who serves tea for a living but hadn't yet learned the finer points of properly preparing the beverage.
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation's suit against the DHS continues to draw national attention. The case, the first filed by the newly created public-interest law firm, seeks to prevent the state and two unions from siphoning off nearly $4 million in "dues" from subsidy checks that home-based day care operators receive when they care for the children of low-income parents.
Science is in trouble. The process of scientific discovery is too often being traded for the practice of political science. The recent "Climate Gate" scandal is just a symptom of a much larger problem. When scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit refuse to release climate data and dismiss any legitimate questions regarding their methodology or conclusions, they undermine the credibility of the very profession they practice.
As Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Michigan Legislature continue to create an overspending crisis by budgeting expenditures higher than revenues, talk has turned toward potential tax increases. Keep in mind that Michigan's unemployment rate has more than doubled since the 2007 tax hikes.
The idea that agriculture is Michigan's second-largest industry is a piece of conventional wisdom often iterated, in fact, so much that a Google search for "second largest industry" returns Michigan's iterations of the idea. Yet this is false. Agriculture is nowhere near as large as most Michigan industries.
Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith's announcement yesterday that he was defecting from the Democrats and joining the Republicans has left political pundits and partisan professionals alike pondering the impact this will have on the 2010 election. With some justification, non-political actors in the nation's Tea Party movement will also see in this some vindication for the pressure that they have been applying to politicians over the last year. But it's very easy to draw the wrong lessons from the Griffith story. What it really demonstrates is something much more important than who controls Congress and your health care.
Michigan schools once again are said to be facing a "funding crisis," and the most suggested solution boils down to rounding up more revenue to feed them. The only problem with this simplistic solution is: It. Won't. Work. And here's why:
In a 2005 Michigan School Business Officials press release about the fiscal outlook for the coming year, Executive Director Tom White described how schools have slimmed down their budgets: "Schools have moved past the fat and are down to the bone." Also in the statement: 79 percent of districts said they expected to spend down their fund balance, 63 percent predicted class sizes would increase and 65 percent said they'd cut spending on supplies and services.
Census Bureau figures released today continue to confirm the damaging impact of bad public policy on Michigan this decade.
An Op-Ed on this issue by Michael LaFaive, director of the Center's Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, and Michael Hicks, an adjunct scholar with the Center and director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, was posted immediately online today by The Detroit News.
It must be Christmas with all the presents floating around.
The health care bill just cleared its first hurdle through the Senate and the amount of special favors and outright bribes for powerful senators and swing states is (expectedly) outrageous.
The most egregious are as follows:
"The MEGA program has brought the kind of leadership and decisive action that will make Southwest Michigan First and the Kalamazoo area a hotbed for job creation." — [Then] SMF chief Barry Broome referring to the Michigan Economic Growth Authority's 2000 decision to award American Greetings a MEGA tax credit deal.
Editor’s note: This piece was updated in 2015 to add a 2001 forecast by [then] MEDC CEO Doug Rothwell.
This week Michigan Economic Development Corp. CEO Greg Main predicted for Michigan Radio News that this state will experience job growth in 2010. He also told West Michigan Business Report that "Michigan appears to be on the edge of coming out of this recession. We're starting to see some climbing out. I think we're going to see some pretty strong growth within the next year." University of Michigan economists (who have a history of flawed crystal-ball gazing themselves) suggest otherwise, believing that none will occur until the year after.
By Jack McHugh
On Dec. 18 the Michigan House voted on party lines to defeat a measure prohibiting state environmental regulators from basing electric generating plant permit decisions on factors other than ones related to pollution, such as whether they think the state really needs the plant, or the owner should look for alternative forms of electricity. The issue arose due to Granholm Administration efforts in the past year to throw roadblocks in front of new coal-fired power plants, including a $2 billion facility in Bay County.
Here's the latest evidence that so-called "economic development" programs are actually nothing more than political development programs: It appears that the state's incentive apparatus has now been enlisted to raise the political profile of Michigan's Lt. Gov. John Cherry, the Democratic heir apparent to replace Gov. Jennifer Granholm when she is termed-out of office at the end of 2010.
Now that the Michigan Legislature finally passed some school reform bills in its attempt to get a potential one-time payment of $400 million from the federal government, let's put this "Race to the Top" program into perspective.
Four hundred million dollars seems like a nice chunk of change; that is, until you consider how much Michigan spends on its public schools. In 2007-08, Michigan spent almost $19 billion on public education, making the potential "Race to the Top" money a mere 2 percent of the state's total education bill.
Michigan's public school funding continues to draw attention.
Michael Van Beek, director of education policy, wrote in the Dec. 18 Dearborn Times-Herald that despite relatively small per-pupil funding cuts this year, Proposal A has increased school funding about 33 percent. Van Beek argues that controlling costs, not receiving more revenues, will help schools deal best with budget issues.
