Michigan Public Radio Correspondent Rick Pluta asks an important question about a possible interstate compact to eliminate corporate welfare, “Why would other states buy into that?”
Lawmakers look at business subsidies as ways to attract factories, offices and jobs to their state. If they are correct about that. then dropping their programs would cost them something valuable. They wouldn’t be able to announce that they had attracted the next big thing to their state if they stopped offering deals to select companies.
With the new budget, Michigan will spend more money on roads than ever before, when adjusted for inflation. The $5.4 billion the state is spending on roads from its own funds — not including federal transfers or the small amounts of local and private money — is 15% more than the previous peak in 2019.
Businessman and former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Kevin Rinke joined The Overton Window Podcast to share how a lifetime of political skepticism eventually led him to public service — and why Michigan’s literacy crisis now commands his full attention.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News September 23, 2025.
Two hundred people gathered in Washington, D.C., last Thursday to honor Edwin J. Feulner. You may not know Feulner’s name, but you likely have heard of the institution he co-founded and built: The Heritage Foundation.
In Michigan, you can be a community librarian with a general equivalency diploma (in a small town), a bachelor’s degree (for mid-sized municipalities) or a master’s degree (in larger cities). But to be a school librarian, you need a bachelor’s degree, a teaching certificate and a master’s degree.
Activists are collecting signatures for a proposal, possibly for a November 2026 vote, that would amend the state constitution to add a new rate in the state income tax. This would give Michigan the seventh-highest rate in the country; fourth-highest if you include Detroit’s city income tax.
Michigan’s slow slog toward being able to spend $1.5 billion share of federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funds may finally be getting somewhere. After years of delays, and our warning in March of this year that the plan Michigan submitted was likely to be rejected by the National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Administration, Michigan has finally submitted a new plan that appears likely to be approved.
Detroit has the most extensive and comprehensive zoning ordinance in the state of Michigan. The zoning law has evolved over time, mostly by getting more restrictive: Much of the current housing in the city would likely be illegal to build under zoning rules that have been put in place over the past few decades.
Invest in MI Kids is a ballot proposal to change the state constitution by increasing taxes on higher earners and sending the money to public schools. Doing so would make it easier for politicians to raise taxes in the future — not only on “the rich” but on everyone else.
Michigan’s electricity is among of the most expensive and least reliable in the country, and ratepayers have no option to take their business elsewhere. The monopoly over electricity sales that investor-owned utilities are given by the state is a key reason for this sorry state of affairs.
By Molly Macek
The wait is finally over. Lawmakers last week passed a record school aid budget that increases per-pupil funding for public schools. It uses more taxpayer dollars to pay for school meals so that wealthy kids don’t go hungry, regardless of whether that was a risk. And it requires districts to pay more toward the underfunded pension system.
The Center for Public Integrity published a series of reports from 2012 to 2015 that assessed “accountability and transparency” across the 50 states. These reports used more than 200 indicators to evaluate public records laws, lobbying disclosure requirements, political spending and more. The results produced an “integrity rating” and measured a state’s “risk of corruption.”
If corporations really believe in environmental, social, and governance investing, shouldn’t they be refusing to take government subsidies? Richard Morrison, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and John C. Mozena, president of the Center for Economic Accountability, join the Overton Window podcast to discuss how the waning of ESG opens the door to less politically divisive froms of coprorate activism.
Across the country, communities are struggling with a shortage of homes. Families are being priced out, young people are leaving, and employers can’t find enough workers. Too often, outdated zoning rules keep cities from meeting the demand for housing.
People created governments to advance the public interest, and they elect the leaders of those institutions. These public servants use their best judgment to tackle the problems important to voters.
But elected officials are also people like the rest of us — often seeking the easy way. This puts people at a disadvantages when their interests collide with the government’s. It’s simply easier for officials to take the government’s side against the citizens.
If you drive around my hometown of Midland, Michigan this week, you’ll see a constant stream of utility workers. Many of them work for internet companies and are hard at work expanding services.
Charter and AT&T have both announced expansions of fiber internet. In the last two years, my bill with Charter declined by $20 per month while at the same time almost quadrupling in speed.
Early reports indicate that lawmakers have a deal to complete the state budget, and that it will include an end to the state’s largest business subsidy program. The state currently earmarks $500 million of the corporate income tax to the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve, which writes big checks to big companies. That earmark would end under the reported budget deal.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News Sept. 16, 2025.
The morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was sitting in my office in Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C., when the second plane plowed into the World Trade Center in New York City. I called a friend and asked, “Are you okay?”
By Molly Macek
The House education budget proposal would give school districts more money with fewer strings and increase funding. So why are local school officials so sad about it?
The House budget, totaling $21.9 billion, would give school districts $100 million more in funding than the Senate’s or governor’s versions and a billion dollars more than schools get this year. And unlike the other proposals, it would roll up most of the categorical grants into the per-pupil foundation allowance.
Ohio public unions see 610 opt-outs
Public workers in the Buckeye State are leaving their unions in what Freedom Foundation calls a “tidal wave” of opt-outs. “More than 440 of those opt-outs came from employees tied to the Ohio Education Association (OEA) and the Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE) — unions long reliant on confusing fine print and arbitrary ‘opt-out windows’ to keep members trapped,” writes Ryan Horan. “What makes these numbers so impressive is the strategic outreach employed by the Freedom Foundation. Through a coordinated campaign including mailers, emails, digital ads and canvassing, we reached employees across the state, sending more than 200,000 pieces of content to Ohio public-sector employees in just two months.” [Emphases in original.]
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News Sept. 9, 2025.
Michigan’s State Board of Education has selected Glenn M. Maleyko to be the state’s next superintendent of public instruction. The superintendent serves as the principal executive officer of the Department of Education and is responsible for implementing the board’s policies. The role is so important that it’s spelled out in the state constitution.
The federal 340B program requires drug makers to sell their products to hospitals, which can then re-sell them and pocket the cash. It’s a case of the government picking winners (hospitals) and losers (drug manufacturers) among private market participants.
Early America lived by sabbath and blasphemy laws yet still maintained a separation between church and state.
Glenn Moots, a professor of political science and philosophy at Northwood University, tells the story of this deep religious influence on modern society.
Both Michigan and North Carolina have Democratic governors with Republicans controlling at least one branch of the legislature. In both states, there has been a budget fight between the different political bodies. The two states have close to the same population — about 10 million citizens in Michigan and 11 million in North Carolina.
Newly proposed legislation in Michigan would impose burdensome requirements on artificial intelligence systems. The predictable impact from these proposed laws would be to drive AI development out of the state, likely to China or other Asian economies.
