Michigan lawmakers have only a few months to create a budget for the next fiscal year, address the Medicaid program and enact criminal justice reforms.
In 2019, lawmakers dialed back taxpayer support for business subsidies, perhaps reflecting a change in thinking.
A legislator from northern Michigan wants the state to restart taxpayer funding of the Pure Michigan advertising campaign. Lawmakers should let its funding stay at the current level: zero.
A conflict between a Republican Legislature and a Democratic governor led to restrained growth in the state budget.
Michigan has reformed some of the many licenses it requires for people to hold a job. Lawmakers should continue that work in the new year.
A set of regulations and laws that a high school student proposed as part of a biology class suggests that Michigan schools should take a closer look at the environmental impact of renewable energy sources when teaching about the benefits.
Without the Legislature’s timely intervention, the commission’s decision threatened to make it more difficult for cancer patients in rural areas of Michigan to access this treatment.
Some Michigan classrooms lack a teacher with full credentials, even though many people with teaching credentials aren’t teaching. Rather than focusing heavily on producing more teachers, the state should find ways to entice some of those teachers into the classroom.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was right to veto funding for the Pure Michigan advertising campaign in the new state budget.
While Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made Michigan’s roads the centerpiece of her election campaign, her veto of extra money for road repair shows that her most important priority is to increase how much state government taxes Michigan residents.
The new ban on flavored vaping products is harmful to public health and respect for law.
Michigan’s two big electric utilities cite their build-up of solar facilities as evidence of their environmental concern. But solar facilities pose significant environmental challenges, which the companies have not adequately prepared for.
Even if the governor and lawmakers can’t agree on whether to raise the gas tax, that’s no reason to shut down state government.
Most local governments in Michigan need to shore up the pension systems they have for their retirees.
Employers should have a larger role in shaping career and technical education programs.
Lawmakers who want to spend more taxpayer money on roads can find another extra $1 billion by using these 13 suggestions.
The state’s Schools of Choice program does not merit the attacks it recently received on a national scale.
A bill in Congress to increase the national minimum wage would harm young and inexperienced workers who need on-the-job experience.
A recent report significantly overstates the number of jobs that renewable energy sources provide.
Michigan should give parents of special needs students more say over their children’s education.
The three competing proposals for the next state budget direct more money to the roads and cut money for corporate welfare.
Michigan improved its school-grading system last year by giving parents more detailed information, but it could still be better.
Michigan has almost doubled its spending on roads since 2010, but it will take a while for the changes to show up.
State lawmakers and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer delivered on a long-needed fix to fix Michigan’s auto insurance laws, which made auto insurance here more expensive than anywhere else in the country.
Michigan should make it easy for people who have obtained occupational licenses in other states to work legally here.
The state would be better off sticking to funding roads rather than subsidizing film festivals, orchestras and garden poetry readings.
Gov. Whitmer wants government to give students a free community college education. The idea will cost at least $292.5 million per year and accomplish little.
Increasing the gas tax by 45 cents per gallon could raise $2.5 billion, but it would also cost 22,500 jobs in the private sector. Spending that money on roads and cutting other areas of state government spending by the same amount could create 24,000 jobs.
Criminal justice, government transparency and occupational licensing are just three areas ripe for reform.
Too few young schoolchildren know how to read and write at grade level. Spending more money on preschool won’t fix that problem.
State funding of Michigan schools has already increased significantly after years of economic stagnation
The Janus decision is having an effect on membership
