Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr is considering several outsourcing options that Mackinac Center analysts suggested the city should pursue as long as 14 years ago, according to The Detroit News.
Among options being considered for privatization are Detroit City Airport, the water and sewer department and garbage collection.
Gov. Rick Snyder has proposed a partial bailout of the city of Detroit with a $350 million gift. The state has been providing special favors to Detroit for years and it hasn't prevented the Motor City from slipping into bankruptcy.
Detroit gets special rules from state policies that don't apply to any other city in Michigan. Many of these rules expand the city's ability to collect revenue. For instance, Detroit is the only city in the state that assesses a tax on residents' utility bills.
(Editor’s note: The following is an edited version of commentary that was originally posted at burtfolsom.com the website of Burton Folsom Jr., a history professor at Hillsdale College and a member of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy's Board of Scholars. It was written by Anita Folsom.)
As state politicians are primed to deliver $82 million more this year to state higher education institutions, it is appropriate to ask what taxpayers will get for this spending.
Unfortunately, there will not likely be much to show for it.
The only direct reward for state taxpayers is a promise that tuition will not increase on Michigan residents as much as it might otherwise. That's not to say that tuition will decrease because of the extra 5.7 percent in state spending. Institutions will just be limited to increases at double the rate of inflation if they want to be eligible for extra "performance funding."
Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio is cited in The Detroit News today regarding President Obama’s recent visit to Michigan in his quest for a higher mandated minimum wage.
Vernuccio wrote in Michigan Capitol Confidential Wednesday that some 500 economists have signed an open letter opposing President Obama’s call for raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, and the Congressional Budget Office predicts such a move would result in the loss of 500,000 jobs.
Mackinac Center contributing author Michael Farren told WWMT-TV3 in Kalamazoo that the state should stop using tax dollars to subsidize Amtrak passengers. Farren pointed out that the subsidy comes from the gas tax, which means fewer dollars are available for road maintenance.
The Mackinac Center is pleased to announce that Jason E. Taylor has accepted an invitation to join its Board of Scholars. Taylor is the Jerry and Felicia Campbell Chair Professor of Economics at Central Michigan University, and a well-established scholar of 20th century economic history in the United States.
Mark J. Perry, a member of the Center’s Board of Scholars and a professor of economics at University of Michigan-Flint, writes in today’s Wall Street Journal about the alleged gap in pay equity between men and women.
(Editor's note: Funeral services for Margaret Ann "Ranny" Riecker will be held at 11 a.m. on April 14 at Memorial Presbyterian Church in Midland, Mich. A full obituary can be found here.)
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy mourns the loss of one of its founding directors, Margaret Ann “Ranny” Riecker, who passed away Monday at the age of 80 in Midland, Mich.
By Jack McHugh
The House and Senate are on a two-week spring break. Therefore, this report contains several recently introduced bills of interest.
Senate Bill 682: Impose additional charter school restrictions, mandates and taxes
Introduced by Sen. Hoon-Yung Hopgood, D-Taylor, to impose property taxes on charter schools; prohibit for-profit firms from managing charter schools; prohibit charter school authorizing bodies from authorizing any new schools unless students in the ones they have already chartered outperform conventional schools in the same school district by at least 20 percent; and more. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
Recent press accounts describe the potential for steeper pension cuts for Detroit retirees if they reject a bankruptcy proposal made in February, and instead accept a new plan that, among other things, would insulate works in the city's art museum from potentially being sold off to satisfy both pensioners and creditors. The amended plan would also require a partial state bailout of the city.
By Jack McHugh
Senate Bill 862, Allow alcohol at Michigan Stadium international soccer game: Passed 37 to 0 in the Senate
To allow the sale of alcohol at the University of Michigan football stadium in Ann Arbor during a potential soccer game in August 2014 between the Manchester United and Real Madrid international soccer teams.
The Michigan Education Association has unveiled a new website that uses misleading information to try to make the case for more education funding.
Education spending is becoming an increasingly central issue to this year's gubernatorial campaign, and as a result, misinformation is rampant.
MEA President Steve Cook in The Detroit News Wednesday repeated the myth that school funding is down $1 billion since 2011. He used the Wayne-Westland schools in suburban Detroit as an example, claiming the district’s funding is down about $40 million since 2011.
It may be water over the dam, but one report on the potential impact to employers if Michigan did not adopt the Obamacare Medicaid expansion has been exposed as being essentially bunk due to flagrant misuse or misrepresentation of the data it cited.
This is worth noting because the claims from Jackson Hewitt were widely cited by Republican lawmakers here who supported the expansion, and probably tilted others into that camp. Its conclusion was that "employers may pay substantially higher federal tax penalties under the ACA (Affordable Care Act) in states that do not expand Medicaid." Jackson Hewitt estimated Michigan employers would pay between $42 million and $63 million in penalties without the expansion.
Dr. Christopher Douglas, an associate professor of economics at the University of Michigan-Flint and a member of the Center’s Board of Scholars, writes at MLive today that the proposed new arena for the Detroit Red Wings should not receive any corporate welfare.
The 2013 state personal income data was released recently and it has some good news for Michigan.
The state had the 9th best performance among the states from 2012 to 2013. While it's unclear how much of a role the passage of the right-to-work law had in the performance, it is worth a look at the trends between states with a right-to-work law and those without one.
I was 21-years-old before I first heard the name Norman Borlaug. It’s a shame it took until my third year of college to learn about one of the greatest humans who ever lived.
Borlaug, who died in 2009, was an Iowa-born scientist who spent his life teaching new farming techniques in third world countries. His movement was eventually called the "Green Revolution."
In praising Gov. Rick Snyder's proposed $80 million increase in aid to public universities, University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman said: "States that do not invest in higher education will not win in the 21st century" and spending more "is investing in job growth."
The Ferndale school district's collective bargaining agreement made headlines recently because it gives preference to applicants of "the non-Christian faith."
Under media scrutiny, Ferndale officials said they "somehow missed" the discriminatory language. Fortunately, they have now removed it.
Research on the relationship between cigarette smuggling and tobacco excise taxes by Mackinac Center scholars was cited recently by Time, CBS News and The Washington Post.
The research was also the focus of this New York Post editorial and was featured on Northwest Public Radio and in Bloomberg and the Arizona Republic.
A clause in the teachers’ contract at Ferndale Public Schools discriminating against Christian employees that gained national and international media attention has been scrapped. Michigan Capitol Confidential broke the story, and media are now reporting the clause has been removed.
(Editor’s note: This commentary by Ray Arthur, a 35-year teaching veteran from Petoskey, originally appeared in The Detroit News on March 19, 2014.)
As I studied Michigan’s right-to-work law in March of 2013 and looked ahead to my retirement this coming June, I began to weigh the pros and cons of my 34-year membership in the Michigan Education Association.
(Editor’s note: The following statement was submitted by Executive Vice President Michael J. Reitz to the Michigan House Committee on Criminal Justice as it begins consideration of House Bills 5230 and 5233.)
The Mackinac Center is well known in Michigan for recommending tax, fiscal, labor and education-related policies that advance the principles of self-government and a free-enterprise economy. The Center is less well known for its scholars’ views on civil and criminal asset forfeiture laws. Among other places these views were articulated in a 1998 study published by the Mackinac Center, “Reforming Property Forfeiture Laws to Protect Citizens’ Rights,” authored by Donald J. Kochan. The study offered a list of specific recommendations, most of which are still relevant. The following excerpt from that report articulates the principles that underlie the Center’s views on this issue:
On public television’s weekly Off-the-Record program last week, state Rep. Mike Shirkey, R-Clark Lake, discussed Michigan’s new right-to-work law as being successful based on business expansion inquiries made to the Michigan Economic Development Corp., the state agency that awards special tax breaks and subsidies for corporations and developers. Yet both history and employment data shows that kind of information says little about the economy.
