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.
Several bills related to brewers, restaurants and bars were recently passed by the Legislature. While all are pushing the rules in the right direction, there is no reason the state should not allow for more freedom on these legal products.
The most significant proposed laws are as follows (all have passed the Legislature nearly unanimously and are headed to the governor):
Michigan Capitol Confidential reports today that a list including the names of employees who have exercised their worker freedom rights at Hurley Medical Center in Flint and opted out of the union has been reposted by the union on a bulletin board in a public area near the hospital’s cafeteria. The list, seen by those whose names are on it as a union intimidation tactic, was first posted three weeks ago. Hospital administration appears to be ignoring the contract it signed with the union in question and refuses to intervene in the bullying.
Michigan Capitol Confidential reports that the Service Employees International Union, which took $34 million in forced dues from home-based caregivers as part of its dues skim, has received the second biggest campaign finance violation fine in state history.
A Coopersville kindergarten teacher who resigned from the Michigan Education Association under the state's worker freedom law says she is glad her ordeal is over, but is concerned for her colleagues, according to a story in The Grand Rapids Press.
"I am very thankful that the MEA has finally recognized my right to opt out, but my settlement doesn't bring justice to the thousands of other teachers in my position in West Michigan and across the state of Michigan," Miriam Chanski, who along with Petoskey teacher Ray Arthur is now free from the MEA, told The Press.
Manny Lopez, managing editor of Michigan Capitol Confidential, was a guest on “Money With Melissa Francis” on Fox Business this afternoon, explaining why corporate welfare for film makers is unfair to the taxpayers from whom the money is taken.
You can read more about Michigan’s film subsidies here.
As auto manufacturing has shifted to the South, the UAW has made a push to begin unionizing workers in right-to-work states.
The words and actions of union officials are interesting compared to states where workers are still forced to pay money to the union.
The minimum wage has been in the news a lot lately due to proposals at the state and federal levels to increase it and because of a February Congressional Budget Office report on the subject.
Among all the policy subjects up for debate, there is perhaps no easier conclusion to draw than that minimum wage mandates are jobs killers.
A Boston Herald editorial on a $1 per pack tax hike on cigarettes in Massachusetts cites Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, who warned that an increase would lead to more tobacco smuggling and less state revenue.
The editorial references an interview LaFaive did with WBUR last year, indicating that the tax hike would cause the cigarette smuggling rate in Massachusetts to more than double from 18 percent to 43 percent. The state is now reporting that it is losing up to $246 million a year in cigarette taxes and $49 million a year in sales tax due to cigarette smuggling.
“We’re looking at Ohio. We’re looking at Missouri. We’re looking at Kentucky. The fire of worker freedom is shining brightly, and it is spreading.”
Those were among the comments of Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio at a panel discussion on right-to-work Saturday held at CPAC near Washington, D.C., according to Huffington Post.
