In her Feb. 15 MLive guest column, Jennifer Goulet presents specious claims for the relationship between our state’s largesse for arts programs, economic realities and an uptick in sectors of Michigan’s economic vitality.
The director and CEO of Wixom’s ArtServe, Goulet writes that Michigan’s arts community recognized significant growth in employment and revenues during the bleakest years of the state’s decade-long retraction: “From 2010 to 2011, arts-related jobs increased 11 percent, while arts-related businesses grew 16 percent,” she writes, adding that jobs increased 15 percent between 2006 and 2011 and “an impressive 65-percent gain to 28,072 arts-related businesses.”
Teachers unions are hurriedly attempting to renegotiate contracts in an attempt to skirt Michigan’s new right-to-work law, Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek told The Detroit News.
The new law takes effect March 27, but contracts in place before then are exempt.\
When choosing between more money for roads — which has become a Lansing priority — or subsidies for out-of-state filmmakers, some Michigan Republicans pick the latter.
MIRS News reported on negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, and Gov. Rick Snyder on funding for the film incentive program. The governor, who would like to end the program, has a plan that lowers the program from $50 million this year to $25 million to eventually zero. Sen. Richardville wants to increase the subsidy to $100 million.
The Detroit News reports that though Gov. Rick Snyder is proposing an overall 2 percent increase in funding for schools, some school districts could see a slight funding decrease.
Under Gov. Snyder's plan, the minimum state foundation allowance per pupil would rise from $6,966 to $7,000. However, the state's "best practices" grant would decline from $52 to $16 per pupil. For some districts, the combination of changes would result in a $2-per-student funding decrease.
Gov. Rick Snyder has said we need to do something about the condition of our roads. But nowhere in the debate is any talk about what has gotten us into this deferred maintenance quagmire — a 30-year experiment with escalating dependence on road salt and the magnitude of damage it brings.
Dr. William T. Wilson, a senior policy adviser with the Center, was a guest on “The Frank Beckmann Show” on WJR AM760 this morning. Wilson was fired from his job as a vice president at Comerica Bank after testifying before a Michigan Senate committee in 1999 about the benefits of a right-to-work law.
The Genesee County Land Bank is considering offering properties rehabbed with federal taxpayer dollars to police officers, firefighters and soldiers at a discount. The land bank's favored buyers would pay 30 percent less.
The Genesee land bank isn't the first Michigan land bank to consider subsidizing housing for government workers. The Detroit Land Bank will pay the down payment for city employees, police officers or firefighters who purchase one of its properties. According to the city, 20 government employees have already closed on homes using this program. More than 200 others are in the process and looking to buy a subsidized home.
In an MLive article titled, “Michigan education funding: Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed 2 percent increased is ‘absolutely not enough,’ say critics,” politicians, administrators, union heads and special interest groups insist that the state needs to increase funding much more than the proposal.
In an interview with the Detroit Metro Times, United Auto Workers President Bob King suggests that the forced unionization of home-based caregivers is more important than Michigan's becoming a right-to-work state.
“[T]here was a whole series of legislation that [Snyder] said was not on his agenda that he signed,” King told the Metro Times. "There were [university] research assistants being denied collective bargaining rights. There were home health care workers, who were given some really strong assurances that collective bargaining rights would not be taken away from them.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 89, Vehicle trade-in “sales tax on the difference” only: Passed 34 to 2 in the Senate
To exempt from sales tax the value of a trade-in when buying a new motor vehicle, titled watercraft or recreational vehicle. The buyer would only pay sales tax on the difference between the agreed value of the trade-in and the purchase price of the new vehicle. The tax break would be phased in gradually through 2021, when its value would reach $226 million annually.
The average teacher salary in Michigan is over $60,000 a year, according to The Daily Caller. That is second highest in the nation when adjusted for cost of living.
Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek told the news site that state Superintendent Michael Flanagan’s suggestion that all teachers in Michigan be paid $100,000 annually would cost taxpayers about $4 billion.
Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek writes in the Port Huron Times-Herald that teachers and school districts should be cautious about unions that want to extend contracts in order to circumvent Michigan’s new right-to-work law.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is recommending that the state undertake a huge expansion of Medicaid, something originally mandated by Obamacare but made optional by the Supreme Court's ruling on the law last June.
Medicaid is a government welfare program that reimburses medical costs incurred by people below the poverty line, and is paid for by a combination of state and federal money.
In pursuit of more money for road improvements — something Mackinac Center analysts and others do not oppose — Lansing politicians are offering Michigan residents a Hobson’s non-choice between higher taxes and higher taxes. A real choice would involve raising taxes and cutting state spending by an equal amount while redirecting that money to roads. We have addressed the subject of road repair and funding before at great length, and recently in this essay.
The media can often have a philosophical bias towards government “doing something” to “solve” societal problems. One recent example is how those in the press perceive a popular issue like education funding.
Two years ago, in the midst of an inefficient tax system and large fiscal deficit, the education budget was trimmed 2.4 percent. At the time, the typical headline was: “Schools face deep cuts under Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget plan.”
At its Tuesday meeting, the State Board of Education will review a report it requested on charter public school performance. The board's report is less comprehensive and uses a different methodology than a recent Stanford University study, but finds similar results.
Teachers unions are circumventing Michigan’s new right-to-work law by trying to extend contracts for several years that would continue forcing members to pay dues or agency fees as a condition of employment, a Mackinac Center legal expert told WJRT-TV 12.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told MLive that privatizing delivery of first-class mail would force the U.S. Post Office to become more competitive and cost-effective. The Post Office announced it would eliminate Saturday delivery beginning Aug. 1.
The U.S. Post Office, which is billions of dollars in debt, has announced it will discontinue Saturday mail delivery beginning Aug. 1.
As this 2007 Mackinac Center commentary points out, allowing private vendors to compete with the Post Office would be more cost effective and efficient.
Union membership is on the increase and wages are higher in right-to-work states, the Washington Examiner reports based on recent research by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy for the Mackinac Center.
In The Detroit News, the presidents of the University Research Corridor schools argue that a dollar of state appropriations for their institutions returns $17 in economic benefits. But this analysis, regardless of accuracy, does not justify the appropriation.
Typing on computers that have replaced typewriters, which previously replaced ink-pen and paper, some reporters write about the concern that increased productivity is leading to irreversible job losses for workers.
"Some experts now believe that computers and robots will take over much of the work performed by humans, raising critical concerns about the future of jobs," wrote business and economics columnist Rick Haglund in MLive.
(Editor’s note: This is an edited version of a commentary was co-authored by Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, and Zach Tiggelaar, executive director of the North Dakota Policy Council.)
North Dakota State Rep. Eliot Glassheim has proposed a hike (HB 1387) in that state’s cigarette excise tax from 44 cents to $1.00 per pack, a 127 percent increase. While his intentions are good — he says he wants to help people quit smoking — it’s doubtful as many people as he believes will do so due to tax avoidance.
For more than 500,000 Michigan students, the school they attend is the only nearby option.
According to data posted by the Center for Educational Performance and Information, the majority of Michigan school districts have just one building that serves students of a given grade-level.
