In a recent article in the Detroit Free Press, an education policy organization called Education Trust-Midwest expressed concern that taxpayers were supporting too many “failing [charter] school operators.”
A focus on school quality for all schools is certainly needed, but Ed Trust’s analysis of charter public schools is short-sighted, unhelpful and risks creating negative unintended consequences.
Three of Livingston County's five high schools scored poorly on the Mackinac Center's high school report card: Howell, Fowlerville and Pinckney high schools received D's.
Howell High School's ranking was 27.7 percent — meaning that more than 70 percent of Michigan's other high schools did better. Fowlerville ranked in the bottom 22.3 percent, while Pinckney ranked the lowest in the county, at 21.2 percent.
Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek told host Tony Conley on WILS AM1320 in Lansing today that the decision by Roscommon teachers to decertify from the Michigan Education Association leaves the state’s largest teachers union with “egg on their face.”
Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio was on Fox Business Monday discussing the Chicago teachers strike and the “Protect Our Jobs” amendment, a ballot proposal here in Michigan that would give union contracts the ability to supersede state law and decisions by locally elected officials in cities and school districts.
On Oct. 3, every student who shows up for class at Detroit Public Schools will get a free pair of Nikes.
The free shoes gimmick isn't really about educating Detroit students. Oct. 3 is the state's "count day," and the number of students who show up that day will determine 90 percent of all districts' state funding.
This recent blog post by Jarrett Skorup about the SEIU dues skim and how the union is using the money not for collective bargaining but for political purposes garnered a story and editorial in The Washington Examiner. Read more about the issue here.
Former Gov. Jennifer Granholm never met a stage she didn’t like. But she might have finally landed on one that got the best of her.
In a wild and rambling speech Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention, Granholm winked and swayed and waved her way through a series of statements that excited an audience of loyalists but was short on facts.
If a corporation in Michigan teamed up behind the scenes with government officials to extract money from the checks of taxpayers and promised to spend that money electing Mitt Romney and other Republicans, what would be the reaction?
MLive reporter David Eggert wrote that "Michigan’s union-backed ballot measures are a hot topic at the Democratic National Convention." How the union heads frame the issue of the home health care ballot is significant.
The Michigan Supreme Court has approved placing an initiative known as the “Protect Our Jobs Amendment” on the Nov. 6 ballot, where it will be labeled "Proposal 2." If adopted, the measure would impact laws overseeing government union contracts, which would in effect become like mini constitutional conventions, trumping statutes passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor.
In a unanimous ruling, the Michigan Supreme Court has determined that the union-backed "Protect Our Jobs" amendment should appear on the Nov. 6 ballot. Now it will be up to voters to determine whether union leaders will have the chance to bargain away state laws.
Voters have a very difficult decision to make now that the Michigan Supreme Court has approved the so-called “Protect Our Jobs” Amendment for the Nov. 6 ballot.
“Right now, it’s with the voters,” Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio told Reuters and CNBC. “They can vote for it and give Michigan to the special interests … or against and leave the power where it should be, with the state’s elected representatives.”
The Wall Street Journal says Michigan is the new battlefield in organized labor’s national campaign to preserve political power.
In a Labor Day editorial, The Journal discusses the so-called “Protect Our Jobs” amendment that would enshrine collective bargaining in the Michigan Constitution. The editorial reflects the work of Mackinac Center analysts, noting the effect of the proposal: “The amendment would reduce the ability of Michigan lawmakers to change labor laws and end-run efforts to give workers a choice about whether to join a union.”
Michael D. LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Center, explains in this Lansing State Journal Op-Ed why Michigan should consider a right-to-work law.
Recently, many Ann Arbor parents received a letter informing them that there was a relatively large gap between high-performing and low-performing students in their child's school. They could, the letter said, choose to transfer their child to another school with a smaller achievement gap.
F. Vincent Vernuccio, labor policy director, was a guest today on “The Paul Miller Show” on WPHM AM1380 in Port Huron, discussing the “Protect Our Jobs” ballot proposal. For more information on this and other ballot proposals, please see www.miballot2012.org.
While the story of 13-year-old Nathan Duszynski and his struggles to open a hot dog cart in downtown Holland captured national and international attention, the issue of restrictive zoning ordinances that can harm people on the bottoms rungs of the economic ladder and put up barriers to prosperity is a much larger issue in cities across the country.
The director of elections for the state of Michigan has released the wording for most of the proposals expected to be on the ballot in November. The proposed constitutional amendment relating to home-based caregivers shows how groups can push innocuous-sounding language to do something extremely damaging.
A proposed ballot initiative is a radical constitutional amendment that would make union bosses the most powerful people in the state, according to an Op-Ed by Labor Policy Director Vince Vernuccio in the Downriver Sunday Times.
The “Protect Our Jobs” Amendment would make union bosses a sort of super-legislature, allowing them to overrule state and local laws and ordinances past, present and future.
Car insurance rates in Michigan are the most expensive in the country because drivers here are required to buy unlimited personal injury protection, a Mackinac Center scholar explained in the Detroit Free Press Sunday.
Dr. Gary Wolfram, an economics professor at Hillsdale College and an adjunct scholar with the Center, urged the Legislature to consider the data, saying that there are “economic distortions in the insurance market that result in the loss of efficiencies.”
The House and Senate are in the midst of a summer break, so rather than votes, this report instead contains several newly introduced bills of interest.
Note: There will be no roll call report in the next two weeks. The next report will be Sept. 14.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
As reported earlier this week, 13-year-old entrepreneur Nathan Duszynski is now free to sell hot dogs in downtown.
Though the city shut down his business in July just minutes after it opened, the Holland City Council voted Aug. 15 to extend him a special permit to operate through the end of October. In the video below, Nathan and Ken Vos, the sporting goods store owner who originally helped Nathan start his business, reflect on Nathan’s new opportunity.
Just 10 weeks before an election that could place Obamacare on a very different trajectory, The Detroit News reports that Gov. Rick Snyder has chosen to bypass the Legislature and enter a “joint partnership” with the federal government to create the “exchange” through which the law’s mandates and subsidies will be administered. A spokesperson for the Snyder administration told The News that the governor is concerned with meeting timelines mandated by the law.
The wealthy are always taking hits from those whom they patronize — often from arts journalists who think the wealthy are philistine, stingy or some combination of the two. Enter Matthew Power, a Brooklyn-based scribe, who in the September issue of GQ authors a sneering, condescending and downright elitist article on Grand Rapids in general and its ArtPrize specifically.
After the Kent County Land Bank Authority came under fire for buying more than 40 vacant, tax foreclosed properties to block developers and individuals from purchasing them, Kent County has set up a subcommittee to study the issue.
The committee will consist of four county commissioners, and will look at how other land banks choose to buy property. It remains to be seen whether they will give a critical look at the practice of government using taxpayer dollars to buy property. The committee may alternatively be nothing more than an attempt to placate Kent County residents upset with the land bank's actions.
It took a national spotlight, but Thursday morning on the corner of River and 11th in Holland, 13-year-old Nathan Duszynski is scheduled to open his hot dog cart for business.
Nathan made national headlines last month after the city of Holland shut down his downtown hot dog operation, which he had hoped would help support him and his family.
