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Senate Bill 1144: Restrict no fault auto insurance gamesmanship
Introduced by Sen. Roger Kahn (R), to prohibit an auto insurer from issuing an auto insurance policy for a term less than one month. This is intended to prevent individuals from purchasing a policy required under Michigan’s no-fault insurance law to register a vehicle, and then cancelling it after he or she gets the license plate or tab. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
The Detroit News reports that there are fewer opportunities for new teachers in Michigan’s public schools and the profession as a whole is getting older. Amazingly, even though the article cites a number of different education experts, no one mentions the most obvious reason for this phenomenon: union contracts.
Nearly all teachers union contracts dictate that when school districts need to downsize (very common in an era of declining enrollment and rising labor costs), the districts must use seniority as the sole factor in determining who gets laid off and who keeps their job. This works to automatically increase the average age of Michigan teachers.
Some union contracts go to great lengths to avoid using something other than seniority to determine layoffs. For instance, when there is a tie in seniority between two teachers eligible for layoffs, the Ann Arbor school district uses the last four digits of a teacher’s Social Security number to determine who goes and who stays. The lower number “wins.” Battle Creek uses the same method, but the teacher with the higher number wins.
Fortunately, these kinds of arbitrary layoff procedures may be coming to an end in Michigan. Statewide reforms were passed last year that prohibit school districts from making personnel decisions based solely on seniority. These reforms, however, would likely be overturned if the union-backed “Protect Our Jobs” constitutional amendment is approved in November.
Nevertheless, hopefully in the future, the teachers who remain in the profession won’t just be there because they have the most years on the job; they’ll be there because they’re the most successful at improving student learning.
A Mackinac Center investigation about a 13-year-old boy in Holland, Mich., being denied the ability to sell hot dogs from a vendor cart has attracted national media attention. This Capitol Confidential story and accompanying video was picked up by Huffington Post, Real Clear Politics, USA Today, Reason, Fox News, Hot Air, The Blaze, MLive and the Detroit Free Press and has received tens of thousands of views.
MLive reports that Shaton Berry, president of the Michigan Parent Teacher Association, is blaming Highland Park School District’s dismal student test scores on a lack of public resources.
In a release commenting on the American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the district for providing an inadequate education, Berry stated:
According to the Huffington Post, last year The Detroit News attempted to compare student academic achievement between Detroit-area public charter school high schools and their conventional Detroit Public Schools counterparts.
The News found that just six of 25 Detroit public charter schools reported higher math or science proficiency rates than DPS high schools.
Labor Policy Director Vincent Vernuccio was a guest on Fox Business Monday, discussing contract unrest at Caterpillar. The company wants to reform pensions and freeze automatic wage increases while offering merit-based raises. Union employees at the company make an average of $55,000 a year before overtime. Vernuccio said the union feels threatened by incentive bonuses the company gave workers because it makes union bosses unnecessary in order for employees to make money.
Assistant Editor Lindsey Dodge in a Detroit News Op-Ed today explains why feminists should embrace capitalism. A free-functioning market, Dodge says, is the greatest environment for female achievement.
Why is the SEIU involved in a ballot initiative that would seemingly have little to do with them?
That should be the question media members and taxpayers ask themselves as we get closer to November when voters may be asked to decide on whether to enshrine into our state constitution the “Michigan Quality Home Care Council.”
Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman writes in today’s Detroit News that Michigan’s elected officials should exercise “principled procrastination” in implementing Obamacare, which he says is a “divisive and astronomically costly law.”
A new report by the left-leaning Center for American Progress estimates that Michigan’s public schools spend about $470 million annually to provide automatic higher pay for teachers who obtain master’s degrees. Nationally, taxpayers supply $15 billion a year for this perk.
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Senate Bill 1040, Senate vote on House pension reform proposal: Failed 16 to 22 in the Senate
To not concur with a House-passed version of the school pension reform bill, which sends the bill to a House-Senate conference committee to work out the differences. The main dispute is over the Senate-passed provision to “close” the school pension system to new hires, and instead give them a 401(k) account (as has been done for new state employees hired since 1997). The House instead proposes keeping a somewhat less generous "defined benefit" pension system for new employees.
Michigan school districts and newspapers are busy reading the Mackinac Center's 'Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card," released only yesterday.
MLive reported on the Kalamazoo area's several high-performing districts with lower-income students, and reported simultaneously the surprising result that many Michigan urban high schools outperform their suburban neighbors, according to the study.
Though its students score abysmally on state reading and math tests, and though classroom management appears to be severely lacking, the Highland Park City school district still may be the best available alternative for some Detroit-area students.
State data showing what districts students are choosing to leave and where they are going reveals that many students from Detroit are choosing Highland Park.
Battle Creek Public Schools, in the last month, has approved cuts to several extracurricular activities in an effort to salvage the district’s financial situation. Subject to the cut were lower-participation sports including tennis, golf and bowling, which, according to the Battle Creek Enquirer, amount to $36,000. Other programs cut included camp programs for first, third and fourth-graders, which Battle Creek decided last week to suspend in order to save another $180,000. Parents may very well be concerned about the loss of these programs. Fortunately, there are more material steps Battle Creek can take which would save these programs, such as implementing a pay-to-play mechanism for extracurricular activities or outsourcing essential services to the market.
Last week Virginia Governor and Republican Governors Association Chairman Bob McDonnell sent a remarkable letter to President Obama revealing a stunning absence of answers to critical questions surrounding the implementation of a federal health care law that in just 18 months will impact every family and business in the country.
Reversing the position it took in May, the Freeland School Board has voted to allow some students from other districts to attend its schools through the state schools-of-choice program. Just not very many.
Freeland's decision appears to be an attempt to game state policy in order to pad its budget. The district is allowing an extraordinarily limited number of students from outside districts to attend its schools in order to access additional state funding. This has implications for how the state aims to use additional per-pupil funding to encourage districts to make policy changes.
Policymakers are still concerned that closing the Michigan school pension system to new members will cost the state in one of two ways: Either it will require additional cash to meet a new front-loaded payment schedule for “catching up” on the system’s unfunded liabilities (the so-called “transition costs”); or, if this is not done, it will damage the state’s credit rating.
This morning, Gov. Snyder claimed at the Michigan Agriculture Exposition at Michigan State University that agriculture is one of Michigan's "Big 3" industries, along with the automotive industry and tourism. The Detroit Free Press cited Mackinac Center research that these analyses are flawed because they include cereal factories, wholesalers, retailers such as grocery stores, and restaurants in measuring the economic impact.
According to MLive reporter Dave Murray, “Key state Senate Republicans say they’re close to a compromise on teacher pension reforms that would move educators into a 401(k)-style plan while saving school districts about $300 million.”
The House and Senate are negotiating a compromise bill to overhaul the current school employee pension system, which is over $22 billion underfunded. The most significant part of the discussion is whether or not to shift new employees into 401(k) accounts or leave them in the current defined-benefit plan, the likes of which are bankrupting cities and states across the country.
Fox News reported on the large pay increases the heads of the nation’s two largest teachers unions received last year after Michigan Capitol Confidential broke the story last week.
Michael Van Beek, director of education policy, told Fox News that the dollar amounts the union bosses receive isn’t as problematic as the process.
Less than nine weeks after Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Joyce Parker as emergency manager for the Highland Park School District, Parker finds herself a defendant in a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU lawsuit notes that a paucity of Highland Park students have met the state’s proficiency benchmark in reading, and alleges that the district failed to provide adequate assistance to students who were not reading at grade level. Just 35 percent of fourth-grade students and 25 percent of seventh-graders scored "proficient" on state standardized tests.
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.
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Senate Bill 1110 and House Bill 5579: Require gross negligence for suits against emergency room physicians
Introduced by Sen. Roger Kahn (R) and Rep. Kenneth Horn (R), respectively, to restrict medical malpractice lawsuits against emergency room physicians to cases of gross negligence. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
MLive today published a story about a Mackinac Center blog post by Jarrett Skorup, content manager for Michigan Capitol Confidential, explaining why municipalities and school districts with appointed emergency managers are better off than facing bankruptcy proceedings.
A remarkable letter to President Obama from Virginia Governor and Republican Governors Association Chairman Bob McDonnell reveals the extent to which Obamacare’s massive intrusion into 18 percent of the U.S. economy is being executed, on the fly, by bureaucrats in so far over their heads they can’t even see the surface anymore.
New regulations that require pharmaceutical companies to report expected shortages for certain kinds of drugs six months before the shortages occur will not help solve the problem, according to a Mackinac Center expert. John Graham, director of health studies at the Pacific Research Institute and an adjunct scholar with the Center, explains the problem in a Detroit Free Press commentary today. He takes a closer look and offers solutions in this recent study.
