The Detroit Free Press and the Bloomfield Hills Observer & Eccentric are both reporting that Senior Economist David L. Littmann will give a presentation at 7:30 p.m. April 26 at the Bloomfield Township Hall on the Bloomfield Hills School District’s proposed $58.6 million bond. Taxpayers will vote on the issue May 8. Littmann is a former member of the BHSD board of education.
The Missouri state House voted Thursday to "nullify" Obamacare, making it illegal for federal or state officials to even attempt to enforce the law.
This is by far the most rigorous expression of resistance by any state legislative body to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The vote moves the bill to the Missouri Senate, where its prospects are not known at this time.
Michigan Capitol Confidential today reports on a retired teacher who is highlighted in a union publication saying he wouldn’t have gone into teaching had he known his payments for retiree health care would increase about $116.
Huron Valley retiree Jim Pierson told the MEA he “sacrificed lower pay for greater security” when he went into teaching. Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek pointed out that a teacher in Huron Valley at the top of the pay scale with a master’s degree earns $70,260 after 30 years of service and would get a pension of $31,500 a year with 3 percent annual increases. Van Beek also estimated Pierson's retiree health care premiums would increase about $116 a month under proposed legislation.
In both the House and Senate, this week was dominated by appropriations committee deliberation on the state budget for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1. There were only a few final-passage floor votes on noteworthy bills, or ones of general interest.
Michigan’s government unions are attempting to use the pension fund as another way to nerf public charter schools and school contractors.
The unions would like charters and contractors to pay for the underfunding of pensions earned by school employees (their members), saying that these capture the “stranded costs” of the system. But corralling additional members into the pension system will create more long-term pension problems without fixing any of the system’s short-term challenges.
A Michigan Capitol Confidential story about a teacher upset over the fact she might not be able to retire at age 47 with full benefits drew several mentions in national media outlets, including Instapundit, Townhall, The Washington Times, Reason, and Hot Air.
Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek's Op-Ed in the Port Huron Times-Herald addresses steps the Legislature can take to correct the $21 billion in long-term debt that Michigan's public school districts owe. The piece is taken from this Viewpoint commentary, which is taken from testimony Van Beek submitted to the state Senate Appropriations Committee about the School Bond Loan Program.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center's Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, is cited in this Detroit News Op-Ed about the need to streamline the state's liquor laws. Chief among the reforms LaFaive would like to see is a dismantling of the wholesale monopolies distributors of beer and wine enjoy.
Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, is cited in today’s Investor’s Business Daily about the effects of right-to-work laws on states.
Read more about right-to-work protections for employees here.
In a recent newspaper article, the superintendent of the Fowlerville school district said: “There are no employees are [sic] getting raises. Every position in the district, from mine on down, has taken concessions.”
To those not familiar with the public school bureaucracy’s jargon, this may sound like no employees in that district will get an increase in their salary. That’s not the case. The tip-off comes in the next line: “We do have contractual obligations that have step increments that occur at various times.”
James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy, writes in a Detroit Free Press Op-Ed Sunday about how to fix the school employees' pension system. An editorial in Friday's Detroit News also cited a recent study by Hohman showing legislators how to fix the underfunded MPSERS while potentially saving taxpayers billions of dollars. The editorial also agreed with an earlier analysis by Hohman that charter public schools employees should not be targeted as a way to shore up the unfunded liabilities of the pension system.
(Editor's note: This article was previously published on Apr. 14, 2012 in the Washington Examiner "Opinion" section.)
As gasoline prices edge upward, consumers and politicians are looking for someone to blame. Some say it's Iran's fault, while others are blaming the Obama administration. The president, who has a habit of demonizing the oil companies, says there's no silver bullet to solve the problem.
The House and Senate are in the midst of a two-week break, so rather than votes, this report instead contains several newly introduced bills of interest.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 943: Authorize extra punishment for threats to politicians and judges
Introduced by Sen. Darwin Booher (R), to authorize additional prison time for threats made to state elected officials and judges, over and above the penalties authorized for making a threat to non-politicians or judges. Specifically, the bill would authorize an enhanced sentence of up to an additional year in prison for threats made in relation to an elected official’s official duties. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
With Detroit on the threshold of literally running out of cash to pay its bills, a consent agreement has been signed shifting the city’s governance to a small team led by Mayor Dave Bing. The city has traveled a good way further down the road to ruin since the Mackinac Center published an article in 2007 called “Flashy Projects Have Not Helped Detroit.”
As spring blooms, the president addresses the nation on energy. He tells us, “Without our planning for the future, it will get worse…The oil and natural gas that we rely on for 75 percent of our energy is simply running out.”
Unless profound changes are made in the next decade, the president warns, the world will demand more oil than it can produce. He calls for “strict conservation” and switching to “permanent renewable energy sources like solar power.” Because they promise future energy independence, his administration is spending billions of taxpayer dollars on wind, solar and biodiesel, plus offering massive “clean energy” subsidies.
If you think smaller class sizes are important to student learning, you should support expanding the number of charter public schools.
That’s the conclusion suggested by the most recent data available from the Michigan Department of Education, and it directly contradicts claims made by defenders of the conventional public school status quo, many of whom would rather limit or eliminate their charter school competition.
(Editor's note: This blog entry was updated to include a link to the Court of Appeals Opinion brief, which specifies MSU ordinance 15.05 is the alleged misdemeanor.)
People may laugh when they read that a parking ticket violation went before the Michigan Supreme Court last week. But strangely enough, what seems like a petty conflict merits further scrutiny.
Thanks to a new law increasing the powers of emergency managers appointed to reform the finances of fiscally failed cities and school districts, the city of Pontiac is now in the midst of a fiscal policy revolution. With the exception of Detroit, there may be few Michigan cities in greater need of a financial makeover.
Unions may tout the value of defined-benefit pensions, but a new survey of multi-employer pension programs shows that union pension plans in particular are more and more dangerously underfunded.
The consequence of this underfunding is pension failures, and workers who were told their retirements would be provided for being forced to live on much less than they had expected. The defined-contribution retirement savings programs programs that are common outside of government and in non-union workplaces are not without their challenges, but they leave workers with much more control over their retirements, and that may prove to be a much better deal over the long haul.
The latest update of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s widely cited index of state competitiveness released at 2 p.m. today, the “Rich States, Poor States” report, shows that Michigan rose from 25th to 17th place in the report’s forward-looking “economic outlook” index. As recently as 2009 Michigan was in 34th place. This year, Utah tops the charts, and (not surprisingly) New York comes in dead last.
A scheme that has diverted nearly $30 million from the neediest Michigan residents to the SEIU over the last six years should come to an end now that Gov. Rick Snyder has signed legislation clarifying that home health care aides are not public employees, according to the Marquette Examiner.
In a recent Mlive.com article, Michael Rice, the superintendent of Kalamazoo Public Schools, places the blame for skyrocketing school employee pension costs on policies enacted by current and past state Legislatures. In particular, Rice disapproves of policies that encourage privatizing noninstructional services, expanding charter public schools and authorizing early retirement incentives for school employees. He’s right to target the Legislature, but does so for the wrong reasons.
Senate Bill 1040, which would increase teacher contributions to their retirement system, won’t help reduce an unfunded liability in the fund of more than $17 billion, a Mackinac Center analyst told The Detroit News.
James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy, recently authored a study explaining to legislators in very clear terms what actions they could take to close the fund and remove the liability burden from taxpayers.
In an earlier post I noted how union officials were unwilling to accept any limitations that the Legislature might want to put on them, and in particular how the Michigan Education Association was willing to resort to litigation to thwart a state law that said it would have to collect union dues and agency fees on their own. (Again, teachers can still be placed in a position where they must pay dues or fees to keep their jobs, but the school district will not collect dues for them.)
A Michigan Capitol Confidential story about Pfizer receiving corporate welfare from the city of Ann Arbor is the basis for a story today at AnnArbor.com.
Pfizer received an $84 million tax abatement in 2001 after implying the company would leave Ann Arbor, but six years later the company left anyway, taking with it 3,000 jobs.
