It has been suggested that school districts should not collect dues or agency fees for teacher unions. The reasoning behind this is similar to that behind the PAC bills that passed the House last week; teachers unions themselves are at bottom political institutions, and government agencies should not spend taxpayer dollars to assist political organizations in collecting their money.
According to a USA TODAY analysis, electricity rates across the country have skyrocketed during the last five years. The average household paid $1,419 for electricity in 2010 — the fifth yearly increase in a row. Electricity costs now consume a greater portion of Americans’ after- tax income, the most since 1996.
Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman in a Detroit Free Press Op-Ed today addresses the issue of recall elections for legislators.
Lehman points out that a measure recently introduced in the state House aims to change the Michigan Constitution and would severely limit voters' ability to recall lawmakers.
MichiganVotes.org sends a weekly report to newspapers and TV stations around the state showing how state legislators in their service area voted on the most important or interesting bills of the past week.
House Bill 4701, Transition state employees to defined contribution retirement health benefit: Passed 23 to 13 in the Senate
To eliminate the current “defined benefit” post-retirement health insurance system for new state employees, and instead offer a “defined contribution” Health Reimbursement Account (HRA), with the state matching an employee’s deposits up to 2 percent of salary, plus an annual lump sum contribution. Employees hired since 1997 could choose to switch to this system and get a lump-sum contribution of the value of benefits they had already earned. Also, to require state employees hired before 1997 to contribute 4 percent toward their traditional “defined benefit” pensions (replacing a 3 percent contribution required under a 2010 law), or else have their benefit levels “frozen” at the current level, with the state instead making contributions going forward into an employee’s 401(k) account. The Senate stripped out a House-passed provision excluding overtime pay from the basis on which the older employees' conventional pension benefits are calculated (potentially enabling some degree of "pension spiking").
The Michigan Legislature is poised to consider a two-bill package that would prohibit unions from using local government payroll systems to collect PAC funds. This is a step that is long overdue. House Bills 5085 and 5086 passed in the state House Thursday.
I have recently had the opportunity to attend various briefings given by key Michigan legislators and the governor. Although the topics being discussed where different, the mindset of the legislators was alarmingly similar.
The predominant mindset of the political class, regardless of party affiliation, is that they are smart enough to plan the future for Michigan residents on critical issues ranging from energy to health care. This attitude seems to get progressively worse the longer elected officials are in office. Perhaps this is a major reason most voters continue to support term limits despite the continual ranting from politicians that such limits destroy their ability to make government work.
As the Legislature debates lifting the arbitrary cap on the number of charter public schools that state universities can authorize, those who oppose expanding parental choice are arguing that charters do not perform well on average. Their arguments often focus on a small slice of cherry-picked research that runs counter to the much larger body of evidence showing good results from charters.
Michigan’s ability to provide Medicaid coverage is $28 million short over the last five years as that much money has been funneled to the SEIU in the form of “dues” taken from home health care aides who were forced into the union, according to The Washington Times.
One criticism lobbed against charter public schools is that they don’t serve enough special education students. While it’s true that historically charters have had relatively fewer students with disabilities compared to conventional public schools, this has begun to change and special education enrollments in charters are up dramatically.
Last week, former SEIU President Andy Stern revealed his preference for dictatorial governance in an article he wrote for The Wall Street Journal. Stern was once considered an innovative leader in the union firmament, which likes to portray itself as the model of democracy in action. For such an influential union advocate to embrace the Chinese methods of economic central planning and government is extremely revealing, and troubling to those who wish to maintain a free society in the United States.
America’s health care system is a dysfunctional mess for a fundamental reason: There is no real market in health care. It was wrecked by a combination of incentive-skewing federal tax policies, innovation-killing “fee for service” payment systems in the two federal programs that pay for practically half of all health care consumed (Medicare and Medicaid), restrictive state policies that create limited cartels of health care professionals and facilities (reducing supply and so increasing price), and more.
"As you know, every decision that impacts public school employees is made by an elected or appointed official. Because of this, it is very important that the members in your local association get involved and stay involved in the political process."
From the Michigan Education Association union pamphlet, “PAC Attack: Everything you need to know to create a PAC-tive local association!” This is part of a union “Building Full Capacity Locals” campaign.
Fiscal Policy Director Mike LaFaive is cited in a CBS News story about the city of Detroit’s financial struggles. The report also cites a Detroit-specific issue of Michigan Privatization Report that contained several recommendations that could have helped the city.
A Detroit News editorial agrees with the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation that graduate student research assistants at the University of Michigan should not be forced into a union and that the Michigan Employment Relations Commission should stick to its 1981 decision that the graduate students are not employees and therefore ineligible to be unionized.
MichiganVotes.org sends a weekly report to newspapers and TV stations around the state showing how state legislators in their service area voted on the most important or interesting bills of the past week.
House Bill 4163, Require school bullying policies: Passed 35 to 2 in the Senate
To require schools to adopt a policy prohibiting harassment, intimidation, or bullying, but not one enumerating specific characteristics, including gender, race and sexual orientation. The bill does not include an exemption previously added by the Senate to its own bullying bill, Senate Bill 137, for "a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction." That bill will be allowed to die in the House.
In charter schools policy debates like the ones this week in the state House Education Committee, a fundamental distinction between charter public schools and district-run schools often gets lost: Every child in every charter school is there only because parents made a conscientious decision to send him or her there.
Gov. Rick Snyder has issued his first veto, rejecting a bill that would have placed limits on the ability of state employees to write rules more stringent than federal requirements without the approval of the Legislature.
His rejection of the legislation puts him at odds with legislators of his own party who have been working diligently to lessen the burdensome red tape regularly churned out by state regulators. In vetoing House Bill 4326, the governor has sided with bureaucrats over businesses and solidified Michigan’s anti-business reputation with companies that have operations in states where similar legislation is already state law.
Russ Harding, senior environmental policy analyst, is cited at AnnArbor.com today in a story about electric car battery maker A123 announcing layoffs of more than 100 workers. The company has received hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies and tax credits.
Two important developments at the NLRB, one probably good, one probably bad. Let’s get the bad news over with: yesterday the labor board voted to proceed with its regulations to speed up union certification elections. These are votes held at workplaces to determine if a union will represent workers. Unions would prefer to have these elections as quickly as possible, to limit the time that employers have to make the case against unionizing. Currently there is about one month between a request for an election and an actual vote. The NLRB’s new rules could potentially cut that in half. We had originally reported that a final vote on the rules would have taken place yesterday. That vote did not take place, but NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce did indicate they would approve the new rules later on. The board's lone dissenter, Brian Hayes, could conceivably derail the "ambush election" rules by resigning, which would deny the board a quorum, but apparently Hayes is reluctant to take this step, so the new election rules have been delayed a bit but will most likely be approved by the end of the year.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has filed a motion to intervene in a Michigan Employment Relations Commission case regarding a scheme to unionize graduate students at the University of Michigan, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation has been involved in the case since July and today welcomed the Attorney General’s entry into the case.
A Detroit Free Press editorial opposing legislation that would remove arbitrary caps on the number of charter public schools contains a series of misleading, inaccurate and intemperate statements. The newspaper’s opening argument exemplifies the latter: “[T]he experiment [the Legislature] is trying to inflict on children and their parents is ill-conceived and dangerous.”
Environmental ideology disguised in the form of government energy policy may accomplish what our enemies cannot – weaken America. Arguably a greater threat to our national security than terrorist attacks is the war on energy that has been declared by our own government, and it’s being fought on several fronts:
An Op-Ed by two Mackinac Center experts in today’s Detroit News outline the regulatory reforms Michigan should take to make the state’s alcohol distribution system less monopolistic and more favorable to consumers.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, and Todd Nesbit, an adjunct scholar with the Center and an assistant professor of economics at the College of Charleston, explain how state laws and regulations increase the price of alcohol and limit competition.
The center-left Brookings Institution released a report today called the "Education Choice and Competition Index," which attempts to measure how open to parental choice the nation’s 25 largest school districts are. New York City came out on top based on the scoring rubric.
An editorial in the Livingston Daily Press & Argus credits the Mackinac Center for helping to stop a diversion of $10 million of taxpayer funds for a movie studio in Grand Rapids as part of Michigan’s film subsidy program.
