Listen here as Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh discusses the legislative accomplishments of 2011 and the legislative priorities for 2012 with WMKT-1270 AM radio talk host Vic McCarthy. Noting the reform of the Michigan business tax as well as welfare reform, McHugh pushes for stronger regulatory reform on behalf of Michigan businesses for 2012.
Yesterday’s main story by Tom Gantert in Michigan Capitol Confidential titled “Chevy Volt Costing Taxpayers Up to $250K Per Vehicle” made national news.
The article was featured on the Drudge Report and eventually picked up by Fox Nation, Bill O’Reilly, Instapundit, National Review, Human Events, the American Thinker, Powerline, Carpe Diem, Hot Air and Reason.
Assistant Director of Fiscal Policy James Hohman on the Lou Dobbs Show on Dec. 21, 2011, discussing the massive government subsidies allocated to the development and production of Chevy's Volt. This topic was originally published on Michigan Capital Confidential. Listen to the entire interview at the audio link!
Enjoy this season’s Christmas lights; next Christmas it will be considerably more expensive to run the lights that adorn Christmas trees, homes and businesses in many areas around the country, including Michigan.
Most American households would have preferred a lump of coal in their stocking from the Environmental Protection Agency rather than the Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) rule issued by the agency today. The rule is aimed at coal-fired power plants, mandating among other things a 90 percent reduction in mercury emissions. This may be the most expensive regulation on utilities issued by the EPA to date, estimated to cost utilities around 11 billion dollars per year.
The Census Bureau released state-level population estimates this morning and reports once again that Michigan lost population. These are the first one-year state-by-state estimates for population changes released by the Bureau since the official Census state data was released in 2010. The population changes are measured from April 2010 to July 2011.
Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman is cited in the current issue of Dome Magazine in a profile of Doug Rothwell, president and CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan.
Rothwell in the 1990s was president of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and Gov. Rick Snyder, then an Ann Arbor businessman, was the MEDC’s volunteer chairman. The article notes it is “ironic” that Rothwell is now working closely with Gov. Snyder on economic development policies that are far different than what they championed more than a decade ago.
The state’s flagship corporate welfare scheme — the Michigan Economic Growth Authority — will end Jan. 1, according to The Flint Journal.
“It created job announcements but no jobs,” Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told The Journal. “That’s the only way to facilitate ribbon-cutting ceremonies.
Note: There will be no weekly roll call report during Christmas week.
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.
Where I live outside of Lansing, there are new bike paths sporting shiny asphalt, but the roads are crumbling. Motorists might be surprised to learn that of the 18.4 cents per gallon of federal gas tax they pay at the pump, only about 11 cents goes to maintain highways and bridges.
A long-time Mackinac Center idea made major strides last night when the Michigan House voted to (gradually) eliminate the arbitrary cap on university-authorized charter public schools. The Mackinac Center has been supporting the rights of parents to choose charter schools since 1988.
Today marks the 220th “birthday” of the Bill of Rights. You might enjoy taking a few moments to read this commentary from 2007 written by Mackinac Center President Emeritus Lawrence W. Reed.
Unexpectedly, sanity has finally prevailed and the plug pulled on a wild-eyed scheme to spend hundreds of millions on a Detroit “light rail” project along Woodward Avenue. The Detroit Free Press reports that instead, the city will explore “a system of rapid-transit buses operating in dedicated lanes on routes from downtown to and through the suburbs along Gratiot, Woodward and Michigan avenues and along M-59.”
Maybe something good has come out of Detroit’s impending bankruptcy. The Detroit Free Press reports that the feds have pulled the plug on the city’s proposed light-rail project, which would run along Woodward Avenue between downtown and 8 Mile Road.
Taxpayers can breathe a sigh of relief that their hard-earned tax dollars will not be wasted on a decision that was bound to be another financial drain on the city. Such projects all around the country have a history of being money losers in all but the densest urban corridors along the East Coast.
A recent commentary by Jarrett Skorup titled “The Rich Are Getting Richer; So Are the Poor” appears today in the online version of Crisis Magazine.
Hundreds of graduate students at the University of Michigan who object to being forced into a union won’t be able to argue their case before an administrative law judge after the Michigan Employment Relations Commission ruled against them, according to the Detroit Free Press and Michigan Radio. AnnArbor.com also covered the results, as did MIRS and Gongwer. Patrick Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, discussed the case on WJR AM760's "The Frank Beckmann Show."
The Detroit News this morning published a story about the possibility of reforming the Michigan Liquor Control Code and its related rules. The author correctly notes that some groups and residents in Michigan are “on edge” over what the reforms may bring.
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.
