By Jack McHugh
Well, they did it. After years of posturing and gamesmanship, both houses of Michigan’s Legislature have finally voted on the same bill to repeal a wart that's irritated this state’s body politic at least since the 1992 term limits amendment: Extremely generous health insurance benefits for former lawmakers starting at age 55.
The political class in Washington has decided that electric vehicles are the future of automobiles in this country. Manufacturers are more than happy to comply, provided that the federal government lavishes taxpayer-funded subsidies on them in the form of grants to build the new vehicles and generous tax credits for purchase of the electronic wonders. Two of the latest offerings from automakers are the Chevrolet Volt, a $40,000 electric version of the Chevrolet Cruz, and the Nissan Leaf, a vehicle that will leave you stranded if your trip is much more than 100 miles.
Senate Bill 618, which passed 20-18 in the Michigan Senate Thursday, would among other things remove the arbitrary cap of 150 charter public schools that can be authorized by universities. During debate, Sen. Hoon-Yung Hopgood, D-Taylor, offered an amendment that would essentially require charter schools to demonstrate student achievement 20 percent higher than the conventional public schools in the districts where charters are located.
Last week Rep. Jim Stamas, R-Midland, introduced legislation to eliminate the requirements that force teachers to complete additional college courses to retain the teacher certification mandated by the state. Removing such requirements would be a good idea for a number of reasons.
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.
Senate Bill 618, Eliminate charter school cap, allow "privatized" teachers: Passed 20-18 in the Senate
To eliminate the cap of 150 on the number of charter schools that can be chartered by universities, and allow all community colleges to authorize charters outside their regular district. Also, to allow school districts to contract out the employment of teachers meeting the same qualifications. The bill would also allow charters to operate the same grade levels at multiple sites, exempt charter schools from property tax, and more.
By Jack McHugh
At a hearing Thursday of the Michigan House Health Policy Committee, Blue Cross Blue Shield and other insurance industry lobbyists pleaded for fast action on creating a state Obamacare “exchange.” Given their point of view, their desire for an accelerated timetable is understandable: As businesspeople, they hope to gain some certainty over Obamacare's endless details. The haste of employees at the Michigan Department of Community Health is similarly understandable, and at this time, they have the ear of Gov. Rick Snyder.
A proposed "right-to-teach" bill has been introduced in the Michigan Senate by Sens. Arlan Meekhof, Phil Pavlov and Randy Richardville. Unfortunately, the bill may backfire because it focuses too much on the MEA.
A broad right-to-work law, in which all employees throughout the state would have the freedom to choose for themselves whether to support a union, would clearly be best for Michigan. Still, there is an entirely reasonable case to be made for starting with teachers in the public schools: Teachers are professionals, and their craft is especially ill-suited to industrial unionism. The need for reform in public education is especially pressing.
The Mackinac Center hosted a panel discussion in Lansing Wednesday titled “The Future of Unionized Government,” which you can watch here.
Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, appeared on both WILS and WJR ahead of the forum to discuss the issue.
It looks like there will be more financial bleeding of federal tax money for green energy projects. As if the bankruptcy of the ill-fated Solyndra solar plant weren’t enough, now a government-backed geothermal plant in Nevada seems headed for insolvency.
While Gov. Rick Snyder and some GOP legislators are using the reassuring language of a modest “Heritage Foundation-type” or “Utah-type” health insurance “exchange” to advance legislation, the Snyder administration is requesting strings-attached Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act grants that increasingly commit the state to something very different: a full-blown “Obamacare exchange.” The latter is not really an exchange at all, but rather the agency through which PPACA’s mandates, subsidies, regulations and rationing will be imposed.
In Monday's Wall Street Journal, former football great Fran Tarkenton goes deep.
Deep to the root of what’s wrong with government-run education, that is.
And he scores. His WSJ Op-Ed “What if the NFL Played by Teachers’ Rules” starts out with a stark picture of the National Football League operating under the same stipulations found in teachers union contracts: “Each player's salary is based on how long he's been in the league. It's about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he's an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster.”
In the Wall Street Journal today, Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton makes a vivid contrast between the NFL and public school employees.
Imagine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player's salary is based on how long he's been in the league. It's about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he's an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player's been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.
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.
Senate Bill 567, Create another corporate & developer
subsidy program: Passed 35 to 1 in the Senate
To authorize cash subsidies of up to 25 percent of a project’s cost up to $10
million, and also subsidized loans, for developers who create certain
“community revitalization” developments meeting a broad definition contained in
the bill. Essentially, the political appointees on the board of the state
government's “Michigan Strategic Fund” would have extensive discretion to hand
out these subsidies to particular developers as they see fit.
Apparently officials in the Obama administration place more value on their green energy agenda than they do on fiscal constraint and protecting the pocketbooks of taxpayers. The Solyndra scandal, which has left taxpayers on the hook for a half billion dollars, has not stemmed the irresponsible flow of money for green energy projects. Rushing to meet the Oct. 1 fiscal year deadline, federal officials at the Department of Energy are putting another billion dollars at risk by issuing two new loan guarantees, one for a solar tower to be built in Nevada and the other for construction of a solar plant in Arizona.
The Mackinac Center is co-sponsoring a talk Monday night at the Doan History Center by John Blundell, author of “Ladies of Liberty: Women Who Made a Difference in American History,” according to the Midland Daily News.
Blundell, author of the biography “Margaret Thatcher: A Portrait of the Iron Lady,” told the Daily News he decided to write his newest book after hearing “Why don’t we have any Margaret Thatchers in America?” during his tour to promote that book.
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 4915, Increase fees on industries: Passed 26-12 in the Senate
To increase air pollution emissions fees imposed on industries. The House Fiscal Agency reports that this will extract an additional $840,000 annually from Michigan businesses.
The Michigan Department of Education is revising the way it measures school performance, and while reform is sorely needed, the value of state-based school assessments is limited because they only allow comparisons between schools within Michigan’s borders. While this may confirm that the children of well-to-do parents in suburban districts out-score students in inner city schools, it tells us nothing about how these supposed high-flyers compare to the rest of the country or world.
After plans to negotiate $145 million in employee concessions failed, the state government will eliminate more than 300 job openings and require its unionized employees to take furlough days, according to the Department of Technology, Management and Budget. These moves point to a broken system that ensures automatic and unaffordable above-inflation pay increases.
A Michigan Capitol Confidential story forms the basis of an editorial in today’s Detroit News that says school districts should stop using taxpayer dollars to subsidize union activity and instead redirect that money to the classroom.
About 40 districts in Michigan pay teachers who are in union leadership roles at least half of their salary, including 25 that pay full-time. Many other districts allow “release time” for teachers to work on union business on school time.
The Heritage Foundation's health policy blog has posted a summary of a new study on creating an Obamacare insurance “exchange,” prepared for the Ohio Department of Insurance by the independent consulting firm Milliman, Inc. The firm used economic modeling to project the effects of the new federal health care law in Ohio.
An Op-Ed on school reforms by Mike Van Beek, director of education policy, recently appeared in The Holland Sentinel. One of the reforms he highlighted was a suggestion that the state remove the arbitrary cap of 1,000 students who are allowed to take courses through online charter schools.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, is cited in a Wall Street Journal column today that critiques former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s new book and says of her eight years in office that “the roll call of despair is not in dispute.”
Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, was a guest Monday on “To the Point,” an issues-oriented news show produced by KCRW public radio at Santa Monica College in California. The program, heard on public radio stations in major cities from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
The promise of green jobs has proven to be political hyperbole and alternative energy is proving unreliable and costly to consumers. So why does the political class remain so doggedly determined to foist these failed policies on the American public? The simple answer is political power. Politicians of both the right and left have been guilty of supporting bad public policy in order to stay in power.
