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. Because the legislature did not meet this week, rather than roll call vote results this report presents a sampling of recently proposed state laws.
Today, Michigan Freedom to Work announced its drive for a state law that would ensure that workers throughout the state have the freedom to decide whether or not to join and pay dues to a union. The campaign for a right-to-work law will face stiff opposition from union officials with deep pockets, but has the support of a wide range of Michiganders, including many union members.
Yesterday, the Michigan House passed SB 165, which prohibits local governments and state agencies from using "project labor agreements" to effectively reserve construction work for union companies. The bill now goes to Gov. Rick Snyder, who is expected to sign it.
In a commentary published at AnnArbor.com, the daughter of a Saline Public Schools teacher decries the district’s decision to involuntarily transfer her mother away from an art-teaching job she’s held for 15 years and into a new position in front of a fifth grade classroom. The daughter writes:
We have a few more reasons to celebrate with passion and verve this holiday weekend. Michigan is a little bit freer, because the Snyder administration, the Legislature and other policymakers have adopted measures or taken steps long recommended by the Mackinac Center.
Cities in Europe have waged a war against the automobile according to an article appearing in The New York Times. Urban areas in Europe such as Vienna, Munich and Copenhagen have closed many of their streets to cars and motorists in London and Stockholm are forced to pay hefty congestion fees if they want to drive downtown. Cites in Europe are making auto travel in urban areas impractical by severely restricting the number of parking spaces. Could this happen in America?
Political careerists who serve the system, rather than the people, threaten our future liberty and prosperity, according to an Op-Ed in The Port Huron Times-Herald by Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh.
McHugh and James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy, also wrote about the problem in this commentary.
A new Michigan Environmental Council study titled “Public Health Impacts of Old Coal-Fired Power Plants in Michigan” claims that coal-fired power plants put in operation between 1949 and 1968 are causing health problems in the state. Authors of the study claim that 10 percent of the coal-fired plants that are the oldest in the country account for 25 percent of the (power) generation and 43 percent of the public health threat. The study focuses on PM2.5 (fine particulate matter) particles emitted from coal combustion that are about 1/100th the width of a human hair.
Managing a large retail chain like Wal-Mart or Meijer is a complicated business. A tiny part of it involves the coordination required for chain-wide promotional pricing campaigns on particular products. One can imagine that memos to store managers would sometimes be part of the routine, along with countless other details.
Thankfully, the serious issues challenging Michigan have apparently been solved, because two legislators have found time to introduce the following two-bill package to regulate “portable electronic device” extended warranty plans:
Introduced by Sen. Dave Hildenbrand, R-Lowell Township, on June 21, 2011, to establish and impose a new state regulatory regime on “insurance” sold to cover portable electronic devices, which among other things would cover extended warranty and service plan offers.
A change in state law that eliminates tax credits for charitable donations shouldn’t impact such giving, one Mackinac Center analyst told The Jackson Citizen Patriot.
“I don’t see it having a major impact on giving in the state,” Mike LaFaive, director of fiscal policy, told the paper. “The best anti-poverty program in the world is a good economy.”
A new online database released today by the Mackinac Center allows users to measure several facets of every high school in Michigan, including graduation rates and ACT scores, as compared to the rest of the state, according to The Bay City Times and WEYI-TV25 in Saginaw.
Every week, MichiganVotes.org sends local newspapers a report on interesting votes and bills in the Michigan Legislature, and how their legislators voted. To find out who your state senator is and how to contact him or her go here; for state representatives go here.
While the price of gas at the pump is still high, it has been steadily dropping across the nation for the past three weeks. Motorists in many areas of Michigan are paying between 50 to 70 cents per gallon less than when gasoline prices were at their peak this past spring. The astonishing response of the federal government to this positive development, as announced by the Obama administration yesterday, is to release 30 million barrels of oil from the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
A new Mackinac Center study shows the 1997 pension reforms for state employees has saved Michigan between $2.3 billion and $4.3 billion, according to The Bay City Times.
“Closing state employees’ traditional pension plan to new employees and placing them in a defined-contribution plan with individual retirement accounts was a considered a dramatic step when the legislation was passed in December 1996,” said Rick Dreyfuss, an adjunct scholar with the Center and an actuary. “But a comparison of the performance of the two plans since then suggests the decision was sound.”
Michael Van Beek, director of education policy, was a guest on WXYZ-TV7 in Detroit recently, discussing his new study on school funding.
The results will “challenge sort of the conventional understanding of how schools are funded and what some of the problems schools face considering their funding and how they spend their money.”
The on again off again expansion of the Marathon Petroleum refinery is on again as reported in a cover story in the Detroit Free Press. According to the Free Press article, the expansion of the Marathon refinery in southwest Detroit is the largest construction project in recent years and will employ 1,300 workers at its peak. This is good news for economically depressed Detroit, both in terms of new jobs and increased tax revenue.
There really is no other way to interpret recent actions by the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board: It is the goal of this administration to muzzle employers who for whatever reason prefer a non-union workforce and who want to make the case to their employees. The quaint notion behind the First Amendment — that people should be able to speak their minds about matters of mutual interest, and that rational debate is useful in a democratic society — would seem to no longer apply in the workplace.
Michigan state Sen. Joe Hune has introduced a bill that would cut state cigarette taxes by $1.00 per pack. If adopted, this would represent a sea change in the thinking behind two cigarette tax hikes over the past nine years, which raised the per-pack tax from 75 cents in 2002 to $1.25 in 2004 and then to $2.00 in 2004. Michigan is currently tied for 11th highest cigarette tax in the nation, making it a target for lucrative smuggling operations. Importantly, Sen. Hune’s Senate Bill 517 would go a long way toward reducing cigarette smuggling and other negative unintended consequences.
When a local, state or federal environmental regulatory agency crosses the line from being an impartial enforcer of laws and regulations to becoming an environmental advocate, both the rule of law and private property rights are in jeopardy. Unfortunately, this happens all too frequently. Many government employees working in environmental agencies often feel they have the right or even responsibility of a higher calling in protecting the environment, even if means adding to or interpreting the law to suit their ends.
Ending billions of dollars in ethanol subsidies should allow the market to determine if the product is viable, a Mackinac Center spokesman told WEYI TV25.
“It doesn’t make sense for them to be shut out of the market if they have a product that works,” Michael Jahr, vice president for communications, told the station. “The problem is, right now it doesn’t.”
An Op-Ed by Jack McHugh, senior legislative analyst, and James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy, was featured in Sunday’s Detroit Free Press. The commentary, about Gov. Rick Snyder’s agenda and his willingness to take on “political careerists,” was also picked up by the Zanesville Times-Recorder in Ohio, which like the Free Press is owned by Gannett.
The Macatawa Area Express, a publicly funded transit system in Holland, is looking to cut costs, according to the Holland Sentinel, after a Michigan Capitol Confidential story last month exposed the costs of municipal transit agencies.
According to the Sentinel, MAX employees miscalculated and provided Capitol Confidential with incorrect information. The system spends $2.07, not $5.46, to move a passenger one mile.
The president’s letter in the January-February edition of the Michigan Beer and Wine Wholesalers newsletter suggests that association members are not primarily motivated by economic self-interest, but are merely active supporters of public safety. He then offered to sell the Mackinac Bridge to potential buyers at an excellent price.
As revealed in Michigan Capitol Confidential last week, a state beer and wine distribution monopoly that successive Legislatures have protected for decades enriches a handful of families (the so-called “Millionaires Club”) at the expense of consumers, taxpayers and small business microbrewers, whose ability to create jobs is also hurt. Over the years legislators have played partner to the distributors, collecting a share of their monopoly profits through steady streams of campaign cash and other benefits.
