The Boston Globe is reporting that the Massachusetts State House has passed a bill that would significantly cut back on the scope of collective bargaining for local government employees. Much like Michigan, Massachusetts law extends collective bargaining privileges to unions representing government employees, and has encountered fiscal difficulties on account of government employee benefits. The approach taken by Massachusetts is similar to one that has been suggested by a recent Mackinac Center study — limit the scope of negotiations.
Federal government policies are partially responsible for the pain that Americans are feeling at the gas pump. The president, congress and the Federal Reserve could help bring down gas prices by taking the following actions:
Critics of developing additional oil reserves in North America claim that drilling for more oil will not bring down prices in the short run because it takes too long to bring production online. They said the same thing 10 years ago. If we had developed ANWR at that time, that oil would be now be flowing to market.
Economist Walter Williams, in a column in The Washington Examiner, cites a study by Mackinac Center analysts on the connection between cigarette taxes and smuggling.
Mike LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, and Todd Nesbit, Ph.D., an assistant professor at The College of Charleston and an adjunct scholar with the Center, co-authored “Cigarette Smuggling and Taxes 2010,” which was an update of their earlier work on the same issue.
We live in a time when every group from senior citizens to minorities eagerly asserts their rights. We can now add “Mother Earth” to the list. According to a report in Yahoo News, Bolivian President Evo Morales is preparing a draft United Nations treaty that would give “Mother Earth” the same rights as human beings. Bolivia is leading the way in this fantastical endeavor, having passed a law giving rights to insects, trees and other “natural things.” The treaty would establish a Ministry of Mother Earth and provide the planet with an ombudsman to hear nature’s complaints presented by activist groups and the state.
Communications Specialist Kathy Hoekstra and Michigan Capitol Confidential Managing Editor Ken Braun were both guests on WKAR’s “Off the Record,” shown statewide on public television stations over the weekend.
Topics discussed on the show included Gov. Rick Snyder’s performance, Michigan’s emergency financial manager law, teacher salaries and ObamaCare.
Every week, MichiganVotes.org sends a report on interesting votes and bills in the Michigan Legislature, and includes how each legislator voted. To find out who your state senator is and how to contact him or her go here; for state representatives go here.
Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, testified before the Michigan House Education Committee April 20 on legislation involving penalties for illegal teacher strikes, according to the Gongwer Michigan Report.
The committee was considering House Bills 4465 and 4466. Kersey, who has written about this subject here, said in his testimony that teachers unions that conduct illegal strikes should lose their ability to bargain collectively in their particular school district for at least three years.
An editorial in today’s Detroit News on education funding as compared to performance cites this research by Michael Van Beek, director of education policy.
“The state’s return on investment is poor,” the editorial states, quoting Van Beek’s work showing that Michigan spends $11,337 per student, good for 16th highest in the nation, yet students here rank between 33rd and 39th nationally on fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores.
Monday's Wall Street Journal highlighted desperate times and drastic actions taking place in Detroit, where Mayor Dave Bing and Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb continue to struggle with high-powered unions. Both seem to benefit from a strengthened emergency financial manager statute that among other things adopts a Mackinac Center proposal allowing an EFM to set aside labor contracts.
A recent bill of more than $544,000 the Michigan State Police wants to charge the ACLU for documents regarding the use of devices that can extract information from cell phones during traffic stops is not an isolated incident, according to Michigan Public Radio.
Suspicions of plagiarism by a Michigan State University professor uncovered last August by Michael Van Beek, the Center’s director of education policy, have been proven true, according to The Grand Rapids Press.
Sharif Shakrani, a senior scholar in MSU’s Education Policy Center, was found guilty of “research misconduct” by a research integrity committee for plagiarizing parts of his 2010 study on school consolidation. The committee also found three articles written by Shakrani in 2008 and 2009 that contain “clear instances” of plagiarism, The Press reported. An MSU spokesman told The Press that a decision on “sanctions or disciplinary actions” is pending.
The Stars and Stripes have been proudly flying over a Belle Tire store since its recent opening on Grand River Avenue in Meridian Township near Lansing. Not so fast, says the Meridian Township Zoning Board of Appeals, which ruled by a 5-0 vote that the flag must be taken down according to a report in the Lansing State Journal.
An Op-Ed in today’s Lansing State Journal by Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman explains that the fact Wayne State University altered the website of its labor studies department after the Center filed a FOIA request with the school “vindicates my organization,” that Wayne State “was perhaps engaging in politics and not just academics.”
A USA Today story on cigarette smuggling cites research by Mackinac Center analysts regarding the “unintended consequences” — namely criminal activity — of higher tobacco taxes.
You can read the Center’s research here and here.
UPDATE: The Honolulu Star-Advertiser on April 21 ran an Op-Ed on cigarette smuggling rates in Hawaii.
Details and circumstances could change in the future, but for now there are good reasons why grass roots reformers should steer clear of the controversy surrounding various proposals for a new Detroit-Windsor bridge:
1. None of the possible outcomes unambiguously serve the public interest.
A blogger at Mlive recently suggested that lower business tax rates do not "necessarily" create more jobs.
The post notes that Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder have proposed federal and state budgets that lower overall business tax rates. (Although by also eliminating various tax subsidies, some companies would pay more under these proposals — attn. General Electric). To make the case against these plans, the piece cites a single academic economist and a union-funded think tank, who, not surprisingly, contend that business owners don’t use tax cuts to hire more workers but instead pocket the savings as increased profits.
Votes by local Michigan Education Association affiliates on whether or not to conduct illegal teacher strikes is “posturing,” Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek told the Livingston Daily Press & Argus.
Van Beek said teachers who strike face penalties from the state, while those who don’t face possible repercussions from the union.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, explains in a recent Port Huron Times-Herald Op-Ed why the Michigan film subsidy program needs to be eliminated.
More research and analyses by Center policy experts on the film subsidies can be found here.
Every week, MichiganVotes.org sends a report on interesting votes and bills in the Michigan Legislature, and includes how each legislator voted. To find out who your state senator is and how to contact him or her go here; for state representatives go here.
The Department of Environmental Quality is requesting fee increases for air quality and solid waste permitting programs. The Legislature should not grant the agency’s request without requiring that the DEQ change the way it does business. A fee increase to obtain an air permit or dispose of trash is just another name for a tax increase. DEQ officials argue that the cost impact on a per capita basis is minimal, but for a large business or utility the costs can be substantial. This is not a good time to raise the cost of doing business in the state with an unemployment rate that is still north of 10 percent.
(Editor's note: The increase in benefits per full-time teacher was incorrectly listed as 50 percent; this has been updated to the correct figure of 37 percent.)
According to new data just released by the Michigan Department of Education for the 2009-2010 school year, the average teacher salary in Michigan has risen for the 13th consecutive year. This most recent data puts the figure at $63,024. If charter schools are excluded, this raises the average salary figure for unionized teachers in conventional districts to $63,445.
Bay City Public Schools claims to have cut spending by more than $24 million since 2000, but research by Michael Van Beek, director of education policy, actually shows the district will spend $5 million more this year than it did in 2000, according to The Bay City Times.
As budget details from the last-minute effort to keep the federal government operating are being released, it is clear that the Environmental Protection Agency is the big loser. Although House budget negotiators were unsuccessful in keeping language that would have reined in the EPA’s war on energy through extensive rule-making, they did succeed in sending a strong message to the agency through a $1.6 billion cut, which amounts to 16 percent of its budget. Lawmakers have not been able to get the attention of the EPA through committee hearings regarding their onerous rulemaking to limit CO2 emissions — effectively bypassing Congress. Perhaps EPA officials will get the message now.
Freedom of Information Act requests the Mackinac Center filed against labor studies departments at three Michigan universities were a fair use of the law and the Center was ultimately vindicated, according to an Op-Ed in The Washington Post written by President Joseph G. Lehman and Senior Editor Thomas A. Shull.
At the time of this writing it remains to be seen if the federal government will be subject to a partial shutdown due to budget wrangling in Congress. The difference in budget reduction dollar amounts has become almost meaningless as reductions in the $30 billion range are tiny compared to the trillions of dollars of red ink the federal government is piling up.
