Since the onset of the Great Recession, nearly every state has experienced budget shortfalls. Most have recognized the need to cut spending and restrain government employee benefits rather than raise taxes. Not all do, however: As reported last week, Illinois is going the opposite direction with massive tax hikes on individuals and businesses.
One of the three limitations of government in Gov. Rick Snyder’s 2011 State of the State speech was a call to do away with Michigan’s Item Pricing Act, which Mackinac Center scholars suggested more than eight years ago.
Today kicks off National School Choice Week. Support for school choice comes from groups ranging across the entire political/ideological spectrum, and evidence from Michigan shows that parents strongly favor more learning options for their children. Favoring market-based policy, personal liberty and free association, the Mackinac Center has long been a supporter of educational freedom.
More than just the economy is responsible for declining union membership in Michigan, Labor Policy Director Paul Kersey told The Detroit News.
“This is a result not only of a recession that has hit unionized industries hard, but also of an erosion of confidence that workers in Michigan and throughout the country once had in unions,” Kersey said. “This is reflected in losses in members, in solid support for right-to-work (laws in the polls) and in increasing concern over government employee compensation.”
An Op-Ed in the Lansing State Journal by President Joseph Lehman and Assistant Editor Hannah Mead explains how Michigan could save $5.7 billion a year by brining public-sector benefits in line with the private sector.
More information on those numbers is available here and here.
Mike LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told National Public Radio that Michigan’s film subsidy program is only a way for politicians to buy “good PR,” but the program is “symbolism over substance.”
Mackinac Center analysts have produced a large body of work examining the film subsidy program and its numerous flaws, which can be found here.
The House and Senate took no votes on legislation, so this report instead contains several newly introduced bills of interest, including ones to cut government employee pay, restrict government union use of public facilities, grant permits to new coal generating plants, ban "ergonomics" regulations, replace the MBT, authorize more special tax breaks, ban partial birth abortion and more.
The latest BLS figures on union membership came out today. For union officials and supporters, the results are grim.
During 2010, employment in Michigan actually ticked up slightly according to BLS, as the state added 21,000 jobs (not an especially impressive number, as there are 3.8 million jobs in the state), but unions in Michigan lost 83,000 members, a decline in membership of 11.7 percent.
Mackinac Center analyst Jack McHugh has called the long process of hollowing out a private economy to prop up an unsustainable government "Detroitification." Detroit's most recent comprehensive annual financial report shows just how much the title-city itself has been hollowed.
Late last month, while all reasonable people were engaged in some combination of recovering from Christmas, preparing for New Years, or watching football, the UAW released its "Principles for Fair Union Elections," a pretentious document that demonstrates the extent to which denial still reigns at Solidarity House.
Gov. Rick Snyder’s first State of the State speech was a “mixed bag,” Fiscal Policy Director Mike LaFaive told The Kalamazoo Gazette. “Gov. Snyder hinted at some positive things, but didn’t go nearly far enough with specific, cost-saving ideas that Michigan desperately needs to right its economy.”
In a highly-anticipated State of the State address, new Gov. Rick Snyder touched lightly on the topic of government employee benefits. Early on the governor did call attention to $54 billion in unfunded pension and other benefit liabilities, but said nothing further on the topic, giving neither a target for how much these liabilities will be reduced nor laying out a general approach for getting these costs back under control. This came in the context of a speech that was vaguely corporatist in nature, with little in the way of strong pro-market material.
Although Gov. Rick Snyder drew applause when he announced an increased subsidy for the Pure Michigan advertising campaign during his State of the State speech Wednesday night, Fiscal Policy Director Mike LaFaive said the move concerns him, according to The Detroit News.
House Bill 4003 would prevent private employees from being forced into public-sector unions, according to the Livingston Daily Press & Argus.
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Human Services on behalf of three home-based day care owners who were shanghaied into a government union because they receive subsidy checks from the state for providing services to low-income families.
The first bill introduced in the Michigan House this year would repeal the much-reviled Michigan Business Tax 22 percent “surcharge,” and the first Senate bill would repeal the MBT altogether. Gov. Rick Snyder has proposed replacing the tax with a 6 percent corporate income tax, a change that would mean a big net tax cut for job providers.
According to data released by the Michigan Office of Labor Market Information today, the state’s unemployment rate dropped by 0.7 percentage points from 12.4 percent in November 2010 to 11.7 percent in December 2010. This is a record for this data series that began in 1976.
(The following is an unpublished letter to the editor of The Grand Rapids Press regarding an excellent editorial on cost savings ideas for local government.)
Applause is in order for the Grand Rapids Press Jan. 5 editorial “How to save money for local governments,” which correctly concludes that removing barriers to freer association between local units of government can cut costs.
President Barack Obama in a recent Wall Street Journal Op-Ed extols the virtues of regulatory reform. He opines that: “Sometimes …..rules have gotten out of balance, placing unreasonable burdens on business — burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs.” The President signed an executive order that he says, “requires federal agencies protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth.”
Gov. Rick Snyder tonight is expected to outline his agenda for dealing with a looming state and local financial crisis as part of his State of the State address. If Gov. Snyder were to ask me for my advice about what might be the most important speech he ever gives, it would be as follows:
Gov. Rick Snyder has said he admires the leadership model of former Gov. William Milliken. In his first State of the State address tonight, it will be interesting to see whether the new governor emulates the earlier one in the number of proposals to expand the scope of state government.
As significant and real reforms and spending cuts are being discussed in Lansing, it’s hard not to feel a touch of sympathy for the “constituent services” staffers employed by lawmakers, and even for some of their politician bosses. This was brought home to the Mackinac Center following the publication of a particular blog post last week, “Are Corrections Costs a Mystery?” The angry calls and letters it generated were not unlike those fielded by constituent services workers in Lansing.
Gov. Rick Snyder is expected to address regulatory reform in Wednesday night’s State of the State speech, according to The Detroit News.
“State-level regulatory reform may be the most important factor in reversing our job losses,” Russ Harding, senior environmental analyst, told The News.
An editorial in today’s Detroit News cites the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation’s work in attempting to expand the scope of public information.
The editorial agrees with MCLF Director Patrick Wright, who said the Michigan Supreme Court’s ruling late last year “cripples the state Freedom of Information Act and shields government officials who break the law from public scrutiny.”
A Detroit News editorial today refers to research by Mackinac Center analysts that show a major part of the large increases in public school funding over the last several decades are due to ever-increasing school employee benefits.
Education Policy Director Mike Van Beek explains that only five states spend more on teacher benefits than Michigan. Van Beek also has compiled a list of the most common school funding myths.
National and state media are reporting that a more responsible approach to public-sector benefits could help ease Michigan’s financial crunch.
The Chicago Tribune cites research by Mackinac Center analysts that show Michigan taxpayers could save some $6 billion in the next decade if state employees were enrolled in health savings accounts.
