St. Clair County fire departments that want firefighters to accompany ambulances on nonemergency medical calls will end up straining already fragile budgets, Fiscal Policy Director Mike LaFaive told the Port Huron Times Herald.
“This sounds like a classic case of a desperate attempt by government employees to remain … relevant,” LaFaive told the paper. “They of course have every reason to sell it as a customer-service improvement. I think this is more about self-service than public service.”
Every week, MichiganVotes.org sends a report to newspapers and TV stations showing how just the state legislators in each publication's service area voted on the most important and interesting bills and amendments of the past seven days. The version shown here instead contains a link to the complete roll call tally in either the House or Senate. To find out who your state senator is and how to contact him or her go here; for state representatives go here.
In a decision handed down last week involving employees of auto supplier Dana in St Johns, Mich., the National Labor Relations Board essentially made it easier to create company unions. That unions would actually go along with such a thing says a lot about where the union movement (or maybe we should call it the union establishment?) is headed.
Three Michigan districts recently signed new contracts with their teachers union. All three include across-the-board pay raises for teachers for this year and the next. Each district also modified the type of health insurance package it offers teachers, all which are still much more generous than than can be found on average in the private sector.
As Michigan’s new governor and Legislature prepare to wrestle budgets increasingly pressured by generous government employee benefits, attention is turning once again to a “grand bargain” on prisons: Lock up fewer people for less time, and also adopt reforms that bring down prison employee costs.
The Grand Rapids Press, WZZM-TV13, WWMT-TV3, Michigan Public Radio, FOX-17, and WOOD-TV are reporting that the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation will file a lawsuit against the Kent County Intermediate School District, nine other school districts and several Michigan Education Association union affiliates over “no-privatization” language included in collective bargaining agreements. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of five Kent County taxpayers.
At some point you have to consider this a trend. As we noted earlier, Governors of northern states are taking a long, hard look at government employee collective bargaining: last week it was Wisconsin Gov.-Elect Scott Walker, two days ago it was outgoing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
AnnArbor.com is reporting that a budget document that discusses potential ways to cut state spending includes a recommendation to “privatize University of Michigan over 5 years.” Mackinac Center analysts recommended the same thing six years ago.
Lawmakers should reject a proposal from the Michigan Environmental Council for a 3/8-cent increase in the sales tax to fund the state’s dysfunctional contaminated site cleanup program. Throwing more taxpayer money at environmental cleanups will not fix what’s wrong with the state’s contaminated site cleanup program.
Education Policy Director Mike Van Beek was a guest today on “The Frank Beckmann Show” on WJR AM760, where he discussed the expanding payroll of the Michigan Education Association teachers union.
Van Beek said the MEA staff saw a 31 percent increase in payroll over the last five years, and a 22 percent increase in the number of employees making $100,000 or more annually.
Teachers in the Plymouth-Canton Community Schools contribute nothing to the cost of their health insurance premiums, and in 2009 received an average salary of $66,644. The local school union president is also carried as a full-time employee on the district's books, but is not required to teach or provide any other service — she collects a salary and full benefits but is granted full "release-time." These are among the highlights in the current collective bargaining agreement negotiated between the district and the local arm of the Michigan Education Association union.
Leaders of our fellow upper-Midwestern states are starting to zero-in on government employee unions. It will be interesting to see if Michigan's incoming governor takes a stand on this issue.
Last week, Gov.-elect Scott Walker of Wisconsin got the ball rolling when he brought up the possibility of revamping the state’s labor relations. Frustrated with union resistance to cost-cutting measures needed to bring Wisconsin’s budget back in order, Walker went through his options in a luncheon sponsored by the Milwaukee Press Club: “Anything from the (sic) decertify all the way through modifications of the current laws in place… The bottom line is that we are going to look at every legal means we have to try to put that balance more on the side of taxpayers and the people who care about services.”
There is no “union movement” in the United States, and hasn’t been since the 1930s. Instead, what we have today is a union establishment. One possessed of perks and privileges granted by New Deal-era labor laws, including the power to coerce employees to pay dues (at least in non-right-to-work states).
Recent climate conferences in Stockholm and Cancun have revealed what the global climate change issue is really all about — the transfer of wealth from developed nations to developing countries. Both during the Stockholm and Cancun climate meetings negotiators have wishfully strategized on how the so called “rich nations” can pay the developing economies to pursue expensive alternative energy projects that will invariably slow down their economic progress and deny affordable energy to many households that do not currently even have access to electricity.
A columnist in The Washington Examiner Sunday cited a 2004 Mackinac Center study that showed only 42 percent of union members believed that union funds are spent “helping workers get better pay, benefits and working conditions.”
Author Mark Hemingway noted that the U.S. Department of Labor is attempting to gut the reporting requirements of unions that must file LM-2 spending disclosure reports.
By Jack McHugh
A reader responded to James Hohman’s “What can $5.7 billion get you in Michigan” in Michigan Capital Confidential, calling it “dishonest” to suggest that bringing the fringe benefits of all government workers in line with private sector averages would make a big difference in the state budget. The reason he provided is that only 53,000 of around 400,000 (non-federal) public employees in Michigan work for the state, with the rest working in schools, colleges, universities and local governments.
Michigan could save around $500 million if public school employees contributed the same percentage toward their employer-provided health insurance benefits as federal workers do, on average. The reform would generate savings of more than $300 per pupil.
Senior Environmental Analyst Russ Harding wrote an Op-Ed that appeared in The Oakland Press today, outlining the points made in his new study titled “Environmental Regulation in Michigan: A Blueprint for Reform.”
WNEM TV-5 and The Saginaw News have picked up Kathy Hoekstra’s discovery that the Saginaw-based company GlobalWatt is far from on-track to fulfill its job-creation promises but is instead reselling India-made solar panels on eBay. Earlier this year, the Mackinac Center raised questions about apparently false claims on the company’s applications for state subsidies.
In an article for the Huffington Post, Gov. Jennifer Granholm pushes for a national program using federal grants to promote clean energy projects. Granholm envisions a federal taxpayer-funded grant program similar to the education Race to the Top program that pits states against each other to vie for the favor of federal officials who judge which states have the most effective public-private partnerships for clean energy.
The Detroit News and other media outlets have reported on the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation’s appeal Wednesday of the day care unionization case to the Michigan Supreme Court. After two rejections from the Court of Appeals (one prompted by a unanimous Michigan Supreme Court order for the lower court to explain itself), the Legal Foundation hopes the Supreme Court will hear the case to end the forced unionization of day care providers.
The Spring 2004 issue of the Mackinac Center's Michigan Privatization Report cited the City of Auburn Hills' Fieldstone Golf Club as an example of what's wrong with municipal governments diverting taxpayer resources into running golf courses. Unfortunately, the city ignored our recommendations to get out of the golf business; this month it was asked by the state Treasury to submit a deficit reduction plan for the course.
A brief article in this week's Forbes explores the mounting debt crisis facing state, local and national governments worldwide; the title suggests one possible cause, "The Economic Incompetence of The Political Class." One startling factoid: The city of Chicago's unfunded pension liabilities are $25 billion, or $40,000 for every city household.
Governors, state legislators, and budget officials across the country are reaching the same conclusion about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA): it creates massive problems for state budgets almost immediately. Medicaid expansion in 2014 may well bankrupt states, but the loss of federal stimulus dollars combined with federal limits on how states can cut Medicaid spending is a clear and present danger to budgets and taxpayers. States can either play chicken with the federal government or give up and look for other places to cut.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who as a former governor should have more understanding of the dilemma facing states, has raised objections instead of supporting innovation. The frustration led Washington Medicaid Director Doug Porter to tell Health Care News, "I cannot see how [the state of] Washington can afford to support both the Medicaid program and our state-only programs."
States can save money on Medicaid by tightening eligibility, limiting services, or cutting payments to providers. But the health reform law, which Democratic governors supported before they read it, requires maintenance of effort for eligibility. The law also severely restricts the ability of states to reduce what they pay doctors if the payment reductions could reduce access to care. That leaves cuts in services, but the most expensive optional service is prescription drug coverage, which can prevent more expensive procedures and save more money than is spent.
States are at the mercy of Sebelius to approve whatever steps they try to take to address the problem. The review process could easily extend past the July 1 start of the next fiscal year even if approved. If this is not an example of the federal government commandeering states, it will be impossible to find one.
So we have a game of chicken.
Will states blink and find other places to cut? Will they stand firm in their plans to drop Medicaid, possibly before 2014, with no federal safety net? Or will the administration admit that the law is fundamentally flawed and waive requirements for states as it has for a growing list of large companies?
Just in time to brighten the holidays, GlobalWatt, a Saginaw-based solar panel manufacturer, is selling five solar panels on the popular auction website, eBay. But GlobalWatt did not make the panels. A company in India did - a strange strategy for GloblaWatt, a company that was approved for special state tax breaks in order to create manufacturing jobs in Michigan.
