Saul Anuzis has announced he's running for chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. The former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party pits himself against sitting RNC Chairman Michael Steele.
Anuzis garnered respect in the state for employing strategies resulting in recent Republican takeovers of the governorship, state House of Representatives and Michigan Supreme Court, expanding the party's majority in the state Senate and increasing the GOP congressional delegation by two seats.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm recently wrote an article for the Huffington Post titled “A Mighty Wind,” in which she credits Michigan’s renewable energy standard of 2008 — which requires 10 percent of energy produced by the major utilities in the state come from renewable sources — for revitalizing the state’s economy. The mighty wind she feels blowing through the halls of government in Lansing probably seems more like a gentle breeze to job seekers around the state who are dealing with the second highest unemployment rate of any state in the country.
During a radio interview last week, incoming Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville was asked about the prospects for a right-to-work bill. Richardville replied that right-to-work, which guarantees individual workers will have the choice to pay union dues or withhold support based on their own values and their own opinion of the union's work, would not be a top priority: "Twenty percent of the workers in Michigan are unionized," MIRS quotes Richardville as saying, "and the idea of going in and changing one of the fundamental privileges for years seems to me to be more disruptive with little positive results."
While speaking overseas this week, former presidential candidate Al Gore took some questions about corn-based ethanol. So what does the green guru think about the fuel that was supposed to wean us off of foreign oil and cut carbon emissions?
“First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.”
Governor-elect Rick Snyder will have to sort through “conflicting information” as he attempts to convince state employees to scale back wages and benefits that are out of line with the private sector, according to an article in MiTechNews.com that originally appeared in the Gongwer News Service.
An Op-Ed in Sunday’s Lansing State Journal by Russ Harding, senior environmental analyst, highlights the points he has made in a new study titled “Environmental Regulation in Michigan: A Blueprint for Reform.”
Harding suggests, among other things that regulatory barriers must be removed so that businesses can locate or expand in Michigan.
A Detroit News editorial Sunday said that merit pay for public school teachers would “connect pay more closely to the quality of instruction, but also said that teacher benefits is a “better place to find cost savings,” and urged teachers and their unions to lead the reform.
Sharon and Doug Rothwell, former Engler administration veterans with corporate experience, are a good choice to head up Gov.-elect Rick Snyder’s transition team, Mike LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told the Detroit Free Press recently.
By Jack McHugh
In her weekly Wall Street Journal column, Kim Strassel offers some benchmarks for who congressional Republicans’ should choose to be the next House Energy and Commerce Committee chair. Michigan Congressman Fred Upton is one of the candidates, and — as described in today’s Michigan Capitol Confidential — this has some on the right fuming.
Because no votes were taken in the Legislature this week, this report instead contains several newly introduced bills of interest. Note: There will be no report next week, the week of Thanksgiving.
Senate Bill 1569 (Extend government pension tax exemption to private sector pensions)
Introduced by Sen. Michael Switalski (D) on November 4, 2010, to extend to the pensions of non-government workers the same state income tax exemption granted to the pensions of retired government employees. Note: Although government pensions up to certain limits are state income tax exempt, the pensions of non-government workers are not exempt and are subject to the 4.35 percent state income tax. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
According to MIRS Capitol Capsule (subscription required), the Michigan Lodging and Tourism Association (MLTA) is "hoping to send a clear message to lame duck legislative leaders — don't you leave town without funding Pure Michigan."
The private trade group wants public funds to advance their industry, and to this end they've launched a billboard campaign:
Editorials in both the Port Huron Times-Herald and Livingston Daily Press & Argus about the changes in the Michigan Legislature due to term limits cite research by Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh that first appeared in Michigan Capitol Confidential.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis recently released a key measure of economic growth that showed Michigan has gone more than a decade without increased production. New gross domestic product figures, a measure of the value of an area’s goods and services production, showed that Michigan’s economy produced 8 percent less in 2009 than it did in 2000 when adjusted for inflation. The nation rose 15 percent during this period.
Teacher salaries and school district spending transparency are the focus of two Detroit News articles today that rely on the expertise of Mackinac Center analysts.
“We’re at the crossroads of trying to maintain a government and school system that we’ve grown accustomed to as a relatively rich state,” Education Policy Director Mike Van Beek told The News. “And now we’re a relatively poor state.”
Senior Economist David Littmann is the primary source for a Detroit Free Press article today regarding GM’s IPO, saying it is in “fine shape.”
Littmann said investors are attracted to the stock offering due to GM’s cost-cutting following bankruptcy last year.
A Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives could mean an easing on the federal fuel standards that many think would harm American automakers, Senior Environmental Analyst Russ Harding told Bloomberg recently.
“This stuff that Obama and some of the Democrats are talking about on the fuel standards is fantasyland,” Harding said. “You’re not going to achieve those numbers with technology we know about in this day and age.”
A "multidimensional" crisis that's been unfolding for decades may finally be coming to a head in the Detroit Public Schools: The district is virtually bankrupt, the schools are unsafe and they generate the worst student achievement results in the nation. And now, Robert Bobb, the governor-appointed emergency financial manager, is waving the white flag, asking the state to borrow against future revenues to bail out the district. Doing so would be unfortunate for both students and state taxpayers.
Last month, the U.S. Attorney’s office announced that Robbin Wolff, a former bookkeeper for UAW Local 383 in Benton Harbor, had been sentenced to two years in prison for embezzling more than $200,000 in union funds. Wolff pled guilty to embezzlement and falsifying union records last July.
It appears likely the starry-eyed promise of Hollywood has left the taxpayers of Allen Park with quite the handful of overpriced real estate.
This unhappy ending seems to be in line with how events have unfolded since the “groundbreaking” at Allen Park’s Unity Studios.
(The following is an edited version of a letter to the editor of The Detroit News in response to their editorial "Ours: Keep film credits for now." The Mackinac Center and others have written extensively on this subject and disagree with the notion that the Michigan Film Incentive program is a policy lever necessary to the economic well-being of the Great Lakes State.)
In an important article in today’s Wall Street Journal, the brilliant George Gilder deconstructs many of the pious falsehoods promulgated by dangerous "green energy" lobbyists, corporate subsidy-seekers and politicians on both sides of the aisle who ignorantly pander to them. The article uses California as a poster-child to show how so-called "green energy" is paving the way to national bankruptcy and irrelevancy.
Over the course of his administration, a governor will be expected to make hundreds of appointments to regulatory agencies and boards. Among the more important will be the members of the state's Civil Service Commission.
Under the state constitution, the CSC has the responsibility for overseeing the state's workforce of over 52,000 people and setting job descriptions, duties and compensation. The CSC has essentially delegated much of that responsibility to a collective bargaining process that is very similar to the Public Employment Relations Act, but the CSC retains control of the overall process.
The Grand Rapids Press reports that teachers in Saugatuck Public Schools will no longer be provided with health insurance from the Michigan Education Special Services Association, an arm of the state's largest teachers union. The district instead will purchase employee insurance from Priority Health, a move that is said to save $3,800 per teacher annually.
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 Gov. Jennifer Granholm's weekly radio address, she ballyhoos her investment missions abroad by claiming that they're responsible for creating or retaining 20,000 Michigan jobs. Unfortunately, she continues to mistake job announcements for job creation.
