A Mackinac Center event featuring Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson was cited in the Birmingham Patch in a story about the economic outlook for downtown Birmingham.
Patterson on Oct. 14 gave a speech in Birmingham titled “What Michigan’s Next Governor Can Learn From Oakland County.”
Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, was cited in two separate stories Saturday about fiscal irresponsibility at the local government level.
The Jackson Citizen Patriot reported on municipal golf courses that operate without paying property taxes and can take customers away from privately run courses.
Senior Economist David Littmann told the Detroit Free Press and Lansing State Journal that an extension of federal unemployment payments will not help the economy.
“It actually increases the duration of the unemployment,” Littmann said. “The incentives are turned upside down.”
The Michigan Senate has been busy this week working on very important legislation, but on Wednesday the 29 outgoing members, plus the nine with a newly renewed four-year tenure, found time for 29 other items of business, listed below. These all passed on voice-votes.
In the waning days of the lame-duck Congress, a bipartisan fight is brewing over federal handouts to encourage production of corn ethanol, with competing letters urging the continuation or end of these subsidies.
The 16 senators calling for the end of ethanol subsidies come from across the political spectrum: From senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on the left to Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) in the middle to Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on the right.
My recent analysis showing that staffing levels at intermediate school districts grew significantly over the last decade — even as the number of students in Michigan public schools fell — drew some criticism from Dr. David A. Spitzley, an employee of the Washtenaw ISD. Dr. Spitzley points out that the data provided by the Michigan Department of Education's Center for Educational Performance and Information are inconsistent over time in some respects. Nevertheless, no matter how one slices the data, it still shows that ISD payrolls expanded while enrollment contracted.
The Traverse City Area Public School district is raising transparency to a new level by posting on its website the contracts it proposes to unionized employees. At present, only the proposed transportation employee union contract is available, but eventually, all of them will be.
Peter C. Cook, faithful friend of liberty and exemplar of civil society, passed away Sunday evening at 96 years old in his hometown of Grand Rapids. Mr. Cook, as I knew him, served on the Mackinac Center’s board of directors from 1992 to 2003. He was a businessman whose philanthropy benefited thousands. Mr. Cook had supported the Mackinac Center since 1990, especially projects related to education reform including school choice.
The lobbyists and activists working to impose a state insurance mandate for autism coverage in Michigan are extremely active. Less than two hours after I blogged on this topic yesterday, I was contacted by two of them.
One of the observations I made in that post was that proponents for a particular mandate always claim that their mandate will actually save money in the long run, which raises the question: “So if it's cost effective why don’t insurance companies just add the desired coverage in all policies without a mandate?”
Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek authored Op-Eds on school funding myths, including the claim that public school funding is “unstable,” that appeared recently in The Oakland Press.
Van Beek’s research debunking common school funding myths can be found here. Short videos explaining how the foundation allowance works and why school employee concessions have not saved public schools money have recently been released.
Lieutenant Governor-elect Brian Calley is urging the lame-duck Legislature to pass a new mandate that would force health insurance companies to include coverage for autism treatments in all policies, potentially requiring them to pay for extraordinarily expensive new treatment regimes whose efficacy is still speculative.
Senior Economist David Littmann recently wrote in a Detroit News Op-Ed about the need to hold the Federal Reserve Board accountable for the damage it has done to the American economy.
Littmann said the Fed “purposely chose to inflate the entire price level of the U.S. economy” and that “inflation-recession cycles of 1979-82 and 2005-09 reflect the Fed’s complicity in Washington’s political efforts to shove the price effects of oil and housing, respectively, under the carpet.”
Brighton Area Schools is one of only 32 Michigan districts currently operating with a budget deficit, even though it takes in more than $8,000 per pupil. According the Michigan Department of Education, the district overspent by 17 percent last year. A good place to start looking for ways to get out of the red would be the teachers union contract, since the costs contained therein consume almost 70 percent of the district's general funds.
Every year, state and local governments and school districts hand over tens of millions of dollars to unions with no questions asked. These funds are guaranteed under the guise of union dues, which are extracted from employees’ paychecks regardless of whether or not they support the union. But in reality, it’s government officials who agree to mandatory dues, then collect and turn them over. Those funds are available for a wide range of things, including electioneering, public relations, lobbying and litigation
A Lansing State Journal editorial today calling for term limit reforms cites Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh, who wrote after the Nov. 2 elections that 86 percent of new legislators are already “political careerists.”
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.
