The New York Times has addressed an issue Labor Policy Director Paul Kersey first wrote about more than a month ago — that of the union's demands for an end to concessions despite being the beneficiary of GM and Chrysler bankruptcy restructuring.
"The bankruptcies were structured to protect the union interests at the expense of the creditors and investors," Kersey told The Times. "So I don't see there being a whole lot of public support for them pursuing a restoration of the concessions."
A film studio that has experienced problems in the past is in danger of being evicted from city-owned property in Allen Park due to lease problems, according to The Detroit News.
Unity Studios could be forced to leave by June 7 if the issue is not resolved.
Today's editorial in The Detroit News is titled "Reforming education retirement benefits has turned into money grab" and both cites and draws heavily from this Michigan Capitol Confidential article by Jack McHugh, senior legislative analyst.
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation and the Michigan Press Association jointly filed an amicus brief at the Michigan Supreme Court seeking to protect the Freedom of Information Act, according to the Livingston Daily Press & Argus.
"The Freedom of Information Act provides Michigan residents with an affordable and effective way to monitor the actions of public officials," Patrick J. Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, said, according to the Livingston Daily. "When the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that public employee communications, such as e-mails on a government e-mail system, can be barred from public access simply by declaring the communications 'personal,' FOIA was largely gutted."
Teachers in Utica Community Schools, the second biggest district in the state, agreed to about $6 million in contract concessions Monday, including a salary freeze and paying more toward the cost of their own health insurance premiums, according to the Macomb Daily.
(Editor's note: A version of this article appeared in the May 9, 2010, Macomb Daily.)
About 70 percent of the Utica Community Schools' annual $260 million budget goes toward paying employees covered by its current collective bargaining agreement for teachers and a few other employee groups. (The budget figure does not include debt service payments on past construction projects or other capital expenses.) Yet few people know what is in this or other school labor contracts. This analysis of Utica's is part of an ongoing series.
A new report from the Kalamazoo-based Upjohn Institute found that millions of dollars in tax credits given away by the Michigan Economic Growth Authority created just 18,000 jobs over 11 years, according to The Detroit News. Michigan continues to lead the nation in unemployment.
Anyone who is concerned about protecting the Great Lakes from diversions should be worried when the state Legislature has to resort to a non-binding House Concurrent Resolution as a last line of defense against large scale diversions from Lake Michigan. House Concurrent Resolution 49, introduced by Rep. Rebekah Warren, D-Ann Arbor, urges the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Council to scrutinize carefully the proposed the 18.5 million gallon per day diversion at Waukesha, Wis. The resolution passed the House with a slightly modified version passing in the Senate.
Generous unemployment benefits and extensions could be causing people to illegally turn down job offers, according to The Detroit News.
The extension "is the most generous safety net we've ever offered nationally," Senior Economist David Littmann told The News. Littmann also noted that about 15 percent of Michigan's economy is "underground," and involves trading services and bartering that is not reported to the government.
New school fiscal data from 2008-2009 are available from the Michigan Department of Education, including average teacher salaries. The Michigan Education Association is claiming that school employees have made $1 billion worth of concessions over the last three years, but this latest report shows average teacher salaries continuing to grow.
There are good reasons why so many Americans are disgusted by the current state of politics, and a story in today's MichiganCapitolConfidential.com captures many of them. It describes progress in the Legislature of a modest school employee pension reform proposed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Here's the gist: Most Democratic and many Republican lawmakers are self-interestedly serving the system, not the people.
News reports often refer to the larger figure in the headline as the amount of underfunding in Michigan state and school employee pension funds.
However, the figure includes not just pension liabilities, but also future retiree health benefits, which according to a recent Michigan Supreme Court case are not considered an enforceable obligation on the state and its taxpayers. When the amount not set aside for these non-obligations is removed, the actual retirement benefit obligation pre-funding shortfall is $11.5 billion.
The Royal Oak Daily Tribune and the Macomb Daily both editorialize today against Senate Bill 1285, introduced by Sen. Bruce Patterson, R-Canton, which would mandate that newspaper publishers charge a deposit on each paper sold equal to 50 percent of the paper's cost and use the money to create recycling programs and redemption centers. Any unclaimed deposit money would be turned over to the state and put in the school aid fund.
Senior economist David Littmann told The Oakland Press that Thursday's large stock market drop is an indication the United States could face a "very, very serious secondary recession."
Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, has introduced a resolution that would withdraw Michigan from the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord. Similar resolutions will be introduced by legislators in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Gov. Jennifer Granholm joined the governors of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa and Kansas in signing the accord, which calls for a 20 percent reduction of CO2 emissions below 2005 levels by 2020 and would require extensive economic pain with little to no environmental gain.
Politicians raiding various pots of tax money to fix their self-created overspending crises and balance the state budget have left certain line items short, according to this Detroit News editorial.
The News cites this report by Jack McHugh, the Center's senior legislative analyst, as one example.
Patrick J. Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, is scheduled to be on The Frank Beckmann Show on WJR-AM760 at 9:19 a.m. to discuss several e-mails that shed light on how 40,000 home-based day care owners were shanghaied into a union despite being small-business owners. The Mackinac Center obtained the e-mails through a Freedom of Information Act request
In today's Wall Street Journal, former mayor of Los Angeles Richard Riordan and investment adviser Alexander Rubalcava describe the looming bankruptcy hanging over Los Angeles, caused by the same process of "Detroitification" that plagues Michigan: A political class progressively hollowing out the private economy to prop up the perks and privileges of an unsustainable government establishment.
On Monday, a Michigan Capitol Confidential story brought to light a series of e-mails between Nick Ciaramitaro, director of legislation and public policy for AFSCME Council 25, and representatives from the Michigan Department of Human Services and the Michigan Home-Based Child Care Council (MHBCCC).
As described in a previous post and essay here, people often respond to government-generated disincentives such as high taxes by voting with their feet, migrating to places with greater economic freedom and opportunity.
The lesson is reinforced by a recent article written by the highly regarded economist Richard Vedder, "High Taxes Lead to Population Losses," published in the magazine of the American Legislative Exchange Council. He compared the state and local tax burdens of the 10 lowest-tax and 10 highest-tax states with their migration patterns (Michigan falls in neither group). This showed that from 2000 through mid-2009, 4.2 million more people moved out of the 10 highest-tax states than moved in to them. In contrast, the 10 lowest-tax states enjoyed a net in-migration of 2.8 million souls.
The revenues of Michigan school districts are directly linked to enrollments: More students means more money for a district's operations, and fewer students means less.
In Michigan, enrollments are falling in many if not most districts, which means that labor costs must also be trimmed. The process of trimming can pit different school employee groups against one another.
There is no shortage of bad ideas coming out of Lansing. Senate Bill 1285 introduced by Sen. Bruce Patterson, R-Canton, would require customers to pay a deposit on each newspaper they purchase equal to one-half the retail price of the newspaper. The proposed law would operate much like Michigan's bottle deposit law. Newspapers would be required to be returned to a redemption center, with each publisher in the state required to operate at least one such center.
On Thursday, April 29, 2010, Dr. Margo Thorning was the keynote speaker at a Mackinac Center Issues & Ideas forum titled "Global Environmental and Economic Challenges." Thorning, vice president and chief economist for the American Council for Capital Formation, discussed the impact cap-and-trade and other climate change legislation would have on Michigan's economy.
Michael Van Beek, director of education policy, corrects a common myth about school funding in "Special Report: The Changing Face of Education in Michigan," by WILX-TV in Lansing.
Public school funding in Michigan has increased significantly since the passage of Proposal A, Van Beek explains, while enrollment has decreased and student performance has been flat.
An article last week in The New York Times, "Greek Wealth Is Everywhere, Just Not on Tax Forms," described a wealthy Athens suburb where just 324 households admitted on tax forms that they own a swimming pool. Curious, tax officials obtained satellite imagery of the area and counted 16,974 pools.
