Michigan's brownfield contaminated site cleanup program, once considered by many to be the best in the nation, is today largely dysfunctional. The main problem is that it is nearly impossible to get closure — once you check in you can never check out. Businesses are reluctant to invest money to clean up contaminated sites when they are at the whim of state environmental regulators for a never ending series of additional cleanup requirements.
In the latest development on the secrecy and unanswered questions surrounding a potential $10 million state subsidy for the Hangar42 film studio project, WoodTV in Grand Rapids reports the following response from the Michigan Film Office to their inquiries: "We have been directed by the Attorney General's office and Treasury to not divulge either an approval or denial" of the deal. (For background, see "Government secrecy rules on $10 million film studio subsidy.")
Here’s an interesting and illustrative article in last Sunday’s Washington Post comparing Montgomery County in Maryland with Fairfax County in Virginia. (Hat tip to Mary Katherine Ham at the Weekly Standard.) Montgomery and Fairfax are very similar — both are in the suburbs of Washington DC, both have around a million in population, both have prospered by drawing professionals from the capital, both have atrocious rush-hour traffic — but in terms of how local governments have weathered the recession, the two counties diverge. Montgomery County is required to bargain with many of its government employees under Maryland state law and is having difficulties dealing with declines in tax revenues. Public-sector collective bargaining is barred in Virginia, and Fairfax is in better shape.
The latest news from the excellent Chris Knape series in The Grand Rapids Press is that final approval of a $10 million state subsidy for the Hangar42 film studio project touted by Gov. Jennifer Granholm in her annual State of the State address last January has been delayed due to paperwork problems.
Gov. Granholm's call to raise taxes yet again in order to fix the latest budget overspending crisis she and the Legislature have created will send more Michigan residents packing, according to this Op-Ed in The Oakland Press, Grand Rapids Press, Dearborn Times-Herald and Detroit News by Morey Fiscal Policy Director Michael LaFaive.
The Michigan Economic Development Corp. creates more job announcements than jobs, Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, points out in this Lansing State Journal Op-Ed.
The MEDC said last week that criticism of its performance is unwarranted. LaFaive says it is overdue.
It is encouraging that Gov. Jennifer Granholm has issued an executive order (2009-44) abolishing the Michigan Climate Action Council. It should never have been created to begin with. Committing Michigan to regional greenhouse gas emission requirements to combat the elusive fear of global warming is fraught with peril for Michigan households and businesses. Many of the recommendations coming out of the Council will invariably lead to higher energy costs for heating and cooling homes and running businesses.
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.
"Why hasn't the president fixed it yet!? Clearly he's incompetent."
Blah blah blah. It's pure mindless partisanship, and merely promotes the ideological hubris that Big Government (and the president) is God and and fix any problem. It (and he) are not: As Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said in quote repeated in the Wall Street Journal, "The government doesn't have everything we need to solve this problem."
Patrick Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, explains in a Detroit Free Press Op-Ed today why the Mackinac Center and the Michigan Press Association jointly filed an amicus brief with the Michigan Supreme Court in a Freedom of Information Act case stemming from e-mails and teachers union business in Howell Public Schools.
At a recent rally where school employees called for an increase in state taxes, a representative of the Warren Education Association claimed that school revenues were in such disrepair that some students had to go without desks. A spokesperson from Warren Consolidated Schools denied this claim, but even if it were true, a few very minor policy changes well short of tax hikes would be all that is necessary to pay for many new desks.
The Michigan Department of Education improperly calculated the average public school teacher salary in the state for the last six years, reporting figures significantly lower than what is correct. Corrected figures for the past two years were recently released.
If you blinked you might've missed it. It could've slipped under readers' radar last week due to news coverage of the tragedy occurring in the Gulf of Mexico, the new immigration law in Arizona, the season finale of "Survivor" or the series conclusion of "Lost." But the Fourth Annual International Conference on Climate Change, held in Chicago May 16-18 and sponsored by The Heartland Institute, provided three days of news-intensive stories that should've taken precedence over nearly every other story of last week's news cycle.
Residents of the Great Lakes State can identify with the frustration of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who said on Monday "Let's be clear: Every day that this oil sits is one more day that more of our marsh dies." The oil spill in the Gulf is an environmental tragedy made worse by federal regulators' inaction. Two recent decisions demonstrate how the environmental regulatory process can do more harm than good in protecting natural resources.
Grand Rapids Press reporter Chris Knape continues to dig into the questions raised by the Mackinac Center about a potential $10 million subsidy for a film studio infrastructure project called Hangar42. At the heart of controversy is the fact that a former Lear Inc. facility in Walker, which had been listed for sale at $9.8 million last fall, is now claimed to be worth $40 million by an investor seeking a 25 percent "film and digital media infrastructure project" subsidy from the state. Gov. Jennifer Granholm touted the project in her annual State of the State address last January.
Michigan public school teachers are the highest paid in the country when compared to state wealth, according to the Livingston Daily Press & Argus.
The information comes from an analysis by Education Policy Director Mike Van Beek using data from the National Education Association.
A columnist for Michigan Business Review says the Michigan Economic Development Corp.'s complaints about critics who point out the agency's failures is a "highly unusual move."
"I sense that they're in survival mode, just as the MEDC was in the final year of the Engler administration," Morey Fiscal Policy Director Mike LaFaive told the columnist.
Grand Rapids-area media have picked up on the story of unanswered questions involving the Michigan Film Office, the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and a movie studio that Mackinac Center analysts uncovered.
Fox-17, WOOD-TV and The Grand Rapids Press had coverage Thursday about Hangar42 Studios after the Center sent out this news release.
After awarding $9 million in tax credits to a convicted felon and a report that showed it only helped create 18,000 jobs in 11 years, the Michigan Economic Development Corp. today issued a statement saying it is "deeply concerned" over "unwarranted criticism," according to annarbor.com.
Today marks the 223rd anniversary of the beginning of the Constitutional Convention. Wesley Reynolds, a Mackinac Center operations intern, writes about on his blog, "Landmarks of Liberty."
The Michigan Education Association teachers union held protests around the state Monday behind a rallying cry of "Enough is Enough" and claiming there are "constant" cuts to education funding, according to WILX, even though the numbers are not on their side.
An editorial in today's Jackson Citizen Patriot advocates a position that Mackinac Center analysts have known for years — school privatization saves money.
The editorial refers to the Center's 2009 school privatization survey, which found that nearly 45 percent of public school districts in Michigan contract for one or more of the three main noncore services — custodial, food and janitorial.
In following up on questions raised by an ongoing Mackinac Center investigation, Grand Rapids Press reporter Chris Knape added two facts to the pattern of information so far known about the proposed Hangar42 film subsidy deal.
First, suspicions that the sale of the Hangar42 property would be in the form of a land contract were confirmed. This is significant, because it would mean that an $10 million "film infrastructure investment" subsidy might be granted with no actual money being spent by the "investors."
(Editor's note: A version of this article appeared in the May 18, 2010, Port Huron Times Herald.)
An ongoing ad campaign from the Michigan Education Association claims that "politicians love to treat school employees like punching bags" and ignore the sacrifices of school employees whose "salaries and benefits continue to be cut." In the Port Huron Area School District, about 70 percent of the $106 million operating budget goes towards paying employees covered by current collective bargaining agreements for teachers and a few other employee groups. Yet few people know what is in these or other school labor contracts.
From MichiganVotes.org:
2010 House Bill 6180 (Create "uncompleted subdivision" renaissance tax break zones)
See also House Bill 6181, which creates a state revolving loan fund to bail out the local governments that aren't collecting the special assessment revenue they were counting on to pay the debt on the infrastructure projects. The bill is cosponsored by Reps. McDowell, Denby, Rogers, Marleau, Walsh and Daley.
