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.
The Department of Natural Resources and Environment today announced the denial of the permit to install applied for by Wolverine Power Supply to build a new 600 megawatt coal fired power plant near Rogers City. DNRE claims to have based its decision on a finding by the Michigan Public Service Commission that the company failed to demonstrate the plant was needed to meet future supply needs. Michigan residents should demand that the same standard regarding the need for new power be applied to all new proposed power generation including wind power. Of course that will not happen from Gov. Jennifer Granholm's administration, which is a cheerleader for alternative energy even though it will raise the cost of energy bills for consumer and businesses in the state.
Revenue from Michigan's sales tax is expected to be down just 1 percent this year, which is one more reason why talk among legislators about expanding it to services is a bad idea, Fiscal Policy Analyst James Hohman writes in this Oakland Press Op-Ed.
On
May 20, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed perhaps the greatest privatization act
in American history into law, opening 270 million acres of western lands for
private and family settlement, and dispensing to American citizens 10 percent
of the entire area of the United
States. From 1871 to 1951, 1,505,405
homestead patents were processed, and the Homestead Act provided land in
the American West until its repeal in 1976. Although distinctly a political act
of war, the Homestead Act encouraged the American dream of personal
responsibility and right to property independent of government for over 100 years.
Ever since the American War for Independence,
the distribution of unsettled frontier lands was a question as ambiguous as it
was controversial. Early American boundaries in the frontier arbitrarily
reflected odd natural landmarks, which often led to overlapping claims and
border disputes between property owners. More structural organization was
achieved with the passage of the Land Ordinance of 1785, dividing the frontier
into 6-mile square blocks of land called townships, which further subdivided
into 36 segments 1 mile (640 acres) each. These very scientific surveys were
conducted using astronomical pinpoints, revolutionizing the frontier method for
land surveying. After survey divisions were made, the government began selling
the 1-mile plots of unsettled land for $1 per acre, an outrageous price
considering inflation adjustments and the fact that uncultivated frontier land
was often arduous to prepare for farming.
Last week, Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman introduced the American Power Act, (Full text, section-by-section summary) the latest version of federal cap-and-trade legislation. A White House statement said the legislation "will put America on the path to a clean energy economy that will create American jobs building the solar panels, wind blades and the car batteries of the future."
Analysis and commentary by Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek figured prominently into media coverage of teacher salaries and health care recently.
His work on the Michigan School District Health Insurance database was cited in The Bay City Times in a story about Bay City Public Schools administrators agreeing to contribute to the cost of their own health insurance premiums. Teachers in the district contribute nothing toward that cost. The same is true for teachers in the East Lansing schools, according to a commentary in the Lansing State Journal. Teachers in both districts are in contract negotiations. Current contracts for those and every other district in Michigan can be found here.
More than any other state, Michiganders identify with the Great Lakes. They are essential to the state's tourism industry and provide extensive recreational opportunities to boaters, fisherman, and those who stroll the many miles of pristine beaches. It seems hard to believe that anyone would want to put the Great Lakes at risk for the unproven development of off-shore wind energy.
Teacher salaries in Michigan rank first in the nation when compared against relative state wealth, The Bay City Times reported. This despite claims by the Michigan Education Association that school personnel have made $1 billion in concessions over the past three years.
Personnel costs, primarily for salaries, insurance and retirement benefits, eat up 85 percent of the Port Huron Area School District's budget, according to this contract analysis by Mike Van Beek, education policy director, that appeared in today's Port Huron Times Herald.
The Macomb Daily reported recently that teachers in Utica Community Schools agreed to $6 million in employee concessions. On the surface, this appears to be a major step towards helping the district balance its budget. In fact, these concessions won't help all that much.
By Jack McHugh
"If the Michigan Legislature is going to interfere to deprive shareholders of the option to remove directors of public companies domiciled in Michigan whenever their boards are challenged, why would investors allocate capital in a state that deprives them of their rights?"
Press Release from Biglari Holdings, as reported by MIRS News
From MichiganVotes.org:
2010 House Bill 6128 (Require MDOT advise and support DRIC "community representatives")
Introduced by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D) on May 4, 2010, to require the Michigan Department of Transportation to give advice and support to "community representatives" (presumably from labor, environmental, and faith-based organizations, although the term is not defined) in negotiating "community benefit agreements" with the private developer of a new Detroit River bridge (who also would be an MDOT contractor). The bill does not actually require the developer to conclude such an agreement, however.
A new paper from the National Institute on Retirement Security observes that state workers receive an average of $22.17 an hour in wages, local workers receive $22.15 an hour, and private sector workers receive $20.57 an hour. But even so, they argue that public-sector employees receive wages that are 11 percent to 12 percent below private-sector averages. They do this by adjusting wage rates to account for demographic differences between the two groups, such as sex, race and educational attainment.
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.
A new study by Johns Hopkins University's Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education casts more doubts on the commonly held belief that expanding state-funded preschool programs is a "can't miss" venture. This new report found that only three of 28 programs studied showed "strong evidence of effectiveness" once their participants finished kindergarten.
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.
