At bottom, Michigan Education Association President Iris Salters’ latest commentary in The Detroit News is an attempt to lay a guilt trip on Michigan taxpayers, essentially saying, "If you really cared about your children you’d send us more money." This sort of manipulation can be annoying when it comes from an acquaintance. When it comes from the president of a multimillion dollar government employee union and lobbying group, it’s bound to be expensive.
House Bill 5319 is a direct threat to private property rights guaranteed in the U.S. and Michigan constitutions.
"This bill would place groundwater in the public trust and would be the single biggest taking of private property in Michigan's history. The result: government ownership of groundwater, overturning a century of Michigan water law," explains Russ Harding, senior environmental policy analyst and director of the Property Rights Network, in a recent Detroit Free Press Op-Ed.
A new study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, called "Economic Freedom and Employment Growth in the U.S. States," concludes that there is a link between economic freedom and employment growth. Other studies have come to the same conclusion. One of the things that makes this one different is its findings on labor markets. The authors write: "In addition, we find that less restrictive state and national government labor market policies have the greatest impact on employment growth in U.S. states."
The Michigan Auditor General yesterday released a 72-page audit of the Michigan Economic Growth Authority program, finding that it is poorly administered. MEGA is the state's flagship "jobs" program, granting selective tax breaks and subsidies to particular firms selected to be "winners" by its staff.
Moments ago, the Michigan House of Representatives passed a bill that would force every charter school in the state to enroll its teachers in the underfunded and hugely expensive "defined benefits" pension system to which conventional public school employees belong. This year, conventional school districts are required to pay an amount equal to 16.94 percent of their payroll into this system, which promises its members lifetime monthly pension payments and health insurance upon their retirement. To deal with the increased cost pressures, next year school contributions to the system are expected to rise to 19 percent of payroll.
About 70 percent of the Saline Area School's annual $53 million operating 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.) Yet few people know what is in this or other school labor contracts. This description of Saline's is part of an ongoing series.
A revelation during a Michigan Senate committee hearing last week is drawing some new connections to the mechanism that enabled some 40,000 home-based day care owners to be categorized as public employees and unionized. There are indications that some of the so-called dots that need connecting may include the Granholm administration and Lt. Gov. John Cherry.
This is tough news for unions, but good news for taxpayers and, over the long haul, for workers as well. The Michigan Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a lower court decision invalidating Detroit's Living Wage Ordinance. While this doesn't immediately invalidate living wage ordinances in the state, it does send a fairly clear signal that the state's highest court is not eager to salvage living wage.
Jobs that were promised in exchange for state subsidies in three high-profile cases in Flint never came to fruition, according to The Flint Journal.
Mackinac Center analysts have found that less than one-third of the jobs promised by the state have actually been created, The Journal reported.
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/or 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.
Some actions that are not — and should not be — illegal are nonetheless reprehensible. Civil society plays a key role in these instances to foster good behavior. In the case of Pittsburgh Steelers' quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who was accused of sexual assault last month, the NFL is correctly enforcing social norms outside of the legal system.
Earth Day does not seem to have much to do anymore with a desire for cleaner air, land or water but instead with promoting a left-leaning political ideology. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, America has made much progress in cleaning up the environment. The air and water in the nation today is much cleaner than when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire on June 22, 1969, and major American cities such as Los Angles were frequently engulfed in smog in the 1970s. According to this recent article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, there are now more than three dozen species of fish found in the Cuyahoga River. Los Angles in the 1970s typically issued smog alerts for almost one-third of the days in the year. Today smog alerts in Los Angles are fairly rare.
Things are about to get a lot tougher for the 440 or so Michigan school districts that buy employee health insurance from the Michigan Education Special Services Association. MESSA recently reported that it's predicting a statewide average increase of 13 percent in the price of its premiums.
The average state employee compensation package costs approximately $93,039. Inflation-adjusted wages and benefits have increased 25 percent since fiscal 1999. The figures include the value of all benefits from state-paid retirement contributions to dry cleaning allowances.
With all the attention regarding the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed regulation of CO2, there has been little attention to another of the agency's current rulemaking efforts regarding ozone.
Ozone is formed from vehicles and smokestack emissions mixing in the air in the presence of sunlight, forming smog. Arguably the new and much stricter standards that the EPA is proposing for ozone could have nearly as big an effect on the American economy as the CO2 regulations. The ozone standard was made more stringent during the Clinton administration and was adjusted downward once again during the Bush administration. The current standard is 0.075 part per million measured over an 8 hour average. The EPA is proposing to drop the standard to between 0.060 and 0.070 ppm and for the first time implement a secondary standard of 7 to 15 ppm for the entire season. The estimated results of this rulemaking would be to place between 76 to 96 percent of the counties currently monitored in the country into non-compliance.
Jobs in the film industry in Michigan fell nearly 10 percent, despite the state giving away millions of dollars of tax money in subsidies to movie makers, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Fiscal Policy Analyst James Hohman said the subsidy program is expected to cost taxpayers $155 million in fiscal 2010.
The LM-2 forms for 2009 are up on the Department of Labor website. Let’s look at some of the highlights. Up first, the United Auto Workers. It was a tough year all around for the crew at Solidarity House:
We'll have comments on more union financial reports over the coming days.
Rick Lowe of the Nassau Institute posted a blog entry April 3 about his experience with a group gathered near his home in the Bahamas to watch and discuss Michael Moore's latest film, "Capitalism: A Love Story."
Moore actually called into this group to say hello and talk about the importance of voting. In the exchange he fielded a question from Lowe in which Moore perhaps inadvertently made an argument about the insidious nature of government business subsidy programs, in particular ones like the Michigan Film Incentive program.
Another study was released this month showing that teacher professional development programs are no guarantor of higher student achievement. The research compared middle school math teachers who were enrolled in an intensive professional development program with teachers who were not and found that students of teachers receiving the extra training failed to perform any better than students of teachers in the control group. This same method was employed by a study a few years ago that found professional development to be just as inept at raising student reading scores.
Interesting snippet from Saturday’s Flint Journal: Democratic Attorney General candidate David Leyton, campaigning at the Democratic state convention in Detroit, felt the need to address A Certain Labor Law Reform That Supposedly Has No Chance of Ever Becoming Law Here. According to the Journal’s Kristin Longley, Leyton drew cheers by pledging to “work to make sure Michigan never becomes a right-to-work state.”[*]
With a secondary-offense only provision, I would be agnostic on the ban and not view it as per se unreasonable in the way of seatbelt or motorcycle helmet mandates, which infringe on my right to wrack my own body as I see fit (but not others').
So I asked my Mackinac Center colleagues whether I have turned into a squish on nanny-statism. The consensus was that pro or con, in the form originally adopted by the House, this probably is not a hill for limited government defenders to die on. Some responses from Mackinac Center policy staffers:
It has been two years since Michigan's film subsidy program became law, which is sufficient for it to have gotten off the ground and had some measureable impact on the state's economy.
According to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of September 2009 (the most recent month available[*]), there were fewer people employed by the film industry in Michigan than before the subsidy program began.
The shell corporation created by Gov. Jennifer Granholm's administration and labor allies to shanghai 40,000 home-based day care providers into a union has "no authority to set rates or provide benefits," according to the Detroit Free Press.
Some $3.7 million in "dues" is taken from small-business owners who operate day cares in their homes. The money comes out of subsidy checks the contractors receive from the state on behalf of low-income parents who hire home-based child care operators while they work or attend school.
As mentioned in a related article published in Michigan Capitol Confidential ("Analysis: What's Next for Michigan Tea Parties?" April 20), although Tea Party rallies held across the state and nation last week had mixed results in turnout, the movement itself appears strong, according to recent polls, including a Rasmussen one showing that 24 percent of U.S. voters now say they consider themselves a part of the Tea Party movement, and 40 percent have a favorable view of it.
In his latest contribution to The Detroit News editorial page, Teamsters General President James Hoffa claims the title of “defender of the middle class” on behalf of the union movement. One wonders why he bothered — aside from that, the article is devoid of content, lacking even the raw anger of a class-warfare broadside. Seriously, who is this middle class? How exactly does the union movement fight for them? By shooting down modest reforms to our public schools? Concocting clever schemes for sucking money out of the state treasury? Questionable lawsuits? Even more questionable grievances?
