(Editor's note: This was originally posted by Andrew Coulson, a Mackinac Center adjunct scholar, on The Cato Institute Web site.)
Michigan is facing a projected $2.8 billion state budget shortfall. As a result, Gov. Jennifer Granholm has cut $212 million from public school spending — rousing the ire of parents and education officials around the state. But if Michigan merely converted all its conventional public schools to charter public schools, without altering current funding formulas, it would save $3.5 billion.
Two Op-Eds by Mackinac Center scholars appeared in The Oakland Press Sunday as part of a feature the paper calls "Michigan Made Better."
"Political Anatomy 101 - The Spine and the Mouth," by President Joseph G. Lehman, which first appeared in Michigan Capitol Confidential, discusses the need for politicians to not just talk about doing the right thing, but to have the backbone to actually do the right thing.
Government entities in Genesee County have increased spending on lobbyists 76 percent, according to an analysis by The Flint Journal.
Jack McHugh, the Center's senior legislative analyst, told The Journal that the process is a vicious cycle, with tax-funded lobbying for more tax dollars leading to "spending more than government has available."
Another Michigan Economic Development Corp. tax subsidy has come under fire.
North American Bancard, based in Troy, was granted a $21.5 million subsidy and says it will create close to 1,900 jobs, according to Capital News Service. So far, the firm says it has created 50 jobs. Michael LaFaive, director of the Mackinac Center's Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, tells CNS that such pronouncements are primarily a public relations tool for politicians "to create the illusion that they are doing something to create jobs."
A recent rally at West Bloomfield High School was apparently arranged by "madder than hell" parents, who are responding to contacts from school employees requesting their support in opposing reductions to state funding. Since all school districts are experiencing cuts, it's rather surprising that such a rally would come from one of Michigan's most luxuriously funded districts.
Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith, D-Salem, has proposed imposing a graduated income tax on Michigan residents and also extending the sales tax to services. She expects these hikes to extract an additional $6.5 billion a year from families and businesses here.
Rep. Smith and others seeking tax hikes (on both sides of the aisle) often claim that because of changes in the state's economy, Michigan's tax system extracts fewer dollars per unit of economic activity than it did in an earlier era.
The already problematic relationship between the State of Michigan and the Service Employees International Union is becoming more and more troubling, as SEIU Local 517M, which represents around 4,400 state employees in the human services, scientific and engineering, and technical bargaining units, reached terms for changes to their contract with the state of Michigan. (Another SEIU local, #526M, represents about 8,200 corrections staff.) As we have reported on this blog, another SEIU subsidiary, the Member Action Services Center, received $2 million in refundable Michigan Economic Growth Authority tax credits last month.
Michigan had the best job creation it has had since the boom 1990s last month. The state added 38,600 jobs in a single month, a gain of 1.0 percent. The last time the state added more than 1 percent in a single month was in August 1998 when GM workers returned to work after a month-long strike.
According to a recent poll, 60 percent of 600 Michigan voters believe schools are underfunded and another 83 percent think teacher pay is about right or too low.
As much as anything, polls like this measure respondents' knowledge of the particular issue. Studies show that when respondents know the facts, their opinions on public education issues change significantly.
For a business trip two years ago, I took a connecting flight from the Lansing airport to Detroit so as to catch another plane to my destination. It was a near-perfect fall morning with all the trees at full color, and I had a window seat. The pilot rewarded me further by plotting his route over the "Lakes Area" of western Oakland County, and for the first time ever I was given a "God's eye" view of the community where I spent most of the first 34 years of my life. It was breathtaking to pass above the dozens of beautiful lakes, parks, winding roads and much else that provided an idyllic place to grow up. The amazing part is how typical this is — just about anybody from Michigan could have these thoughts if they flew over their hometown. I was lost in pleasant memories that flooded back as fast as the plane was moving while we zipped by one body of water after another.
The Detroit Free Press reports that Gov. Jennifer Granholm is calling for legal action to block the shipping route between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River in an attempt to prevent Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes system.
Asian carp is a non-native, invasive species that could threaten the ecological balance of the Great Lakes.
Russ Harding, director of the Center's Property Rights Network, is cited in a Detroit News editorial today about proposed legislation that would place all groundwater in Michigan in a "public trust."
The News cites this Viewpoint by Harding, which explains how Michigan for well over a century has used riparian water rights to guide public policy on the matter. Such as approach, Harding explains, is used by most states east of the Mississippi, and gives property owners rights to reasonable use of the water under the land they own. This approach has served Michigan well, Harding says, because Michigan has an abundance of groundwater. "If Michigan has a water shortage," Harding has been known to ask, "then why do so many homes require sump pumps?" House Bill 5319, however, would put that water in a public trust and require property owners to obtain a permit from the state to use the water.
Imagine you've found out that your job was just eliminated by your employer — an experience Michigan residents have faced at an increasing rate in the last decade. Now imagine your co-workers, out of pure goodwill, decide to collectively take pay cuts so that you can keep your job and your employer can stay afloat. What a remarkable act of kindness this would be!
The state archeologist office, which traces the remains of human civilization and industry, is now found in the Michigan State Housing Development Authority.
Today, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in an important property rights case, Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which may have an impact on beach walking along Michigan's Great Lakes shoreline.
As a public service, we are making available a copy of the MEA's LM-2 report for 2008-2009, which you can download here.
Satisfy your curiosity! Or just get a sense of how big the MEA really is!
The Michigan Education Association's LM-2 report for the 2008-09 school year is up at the U.S. Department of Labor's Web site. (You can also check it out here.) This is the annual report on spending that nearly all private-sector unions and a handful of government employee unions are required to file annually.
According to a Detroit News article, a countywide proposal to raise taxes for bus service will not appear before Oakland County voters anytime soon because there isn't sufficient support from the Oakland County Board of Commissioners to place it on the ballot. The News also notes that 38 of 61 communities within Oakland County have already opted out of getting bus service from (and thus paying taxes to) the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation.
The annual revenue of the Michigan Education Association school employee union in the year ending Aug. 31, 2009, was $132.2 million. This comes to $83.01 for every K-12 student in the state.
Sources: MEA revenue from "Form LM-2” filed by the union on Nov. 24, 2009, with the U.S. Department of Labor. Per-pupil amount based on 2009-2010 pupil count projected by the May, 2009, Michigan Consensus Revenue Agreement.
Our ongoing examination of the SEIU-Member Action Service Center (we’re calling it MASC for short) continues to bring up interesting nuggets of information about the for-profit union subsidiary that received a $2 million tax credit from the state:
It is not at all clear that SEIU was seriously considering other locations aside from Redford; the union did not appear to have taken steps to set up operations outside of Michigan in case the MEDC grant fell through. This is awkward for MEDC because part of the rationale behind its decision to grant this operation MEGA credits was the possibility that SEIU might put the Member Action Service Center elsewhere.
Russ Harding, senior environmental analyst, wrote an Op-Ed in Saturday's New York Times about the problems ethanol subsidies create, calling on the federal government to put an end to them.
Harding wrote that these subsidies will not make the United States less dependent on foreign energy sources, nor does ethanol production help the environment. He also pointed out that increased ethanol production has had an adverse impact on the food supply for the world's poorest people.
In his weekly column in the Lansing insiders publication "The Dome," Tim Skubick joined the finger-wagging chorus bashing lawmakers for taking two weeks off for deer hunting season. The meme played by the Governor and attention-seeking statewide office candidates is, if they stayed in town they could "solve the school funding crisis, the economic mess, college kids not getting their $4,000 state scholarships," etc.
The University of Michigan's "Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics" predicted last week that Michigan will lose 60,300 jobs in 2010 and unemployment will rise to 15.8 percent. In 2011, the figures will be 16,200 jobs lost and 15.1 percent unemployment, according to the forecast.
Russ Harding, senior environmental analyst for the Mackinac Center, is cited in Reporting Michigan on the recent revelation that e-mails regarding research on "man-made global warming" may contain information that shows scientists massaged data to downplay evidence contrary to their views.
In earlier posts on the Michigan Economic Growth Authority's decision to grant a $2 million tax credit to the Service Employees International Union Member Action Service Center (MASC — get it?), we stated that the credit was refundable. To this point, we have yet to see any evidence that this report was incorrect. But a lot hinges on this point; a refundable credit means that the state could wind up paying as much as $2 million to the SEIU subsidiary even if they have no tax liability, which would be an especially disturbing outcome. So we have spent the last few days attempting to contact the Michigan Economic Development Corp. (which administers MEGA) and get the definitive word. The MEDC's response to this seemingly simple yes-or-no question has been unenlightening in some ways and very enlightening in others. It all depends on what you want to know.
