This morning, a loyal reader of Michigan Capitol Confidential posed an important question about a Constitutional Convention that will doubtlessly come up a lot in the months to come. My reply is printed below -- KB.
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I read your bi-monthly newsletter, Michigan Capitol Confidential, all of the time. I love it because it gives me information about Michigan laws and lawmakers I normally would never get elsewhere. Anyway, I've been thinking about how we can impact state government. It turns out that we can demand a constitutional convention in 2010.
Poverty rate data released today shows that Michigan fell further in its economic status. The percentage of Michigan residents living in poverty increased from 14 percent to 14.4 percent in 2008, according to the Census Bureau release.
In 2005, Michigan had the 22nd highest poverty rate. Today's release has the state at the 16th highest.
By Jack McHugh
Updated on Oct. 1
Facing a Sept. 30 deadline to adopt a budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, the Legislature has been busy with more than just closing the desired-spending vs. expected-revenue gap (a.k.a. “the deficit”). In the 30 days preceding the deadline they introduced 304 bills.
The Michigan Education Association union is leading the education establishment's attacks on lawmakers' plan to pass a no-new-taxes budget that among other things reduces state spending on public schools. In a podcast posted yesterday, MEA President Iris K. Salters repeated a claim she made in an Aug. 26 Detroit News Op-Ed that school employees "probably have saved over $700 million" in health care costs. Salters does not disclose the source of this figure.
The saga of a Middleville woman investigated by the state Department of Human Services for the crime of keeping an eye on some neighbors’ kids as they waited for the school bus has gone national after having been all over the blogosphere for days.
Maybe the attention will shed some light on the false promise of “licensure” as a way of protecting the public. In fact, in almost every case licensing laws are promoted by the professionals who will be subject to them for the purpose of limiting competition. The Mackinac Center published an article on this a while back that explains.
Q. If it comes down to an all-cut budget, can House Republicans be counted on to supply the needed votes?
"If House Republicans can't be counted on to support an all-cut budget, what is the reason for the existence of House Republicans?" DiSano said. "That caucus is filled with hard-line conservatives who talk tough in GOP primaries. Now is their chance to shine and cut, cut and cut some more. The question is do they have the guts to go home and explain these cuts?"
Jack McHugh, senior legislative analyst, is quoted in a Detroit News article today about Michigan's budget negotiations and the possibility of a government shutdown if a balanced budget is not passed by midnight tomorrow.
McHugh said powerful state employee unions play a role in the process.
Op-Eds by two Mackinac Center authors were recently featured in the Dearborn Times-Herald.
"Political Anatomy 101," written by President Joseph G. Lehman, explains the need for Michigan politicians - particularly those running for governor - to use their spines as well as their mouths when discussing budget and tax issues with voters.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Mackinac Center's Morey Fiscal Policy, was cited in today's Lansing State Journal in a story about the public's disinterest in tax hikes. The Michigan Legislature currently faces a self-created $2.8 billion overspending crisis and has until midnight Wednesday to eliminate it and pass a balanced fiscal year 2010 budget. The Legislature passed $1.4 billion in tax hikes in 2007 to balance the state budget, since which time Michigan's unemployment rate has doubled.
Yesterday, I published the second part of this essay, which uses an MEDC letter-to-the-editor in the Wall Street Journal to illustrate the agency's pattern of using illegitimate rhetorical devices in response to serious critiques, including distractions, irrelevancies and non sequiturs. Part I was published Wednesday. Here's third and final part:
Following up on yesterday's report of possible corruption in Detroit Public Schools, The Detroit News reports on the arraignment of Ecorse's mayor and controller, who have been charged with conspiracy, bribery and fraud with regards to the city's public works contractor. The pair allegedly received at least $10,000 and a Lexus from the contractor, according to The News.
Do parents really want school choice? Ab-so-lutely. According to a Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency report titled “Explaining School Choice,” when given the ability to choose their children’s school, Michigan parents are exercising that choice at increasing rates.
The state is currently wrestling with how to close a budget for fiscal year 2010 that overspends revenues by $2.8 billion. Some of the proposed cuts to state spending are significant and debate over them may be holding up completion of the budget, which must be passed by midnight Sept. 30 to avoid a government shutdown.
The Michigan Senate has voted to keep the state wetlands program targeted by Gov. Jennifer Granholm for return to the federal government. The vote was along party lines with the Republicans voting to keep the program and the Democrats voting against the legislation. Once again, legislators from both parties have come to the wrong conclusion.
In an effort to help this state's political class bust out of its narrow conceptual box the Detroit News is running a "50 ideas to fix Michigan" feature, solicited from various entities that have a few. The Mackinac Center tried to provide ideas that no one else would offer, that represent not just "cuts" but genuine transformational reform in the way the state does business, and that truly "blow up the box" that constricts most conversations on state budget issues to a simplistic "cuts vs. tax hikes" formula. The first Mackinac Center idea highlighted by the News is one we first offered back in 2003, to save $65 million without reducing the number of law enforcement officers by devolving Michigan State Police road patrols to county sheriff deputies - something the Lansing budgeteers should have on the table this week as they struggle to craft a budget that "saves" the jobs of 105 troopers eliminated last spring.
USA Today cited a recent Mackinac Center study showing that just one-third of jobs promised by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. have come to fruition.
The article discussed the frenzy among various states to create more and more subsidy programs that take money from taxpayers and transfer it to particular companies making promises, particularly in the race to gain so-called green jobs.
Reason's Radley Balko notes that center-left publications including the The American Prospect and The New Republic (plus our own Blogging for Michigan) are "pushing the 'Tenther' smear, aimed at lumping those who, horrors!, still take seriously the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in with the Obama birth certificate deniers and 9/11 truthers."
Perhaps you’ve heard that a majority of members of Congress (or perhaps it’s just the House) have turned down amendments that would commit them to any sort of “public option” that they create. Such a jarring juxtaposition (some would say hypocrisy) is nothing new, of course. Rank has its privileges.
Cross-posted from State House Call
Kansas is a deep-red, Republican state that would have nothing to do with a government takeover of health care, right?
Not quite. Start with the fact that Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s secretary of health and human services, is a Democrat and former governor. Now, two agencies in the state government headed by her hand-picked successor have been helping a union that’s at the forefront of ObamaCare, until recently.
On Wednesday, a legislative conference committee re-wrote a budget proposal for the 2010 K-12 School Aid Fund in such a way that it would reduce the foundation allowance by $218 per student. If enacted, this will yield a total School Aid Fund savings of $346.4 million. The idea of cutting this much from the school budget was swiftly criticized by the governor's budget director, Bob Emerson, who predicted "mass layoffs" because under this proposal the "School Aid Fund isn't adequately funded."
Actually we don't know what they chanted, but MIRS News reported that that tourism-related business officials did demonstrate in front of the Capitol yesterday, protesting a proposed cut to the state's "Pure Michigan" advertising campaign.
Here's a concept for them: If ad campaigns like Pure Michigan are really such a success, why don't the hotels that benefit from this taxpayer largesse pay for it themselves? That the tourist industry's members refuse to do so speaks volumes about the program's real value.
The Detroit News today writes about a possible scandal regarding building construction and land purchases by Detroit Public Schools. The district paid more than $156.2 million for services it may have obtained for $15 million, according to The News. It underscores the importance of transparency.
Yesterday, I published the first part of this essay illustrating how an MEDC letter-to-the-editor responding to a critical Wall Street Journal editorial illustrates the agency's pattern of using illegitimate rhetorical devices to avoid responding to the substance of serious critiques, including distractions, irrelevancies and non sequiturs. Here is the second part of the essay, deconstructing other statements in MEDC CEO Greg Main's letter.
By Jack McHugh
As Michigan faces the potential for yet another budget debacle, frustrated citizens and pundits wonder if there aren't institutional reforms that might mitigate the apparent inability of our state's government establishment to solve long-festering dysfunctions. Things like a part time or unicameral legislature, biannual budgeting, etc.
An Op-Ed by the Center's James Hohman and Eric Imhoff in today's Detroit News highlights the millions of dollars public schools can save by privatizing noninstructional services.
Hohman and Imhoff recently completed the Center's 2009 school privatization survey, in which 100 percent of conventional public school districts cooperated by answering questions about privatized services and money saved.
