National Travel and Tourism Week starts May 7. It’s an ideal time to remind taxpayers, voters and lawmakers that the state of Michigan spends $34 million each year on a program to promote tourism. Unfortunately, the program, called Pure Michigan, is demonstrably ineffective and wasteful. Both the state government and the private trade association for the tourism industry make poorly supported claims on its behalf. A recent statement by tourism lobbyist Deanna Richeson about the Mackinac Center’s research is particularly shameful.
By Jason Hayes
I was pleased to see DTE’s response to my column in which I questioned the value of the MiGreenPower program. Unfortunately, the energy company’s response contained a few errors. So, to help correct the record, I’ll work through a few of the details.
DTE’s first critique employed the unique rebuttal tactic of admitting my argument was correct. It said, “Mr. Hayes first claims that customers already pay for renewable energy in their rates. This is true, of course, but only for the projects used to comply with the Renewable Portfolio Standard.” So, yes, DTE customers do already pay for renewable energy. This wasn’t a terribly effective rebuttal, but it was good for my argument.
By Jack McHugh
First budget votes this week
The House and Senate passed separate versions of an "omnibus" state budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Following weeks of committee hearings and votes this is the first big milestone in an annual budget process that will probably conclude late next month.
By Kahryn Riley
Michigan’s Criminal Justice Policy Commission recently heard from representatives of Oakland and Kent counties about Michigan’s system of pretrial detention. At the request of the Legislature, the commission has the task of examining Michigan’s criminal justice system to identify ways to save money and improve its effectiveness.
Occupational licensing laws are a growing and significant barrier to gainful employment, affecting more than one out of every five workers in Michigan. A bipartisan group of U.S. representatives and senators is proposing a reform that would take a look at these regulations.
Michigan lawmakers are going to take another $1.5 billion from taxpayers this year and distribute it to state universities. That is roughly $390 for every household in the state. Yet it may be that in no other area of government is there less accountability than in sending taxpayer dollars to these institutions.
In a recent piece in Bridge Magazine, I made two key points: 1) By subsidizing public universities, Michigan taxpayers are redistributing money upward — from middle-class and low-income families to the well-off and educated; and 2) Many Michigan universities are not doing a particularly good job with the money they receive from taxpayers.
Editor's Note: This op-ed was originally published by The Hill on April 19, 2017.
Michigan has made great strides to reforming civil forfeiture — the process that allows law enforcement to take someone’s property and forfeit it to the government. But Michigan still has laws that are among the weakest in the nation when it comes to protecting the constitutional rights of citizens.
If you were wondering whether your government works for you or for politically connected special interests, your elected officials are about to give you a simple answer. That’s because if some politicians and bureaucrats in Lansing have their way, your next income tax check might go to a billionaire real estate developer rather than schools, roads or other public services.
In addition to a bill to give more taxpayer dollars to select developers to build buildings, state lawmakers are considering another package that would give more taxpayer dollars to select businesses. The package contains bills with similar language to that of the state’s old business subsidy program, the Michigan Economic Growth Authority. The state stopped awarding new deals for that program in 2012.
Editor's Note: This op-ed was originally published by The Detroit News on April 13, 2017.
It’s been a bad couple of weeks for those who oversee Michigan’s public employee pension systems. The evidence of mismanagement coming out of Michigan’s Office of Retirement Services is starting to pile up and lawmakers should respond by rolling back the agency’s power.
By Jack McHugh
Senate Bill 275, Ban police sex with prostitutes: Passed 38 to 0 in the Senate
To repeal an exemption that allows police to have sex with a prostitute as part of an investigation.
Who Voted "Yes" and Who Voted "No"
Senate Bill 178, Authorize professional sports teams specialty plates: Passed 33 to 3 in the Senate
In an article in MLive, Michigan Future President Lou Glazer says that Michigan needs to attract more talent. “Michigan won’t be a high-prosperity state unless metro Detroit and metro Grand Rapids are able to compete with national talent magnets like Chicago and Minneapolis for mobile talent,” he told the paper. He should have checked the numbers first since Grand Rapids is the leader of this group and Chicago is shedding people to other places.
In a previous blog post titled “What’s Old Is New Again” I mentioned just three similarities between the state’s disastrous Michigan Economic Growth Authority law of 1995 and the proposed Good Jobs for Michigan legislation (specifically, Senate Bill 242). There are many others — 12 major ones by my count — and most are marked by some identical language or concept.
By Ben DeGrow
Michigan state Superintendent Brian Whiston caused a small stir at a recent State Board of Education meeting when he remarked that Detroit district leaders would be shutting down some schools this year.
The School Reform Office released in January a list of 38 persistently failing schools subject to closure or other drastic interventions. Twenty-five of the schools are in Detroit, all but one operated by the school district or the almost-defunct Education Achievement Authority. But state officials have never closed down a conventional public school for poor performance.
By Jack McHugh
House Bill 4080, Authorize new energy-related purchase/debt scheme for schools: Passed 36 to 0 in the Senate
To include schools in a scheme authorized by a 2016 law for counties, which lets them contract with vendors for energy efficiency projects, and pay for these with money the projects are supposed to save (or from regular tax revenue if savings don’t appear).
(Editor’s Note: The following is legislative testimony given by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center, to the Michigan House Tax Policy Committee on April 19, 2017, concerning a series of bills — Senate Bills 111-115 — intended to give taxpayer-financed subsidies to select real estate developers.)
The Michigan Senate has already passed and the House is considering a major expansion of Michigan’s corporate welfare regime. The House Tax Policy Committee held a hearing on March 8, and two officials from the agencies in charge of current business subsidy programs came to explain and justify the state’s corporate welfare apparatus.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
People move for a lot of reasons: for family, health and retirement among others. Finding economic opportunity is an important driver and one that is encouraged by state and local policy.
Over the past decade, Michigan has started to attract more people. It still is losing people to other states, but those numbers are down.
By Jack McHugh
Christopher DeMuth is the former president of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank. In 2017, DeMuth received a Bradley Prize for his contributions to “preserving and defending the tradition of free representative government and private enterprise.”
April 18 is tax day in America, and in Michigan it’s also the 22nd anniversary of a failed corporate subsidy program known as MEGA, or the Michigan Economic Growth Authority. Although it was repealed in 2011, MEGA continues to raid the state Treasury every year, wasting shockingly high amounts of taxpayer money in the process.
By Jack McHugh
The House and Senate are out for a two-week spring break. Therefore, this report contains no votes but several recently introduced bills of general interest.
Senate Bill 59 and House Bill 4409: Authorize student loan tax breaks
Introduced by Sen. Curtis Hertel, Jr. (D) and Rep. Andy Schor (D), respectively, to authorize an income tax credit equal to 50 percent of the amount of student loan payments made by a resident (subject to some caps) who got a degree from a college or university in Michigan and is employed in the state. The credit would not be “refundable,” but would reduce an individual’s tax liability on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
A state label served as a wake-up call for one rural Southwest Michigan district. Today, its high school stands out as one of the top academic performers in the state.
In August 2010, the Michigan Department of Education released its first list of underachieving schools under a new law that created a school reform office with the power to take over the worst schools.
For many years, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation has always selected a friendly vendor to calculate the return on investment of its state tourism promotion funding effort (Pure Michigan), rather than seek bids from several possible choices. Last year, it finally requested proposals from other vendors for the right to make these estimates. The winner of the new contract — and the costliest bidder, too — was … wait for it … the very same firm (Longwoods International) the agency had for many years simply selected on a no-bid basis.
Last year, the state’s Office of Retirement Services testified against a plan that would offer new employees in the school retirement system 401(k)-style benefits. The office claimed that shifting employees would require increased costs in order to follow industry best practices. But state officials are already ignoring a large number of best practices when it suits them.
