For years the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has argued that — done right — governments could save money and improve services through privatization. That is, through selling assets or competitively contracting out services such as food, janitorial or busing services in conventional public school districts, governments can get better services with lower costs.
(Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared on the Illinois Policy Institute Blog.)
National Employee Freedom Week started on August 16th and celebrates the freedom of choice employees have when it comes to union representation.
The Mackinac Center joined over 99 organizations in 42 states in what is called “a national effort to inform union employees about the freedoms they have to opt out of union membership and let them make the decision that's best for them.”
Click here to find the full results from our 2015 school privatization survey.
There are more Michigan public schools contracting out food, custodial or transportation services than ever, according to the Mackinac Center’s latest survey of school districts. This year, 70.8 percent of school districts use private-sector vendors to clean buildings, get kids to school, or cook and serve school meals. This is up from 66.6 percent the previous year.
Bridge Magazine has a piece on “Michigan’s stumbling middle class” and says, “today’s workers are part of the first generation in Michigan history who, taken as a whole, are not better off than their parents.”
The main economic data point put forth is that adjusted for inflation, Michigan’s median household income is lower than it was in 1969. That’s true: Household income has declined from $64,778 in 1969 to $49,418 in 2013.
In July, Boston withdrew its application to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, becoming the latest city to respond to citizen concerns and cold hard facts about sports entertainment and public investments.
The Olympics seem to live in perpetual jeopardy, plagued by financial mismanagement and corruption. Bloomberg estimates that the 2004 games in Athens contributed €7 billion to Greece’s now-crippling debt. Russia spent billions failing to turn Sochi into an acceptable Olympic venue. China has struggled for years to get its money’s worth out of the 2008 Beijing infrastructure.
By Jack McHugh
The House and Senate are out for several weeks. Therefore, this report contains several recently introduced bills of interest.
Senate Bill 324: Require policy for police involved in a death
Introduced by Sen. Coleman Young, II (D), to require local police and sheriff departments to have a policy on deaths that involve a law enforcement officer. This would have to include requiring an investigation by two officers who are not employed by the same agency. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
While many are familiar with the federal Affordable Care Act’s impact on small businesses, the law is also imposing hardships on public school districts. None more so than rural school districts, where low population densities and fewer insurance providers limit options for complying with the law’s employer health insurance mandate.
A news article in The Wall Street Journal notes that a view long held by most economists is increasingly being accepted by other scholars and policymakers across the board. Increasing federal aid for higher education, intended to make college more affordable, is driving up prices and making it more unaffordable.
Summer elections are somewhat of an afterthought for voters but there is one in Grand Rapids today that is bound to get some attention — the race for mayor.
Mayors in the city are part-time and nonpartisan, so elections tend to be noncombative. But in this runoff, more may be at stake than usual. For the first time, the mayor and commissioners are restricted by term limits and it is the first mayoral election after an extension of the city’s income tax increase, which could make this election a referendum on the city’s fiscal health.
Neal Rubin laments the elimination of Michigan’s film incentive at The Detroit News. But he paints a false picture of the scholarship on this subsidy.
The incentives work — 37 other states currently have them — but at a cost. What cost, and what value, depends on who’s crunching the numbers.
Many public unions have negotiated release time into their contracts, allowing publicly employed union officials to receive a salary to spend all or part of their time on union business. A bill that would prevent taxpayers from funding release time was recently introduced in the Michigan Senate.
Since the colossal failure of Proposal 1, the state House and state Senate have each released road funding proposals of their own. We now have a debate bounded by two high profile proposals, each with components worthy of applause.
We have written much about both plans but feel compelled to linger over one component in the Senate plan: the income tax cuts.
I am a child of the liberty movement, blessed with the good fortune to have been born into a close-knit extended family of devout, hard-working and patriotic people, many of whom served as leaders in their communities and heroes our armed forces. My parents and grandparents left my sister, my cousins and me an example of self-reliance, generosity, and financial prudence.
The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, has forced many public schools to cut employee hours or privatize noncore services. At issue is the ACA’s mandate that employers with 50 or more full-time workers provide health insurance to any who work 30 or more hours per week.
In a letter to the editor titled "Think tank's efforts to discredit union fails" published earlier this week by The Detroit News, MEA President Steve Cook attacked the Mackinac Center's position as an advocate for worker freedom and educational choice in Michigan.
By Jack McHugh
The House and Senate are out for several weeks. Therefore, this report contains several recently introduced bills of interest.
Senate Bill 291: Authorize wrongful imprisonment compensation
Introduced by Sen. Steve Bieda (D), to authorize payment by the state of civil damages to a person wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he or she did not commit. The damages would be $60,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment, plus “economic damages” including lost wages, plus reasonable attorney fees. Versions of this bill have been introduced in every legislature since at least 2005. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
On July 29, the Michigan Supreme Court upheld right-to-work for state employees, ruling that the Michigan Constitution prohibits agency fees for state workers. The Mackinac Center filed an amicus brief in the case, which the court eventually used to come to its decision.
Policy Analyst Jarrett Skorup took part in a Google Hangout with Congressman Tim Walberg on the issue of civil asset forfeiture. The event was sponsored by Generation Opportunity, a national network that connects young people “promoting economic opportunity and prosperity.”
The White House Council of Economic Advisers has released a new report about occupational licensing. It outlines the growth in licensing over the past few decades and argues that this reduces employment, raises prices and lowers wages overall.
The report recommends that states lower or eliminate this barrier to entry by establishing some “best practices.”
Until last week New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and city regulators were poised to severely limit New Yorkers’ access to ride-sharing services like Uber. Spurred on by lucrative taxi-cartel oligarchs, the regulations would have restricted the number of new Uber drivers to just one percent of the current fleet.
Bills recently introduced in the U.S. Congress would greatly increase the rights of unionized workers nationally. Known as the Employee Rights Act, the proposed legislation would amend the National Labor Relations Act, ensuring that workers have more opportunities to voice support for or opposition to the union, as well as providing more protections for workers who do not want to contribute to their union's political activity.
The Detroit News analyzes the current debate over renewable energy mandates in Michigan. A 2008 energy law eliminated most electricity choice and required 10 percent of the state’s energy to come from renewable sources – which in practical terms means windmills. Since the law went into effect, Michigan energy prices have steadily increased and are the highest in the Midwest.
Nobody wants to feel like a criminal. In fact, most people want to respect the law, but the bigger government gets, the more laws it writes, and the harder it becomes to not break the law. The Wall Street Journal reports that 1 in 3 Americans is in the FBI’s criminal database, which makes it likely that someone you know could be defined as a criminal. You may not feel they are a threat, but the government does. Perhaps your government even considers you to be a criminal.
The state will no longer offer new film productions taxpayer money to shoot movies in Michigan. This is an incredible development considering that film incentives passed with only one dissenting vote just seven years ago. Now that policymakers have acknowledged some limits on profligacy in the name of economic development, there are other programs that ought to be reviewed as well.
By Jack McHugh
The House and Senate are out for several weeks. Therefore, this report contains several recently introduced bills of interest.
Senate Bill 197: Pro-rate Michigan's electoral college presidential votes
Introduced by Sen. Dave Hildenbrand (R), to end the current winner-take-all system of allocating Michigan’s presidential electors, and instead pro-rate the state’s electoral college votes on the basis of the state’s popular vote totals. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
