Editor’s Note: The author made several attempts to contact Steve Inskeep and to request a follow-up story that might provide a fairer treatment of the Mackinac Center’s right-to-work study. We received no response.
April 6, 2015
Mr. Steve Inskeep
In a March 27 on-air exchange with David Wessel of the Brookings Institution on the impact of right-to-work laws, you focused on a “single phrase that was mentioned in a news story earlier this week” (transcript here). This phrase was sourced in the NPR story to a 2013 study coauthored by Dr. Michael Hicks and myself.
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Duluth News Tribune on April 15, 2015.
Minnesota raised its excise tax by 130 percent in 2013, the consequences of which may not be fully understood. The large increase in price from that tax hike has created a yawning gap between the cost of cigarettes in Minnesota and elsewhere, spurring rampant smuggling, according to research conducted by my colleague Todd Nesbit and me.
The Detroit News reports on the lack of transparency from Michigan’s corporate welfare program.
“Michigan taxpayers are on the hook for giving 96 percent of nearly $9.4 billion in tax credits to companies in the vaguely named ‘transportation’ sector, but a state agency that doles out the job-retaining incentives refuses to disclose the revised amounts owed to individual companies,” the article notes.
According to the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning, the rates of accidents, injuries, and fatalities on Michigan's roads have been decreasing for decades. Improved pavement conditions will make the roads safer, but drivers should feel at ease that transportation is less risky than it used to be.
LaTanya Dorsey is a mother who sends her daughter to a public charter school in Eastpointe. Her daughter is on the honor roll and doing very well.
Dorsey didn't expect to have a say in where her daughter went to school.
“Usually, it's the district that you're in is the school that you would have to attend,” Dorsey said. “That kind of surprised me — that I did have a choice to send her to another school, so I was real grateful for that.”
Policy Analyst Jarrett Skorup and Assistant Director of Fiscal Policy James Hohman explain in an MLive.com column why the state should get out of the business of subsidizing film production companies.
Skorup and Hohman note:
Despite handing out nearly $500 million over the years, the program has failed to create a sustainable film industry in Michigan. According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are fewer film jobs in Michigan today (1,561) then when the program began in 2008 (1,663). In 2013, there were zero full-time jobs created by these subsidies, according to the latest reportfrom the Michigan Film Office.
An Associated Press story about Proposal 1, the May 5 sales and gas tax ballot question, prominently features Mackinac Center research. From the article:
The state sales tax would go up a penny on the dollar. The gasoline tax would rise with inflation, likely more. The annual vehicle registration tax would be higher.
By Jack McHugh
Now with one click you can approve or disapprove of key votes by your legislators using the VoteSpotter smart phone app. Visit votespotter.com and download VoteSpotter today!
The House and Senate are on a two-week spring break. Therefore, this report contains several recently introduced bills of interest.
Policy analyst Jarrett Skorup recently spoke on the issue of civil asset forfeiture to the Birmingham Republican Women’s Club. The event also featured Rep. Mike McCready, R-Bloomfield Hills, Regina Brim who is a local activist opposed to forfeiture, and Megan Noland, who represented the Oakland County sheriff’s office.
Most of the focus on Proposal 1 has been directed to its changes in the state’s fiscal policies, rather than a close look at its proposed constitutional changes. One issue demands further attention since its effects are unclear.
The constitutional amendments allow for a higher sales tax, earmark more money to the School Aid Fund and exempt road vehicle fuel from sales taxes. But they also remove “higher education” from the list of acceptable uses of the SAF while adding community colleges and some programs to the acceptable uses of the that fund. Here is this section of the proposed amendment:
The River Rouge School District buses students out of Detroit to attend its schools. This makes financial sense for the district: More than 400 River Rouge students live in Detroit and attend the district through the state's Schools of Choice program. These are families who have chosen to leave their neighborhood school.
By Jack McHugh
Now with one click you can approve or disapprove of key votes by your legislators using the VoteSpotter smart phone app. Visit votespotter.com and download VoteSpotter today!
The House and Senate are on a two-week spring break. Therefore, this report contains several recently introduced bills of interest.
Our friends at the Foundation for Economic Education recently published an interview with their current president, Lawrence W. Reed. Friends of the Mackinac Center will know Larry as the first president of this organization. He currently is president emeritus at the Center and a member of our Board of Scholars.
A Detroit coalition has released its long-awaited recommendations on education policy for Detroit. Though the coalition characterizes its recommendations as a way to improve the "education landscape" for all Detroit students, the coalition's main apparent goal is preserving the institution of Detroit Public Schools.
The Detroit News quotes Audrey Spalding, director of education policy, on school choice in Detroit.
According to the article, 25,000 Detroit students have chosen to use school choice to attend schools in the suburban areas, with 17,000 of those students attending charters.
The many friends and admirers of Robert P. (“Bob”) Crowner mourn his passing, which occurred this week at the age of 87, after a long bout with cancer.
Bob was an exemplar of the balanced life. He was successful in business before he taught the subject at the university level. He believed in the education of youth, devoting his attentions to enhancing it in both the public and private sectors. He knew a lot about a lot of things but never felt he knew enough that he could crow about it. He was an engineer who knew there was another engineer who towered over all others, the Creator who made us all. He worked hard at every job he held, but still found time to work a lot more as a volunteer for worthy causes. As a long-time member of the Mackinac Center’s Board of Scholars, his bio spells out some of the details:
Specifically, if voters approve Proposal 1’s $2 billion tax increase (and if as expected legislators pass a necessary “clean up” bill), then most of the revenue from the measure’s $1.2 billion fuel tax will initially go to repay debt on past road repairs. In the first year $815 million will be used to repay debt. In the second year, this falls to $456 million. Only in the third year will the full gas tax amount go to current transportation funding, rather than paying for road repairs that politicians put on the state’s credit card years ago.
According to Grand Rapids ABC affiliate WZZM 13, Michigan taxpayers spend $1.3 million every year on administrative costs and board member transportation to the meetings of 184 state oversight boards.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative at the Mackinac Center, was quoted in the article, suggesting other uses for the money spent on these boards.
Gov. Snyder recently sent a letter to Michigan House Speaker Kevin Cotter and Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof explaining some of the problems of occupational licensure.
The governor summarizes some of the good work the Legislature has done, and outlines the principles he'll use in "determining whether to support any legislation providing for additional occupation regulation.” Below are these principles:
Assistant Director of Fiscal Policy James Hohman discusses his Proposal 1 study on "The Frank Beckman Show" on WJR AM760.
The May 5 ballot proposal raises revenue to fix the roads by increasing the sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent and changing the way gas is taxed. The study shows the proposal will cost taxpayers $2 billion and the average household approximately $500 more per year. At the Energy Information Administration’s estimate average gas price for 2015 of $2.39, Proposal 1 would increase the price per gallon by 10 cents.
By Jack McHugh
Now with one click you can approve or disapprove of key votes by your legislators using the VoteSpotter smart phone app. Visit votespotter.com and download VoteSpotter today!
Senate Bill 56, Give judges a raise: Passed 33 to 3 in the Senate
To increase judges’ salaries around $12,000, and index them going forward to increases in the salaries paid to unionized state “civil service” employees. After the change salaries would range from around $150,000 to $163,000 depending on which level of court.
An article by American Enterprise Institute scholar Andrew Biggs in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) explains how the bogus “transition costs” argument against reforming government pension systems recently became even more bogus.
To refresh, this was the argument used in 2012 by teachers unions and state pension bureaucrats to scuttle a transformational school pension reform bill that had passed the Michigan Senate. The measure would have closed the system to new hires, instead granting them generous 401(k) benefits.
Right-to-work is not for or against unions. In fact, the only effect of right-to-work on collective bargaining is that it takes away a union’s ability to get a worker fired for not paying them.
In 1999 Robert P. Hunter, a Senior Fellow in Labor Policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, created the Spectrum of Government Intervention in Organized Labor. On one side of the spectrum was government outlawing unions, labeling them a criminal conspiracy. On the other side was forcing all workers to be members of a union.
Yesterday the House Committee on Criminal Justice heard testimony on a package of bills that would amend or repeal several archaic laws. Among the laws under consideration are criminal prohibitions on participating in walkathons, playing “The Star‑Spangled Banner” as part of a medley, using “reproachful” language and selling dyed baby chicks and rabbits. The hearing was covered by the Detroit Free Press and MLive.com.
By Jack McHugh
Now with one click you can approve or disapprove of key votes by your legislators using the VoteSpotter smart phone app. Visit votespotter.com and download VoteSpotter today!
To require the Secretary of State to develop a “Choose Life” license plate, with fees collected from its sale given to organizations and projects that promote alternatives to abortion.
