At a time when many of his peers are finishing college to find a still-depressed job market, Andy Didorosi isn’t waiting for anyone to offer him a slot. At 25, the college dropout describes himself as a “social entrepreneur” and is currently at work on his latest start-up — the Detroit Bus Company, founded with […]
Nancy Derringer
Nancy Nall Derringer is a former reporter at Bridge
Posted inMichigan Government
Millions at stake for schools as Senate considers teacher retirement change
David Campbell, superintendent of the Livingston Educational Service Agency, has been watching the debate over reform of the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System (MPSERS) for years from multiple perspectives, as a public school administrator charged with spending scarce resources, and as a future pensioner himself who will feel the effects of the reforms. All of […]
Posted inQuality of Life
Talking Detroit's Eastern Market, the hunt for the Michigan potato, and other food stuff
Dan Carmody joined Detroit’s Eastern Market Corp. in 2007, just in time to catch the local-food wave. The market district covers one square mile on Detroit’s east side and holds about 150 businesses, but the public draws are the five city-owned structures where, on Saturdays year-round, Metro Detroiters flock to buy fresh produce, meat and […]
Posted inQuality of Life
Michigan food and the case of the Chinese cherries
Matt Gougeon runs the Marquette Food Co-op, a store that began the way a lot of co-ops did in the 1970s, as a buying club for a number of families who wanted food that was hard to find in the Upper Peninsula. Over the years, it’s grown into a 3,200-square-foot store with $5 million in […]
Posted inMichigan Government
Detroit, allies caught on blight treadmill
The numbers are inescapable: Estimates of just how many blighted buildings still stand in Detroit– most of them houses past rehabilitation, nests of crime and the most visible signs of the city’s distress – range from 30,000 to as many as 70,000. It costs about $10,000, on average, to take down one of them. Which […]
Posted inTalent & Education
GAO wades into charter-school special ed
Publicly funded independent, or charter, schools educate fewer children with disabilities than traditional public schools, suggests a new report by the Government Accountability Office. But the report, reported by Education Week here, notes that there are a number of contributing factors that make clear conclusions difficult: “Several factors may help explain why enrollment levels of students with […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Filmmakers still seeing stars after incentive cut
Once upon a time, Michael Jones had a career in Michigan. He was a location manager for print and TV advertising, finding, securing and running the spaces where commercial shoots set up temporary shop. Then things got very bad, when the auto industry collapsed, throwing its ancillary industries into chaos. But then, things got very, […]
Posted inMichigan Government
Were film tax incentives too good to last?
No one knows yet what the final economic impact will be when the film once known as “Category 6” and now called Untitled Tornado Project wraps production at Michigan Motion Picture Studios some time down the road, but Michigan taxpayers will be paying, one way or another. The studio, which was built as Raleigh Michigan […]
Posted inTalent & Education
45 minutes with the mustache
My upfront prejudice, so you all know where I’m coming from, here on the last day of the Mackinac Policy Conference: I’m not a Thomas Friedman fan. The New York Times columnist and best-selling author traffics in glib catchphrases, strangely articulate taxi drivers in Bangalore and a certain sort of cheery fear-mongering. His talk Thursday […]
Posted inTalent & Education
Businesses endorse preschool expansion
To the 100 business leaders who signed the Michigan Early Childhood Business Plan, the choice is simple: Pay a little now, or pay a lot later. And so they gathered on the porch of the Grand Hotel Wednesday at the Mackinac Policy Conference to call for publicly funded preschool for 38,000 eligible 4-year-old children currently […]