Ted Roelofs

Close races, marijuana referendums, a southeast Michigan mass transit tax proposal and a statewide business tax issue highlight the Aug. 5 ballot.

After a disastrous launch, Michigan residents are flocking to the Affordable Care Act. Yet the rates all those newly insured vary widely depending on where you live. A lack of competition in some local markets raises questions on why the same kinds of coverage have such different price tags across the state.

Nearly 270,000 low-income Michigan residents signed up for expanded Medicaid in less than two months. While officials project that number to explode, critics fear the program will prove too costly to sustain.

Michigan is among a dwindling number of states that prosecute 17-year-olds as adults, even though teens are more likely to commit more crimes when placed with adults. Most teens prosecuted as adults committed nonviolent crimes.

Innovative programs in Berrien County are going to teens’ homes, not waiting for teens to find trouble. The result: recidivism is down sharply.

Michigan prisons have increased seven-fold as a percentage of the state’s budget since 1980. Michigan also holds prisoners behind bars far longer than other states, a cost that conservatives say the state can no longer afford.

In 1988, Judge Norman Lippitt sentenced Karen Kantzler to life in prison for killing her husband, who she said was abusive. Lippitt never imagined she would actually spend her life behind bars.

Republicans are rethinking the wisdom of “tough-on-crime” formulas of the past, as they eye alternatives to incarceration.