Michigan Government

With heroin and prescription drug abuse at historic levels, lawmakers are pushing for wider access to naloxone, a life-saving antidote, for some drug abusers.

Overdose deaths as the result of heroin or other opioid addictions have quadrupled in recent years across Michigan, often primed by abuse of prescribed painkillers.

The insurance industry cites schemes involving morally flexible lawyers and overactive doctors as reason to curb Michigan’s no-fault law. Critics say Lansing’s “reform” legislation would hurt the most seriously injured.

Reform advocates agree that Michigan could save millions by reducing its prison population, a cost that has risen seven-fold over three decades. But with politics never far from the surface, can policymakers agree on who doesn’t belong?

An unexpected coalition of conservatives and progressives is forming around finding ways to reduce Michigan’s costly prison population

As President Obama tries to sell Congress and the U.S. people on a nuclear deal with Iran, legislators in Lansing are pushing for ratcheting up state-level sanctions to discourage companies in the state from doing business with Iran.

Harold Haugh has been vilified for helping to legalize high-powered fireworks in Michigan. He says the law has proved an economic boon to the state.

Proposed legislation would move public notices – hearings, descriptions of property to be sold, election dates, all in tiny type – from print to the Web, and with it money that Michigan’s newspapers can ill-afford to relinquish.

Democrats disapprove of the work Lansing lawmakers do by a wide margin, but even Republicans were down on the GOP-dominated body.

A Democratic representatives finds a legislator can be effective when his party is outnumbered, by turning policymaking into more of a chess game than an all-out assault.