By Brendan Walsh/Grosse Pointe School Board treasurer When he proposed Michigan’s largest-ever cut in public education spending last year, Gov. Rick Snyder cited a statistic that only 16 percent of the state’s high school graduates were college-ready. “Michigan’s education system is not giving our taxpayers, our teachers, or our students the return on investment we […]
Guest column: Time to play 'Moneyball' with K-12 funding
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers” — Alfred Lord Tennyson, 19th century British poet laureate. * Washtenaw County residents are now short $350,000 because the county stepped in to cover debt payments by a township (Sylvan) for water and sewer work for a development that never materialized. (Hat tip to Bridge contributor Jon Zemke.) Now the […]
Posted inGuest Commentary
Guest column: Change tax code to feed starving Michigan cities
By Dayne Walling/Flint mayor In Michigan, cities were the greatest victims of the recent near failure of the economy and the housing market. Michigan is not seeing the same renaissance of returning to the city at a significant rate equal to the national trend. The problem is that all of the cuts to government here […]
Posted inTalent & Education
A film about Detroit manhood scrambles for funding
Veteran Detroit screenwriter and teacher Harvey Ovshinsky likes to say Detroit is the Saudi Arabia of stories, and all an aspiring filmmaker needs to do is go out there and grab one. Certainly, many have been taking his advice; documentaries set in and around Detroit have exploded in recent months, prompting the Free Press to […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Michigan seeks 'sweet spot' on small businesses
Most new jobs are created by small businesses, right? That’s long been the perception perpetuated by small-business advocates and politicians from the local level on up to the White House. The reality isn’t so neat. While federal statistics show small businesses accounted for 65 percent of all new jobs in the United States between 1993 […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Big firms still offer employees better pay, benefit deals than smallest firms
One area in which the conventional wisdom about small business holds is in benefits. Workers at smaller firms earn less in wages, get fewer paid days off and receive less generous health insurance benefits than their counterparts at large companies. The compensation gap is huge between businesses that employ between one and 49 workers, and […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Michigan workers more likely to work for big business — then and now
Michigan has a long-held reputation as a big-business state. But the number of large establishments in the state and the number of workers they employ have dropped significantly since the mid-1990s, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Edward Lowe Foundation in Cassopolis. The Lowe Foundation compiles statistics on small […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Metro Detroit bank, Traverse Bay winery navigate way to 2012 '50 to Watch' list
It isn’t surprising to see computer software, health care and Internet-based companies on a list of up-and-coming companies in Michigan. But a community bank? Wall Street’s meltdown in 2008 wiped out hundreds of banks across the country, including 13 mostly small local banks in Michigan. The banking climate was so bad in Michigan that the […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
Almost all in 2006 '50 Companies to Watch' still in business
Strathmore Development Co., an East Lansing-based commercial and residential developer, was named to the “Michigan 50 Companies to Watch” list in 2006. Times were good, but Strathmore and many other promising companies on that list were about to experience the challenge of their young lives as the U.S. economy nosedived just a year later. “The […]
Posted inPeter Luke: Eye on the Capitol
Republicans play to win; Democrats play to pout
In 1983, Michigan Republicans secured a two-seat majority in the state Senate thanks to the recall of two Democratic senators from southeastern Michigan. They’ve been running the Michigan Senate ever since. After the 2008 elections, Michigan Democrats had assembled a 20-seat margin in the Michigan House, thanks to the second of two successive national wave […]