(courtesy image/used under Creative Commons license) Officially, Michigan’s state government is spending $48.2 billion this year on education, health care, prisons, transportation and all other spending programs. But the state actually is shelling out $78.9 billion — 64 percent more than the spending allocated through the state budget. It’s happening through something called “tax expenditures”—tax […]
Mackinac Center
Posted inTalent & Education
As Right to Work takes root, MEA faces rough lessons from Wisconsin
LABOR LOSS: Protesters packed the Wisconsin State Capitol in 2011 in opposition to restrictions on public-sector union organizing. Since the restrictions were implemented, the number of public-sector union worker has dropped 21 percent. (courtesy photo/used under Creative Commons license) In the hectic days of last December, as the Michigan Legislature prepared to pass a Right-to-Work […]
Posted inTalent & Education
MEA faces breakaways, poaching of locals
Just months after Right to Work was enacted in Michigan, Michigan Education Association local units are looking to depart the mothership. MEA NO MORE: Teachers in the Roscommon schools decided in 2012 to leave the Michigan Education Association and form their own independent bargaining unit. (courtesy photo) MEA leaders say local units have left – and […]
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
*Of all the … the federal government has been giving students money to mess around with experiments in burning animal dung. HELP FROM HOUGHTON: Students at Michigan Tech University used federal grants for research on making cooking fires safer. (courtesy photo/used under Creative Commons license) That’s one way to look at it. Here’s another: Michigan […]
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
*Michigan Capitol Confidential, an arm of the Mackinac Center, reports that, “For the first time since 2006, the Service Employees International Union is not deducting money from the Medicaid checks of the state’s 59,000 home-based caregivers. James Haveman, director of the Michigan Department of Community Health, confirmed that the money no longer is being taken […]
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
* The Mackinac Center created a searchable database of public school superintendent compensation – a potentially useful tool for parents and patrons to compare their local leader to other districts. Of course, the unanswered question in all this is: How much should a superintendent make? * Speaking of databases, the Michigan Municipal League has a new […]
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
“We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed” — Charles Caleb Colton, 19th century English writer. * Bridge’s media partner, Mlive.com, is publishing an impressive series this week on self-defense shootings in Michigan. First major point: There are far more of these shootings than the […]
Posted inGuest Commentary
Do liquor control rules fail public?
While the Snyder administration has reported consistent progress on pruning Michigan’s regulatory thicket, the matter of how much to regulate the liquor market has proven to be more ticklish than most. As Bridge reported in April, “The one exception to the smooth process of developing (reform) recommendations could be the Liquor Control Advisory Rules Committee, […]