One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter school system, only to witness the for-profit management company it hired flee the scene after determining it couldn’t turn a profit. Numerous cities and school districts in…
Tag: michigan
Republican Michigan Governor Vetoes GOP Voter Suppression Law
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder (R) bucked his fellow Republicans on Tuesday by vetoing a voter ID law crafted by GOP members of the state legislature, the Detroit Free Press reports: Among the bills vetoed was one requiring photo ID for first voter registration or to obtain an absentee ballot, a requirement that African-American activists claimed…
The Scandal of Michigan’s Emergency Managers
Under PA 4, EMs have proven to be a divisive solution. Outsourcing services to private companies and abolishing collective bargaining takes a page right out of the right-wing playbook: a 2011 report titled “101 Recommendations to Revitalize Michigan,” published by the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy, calls for ending “mandatory collective bargaining for government…
Michigan Tea Party Mayor Says No To Fed Funds, Sends Business Packing
In what could be a new high water mark of anti-Washington sentiment, the city of Troy, Mich., is rejecting a long-planned transportation center whose construction would have been fully financed with federal stimulus money. The terminal, which would help Troy become a transportation node on an upgraded Detroit-to-Chicago Amtrak line, was hailed by supporters as…
Senate passes ‘license to bully’ legislation
Advocates for a law to prohibit bullying and provide school districts with the tools to address the problem were dealt a stinging rebuke Wednesday morning in the Republican-controlled Michigan Senate. The GOP pushed through an amended bill, SB 137, which does nothing advocates have pushed for — including reporting requirements and enumeration, or listing, of…
Have a license for medical pot? You can’t have a gun, U.S. says
Michigan’s medical-marijuana users can’t catch a break. Three major state appeals court decisions have gone against them in the last month. Now, federal authorities have issued an order that licensed medical-marijuana users nationwide can’t possess a gun. That means no hunting, no target shooting, no gun collecting and no guns for personal protection —…
August Unemployment Rates Fall in All of Michigan’s Regional Labor Markets
From August 2010 to August 2011, unemployment rates fell in all of the state’s 17 regions. Rate drops ranged from a half percentage point to 1.8 percentage points and were significant in a number of regions over the year. The median reduction since August 2010 was 1.2 percentage points. The largest declines over this period were posted in…
EMU joins other Michigan universities in banning medical pot on campus
Eastern Michigan University became the latest university to formally ban medical marijuana on its campus. Despite state laws allowing those with medical marijuana cards to smoke the drug, federal law still lists it as illegal. That makes it necessary for universities to ban it as well, university officials said, because EMU and other higher education…
Michigan House Moves to Ban Domestic Partnership Benefits
Domestic partners of Michigan state employees were supposed to start getting state benefits on October 1, but the Republican-controlled state House is having none of that: The bills, HB 4770 and 4771, prohibit any government entity in the state – including universities and city governments – from providing such benefits and prohibit unions from including them in collective bargaining…
House OKs ban on schools automatically deducting union dues from pay
The Michigan House today narrowly passed a bill that would prohibit school districts from automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks. The bill passed on a 55-53 vote in the Republican-controlled House. It now goes to the Republican-controlled Senate. House Speaker Jase Bolger, R-Marshall, praised the vote, saying school employees “should be able to ask…