Cross posted at Blogging For Michigan
Wasn't is just last week, when MI State Senator Gretchen Whitmer (D) asked the GOP controlled State Senate to reduce its budget and offer up some transparency regarding its own spending? And the Republicans snickered and said, "we won, you lost?"
Seems there's plenty of that same kind of snickering going on at the "think" tank that writes the Michigan Republican Party's platform. Let's take a quick look at what we can find on the Mackinac Center for Public Policy's "Michigan Transparency" website.
- Public School Check Register Report
- Why Doesn't The State Government Put Its Expenses Online? (This links to requests made to the Governor's office only)
- Michigan Secretary of State Quarterly Expenditure Reports (important info that can be skewed and misunderstood in order to support shutting down the branch offices in low-income minority areas where the Democrats are)(and here is MDP Chair Mark Brewer on that issue)
- Request to Governor’s Office for Quarterly Expenditure Reports
- Michigan School District Revenue and Expenditure Report
- Michigan School District Categorical Grant Report
- School District Checkbook Register Report
- Michigan School District Collective Bargaining Agreements
- MichiganVotes.org
- The Lansing State Journal’s State of Michigan Salary Search (This newspaper Web site provides state employees' salaries.)
- Michigan Merit Exam Scores (This newspaper Web site provides state employees' salaries.)
- A Michigan School Money Primer
So, out of the 12 major transparency resources on the front page of this site, under the heading, The "Show Michigan the Money" Project:
The public schools, the state employees, and the executive branch ... clearly dominated by Democrats and middle-class labor. Are these three areas really the only places where Michigan spends money?
I can't think of any "non-partisan" website that more clearly demonstrates that the Republican demands for transparency only apply to "losers."