Cross-posted to MichiganLiberal.com.
This Week's Stories
- This Week's Lucky Numbers
- A June Without Elections?
- Quiet Week in Motown Politics
- Looking Ahead to 2006...and 2008
- What's Happening in Washington
- Legislature Update
- Around the State
- Don't Forget: Kossack Gathering tonight
This Week in Review won't appear next Saturday. Yours truly will be hitting the road for the Canada Day/Independence Day weekend.
This Week's Lucky Numbers
- State unemployment rate: 7.1%.
- Cost of John Engler's official portrait: $150,000. Not including the frame.
- Size of Detroit's budget, as proposed by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick: $1.4 billion.
- State fee for dumping trash in a landfill: 21 cents a ton.
- Local units of government in the state: 2,884.
- Required number of hours in a school year: 1,080.
- Eastern Conference championships won by the Pistons: 7 (counting 2 as the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons).
A June Without Elections?
For the first time in years, Michiganders are not going to the polls in June. The reason: new legislation requiring that school elections be held in February, May, August, or November. Jack McHugh of
MichiganVotes.org wrote an article
examining the pros and cons of the new election schedule and provides some historical perspective on Michigan's trend toward consolidating elections. MichiganVotes.org is a project of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Quiet Week in Motown Politics
It's the calm before the storm in Detroit. City Council is still mulling a lawsuit that would force Mayor Kilpatrick to comply with its budget. But at the same time,
it was considering smaller cuts to the police and fire department budgets than it voted to impose. The city's new fiscal year begins July 1.
Looking Ahead to 2006...and 2008
Mitt's Michigan Connection. Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who's considering a run for president in 2008,
made another appearance in Michigan, and is likely to come back in September when Michigan Republicans hold their leadership conference on Mackinac Island. His father, George, was elected governor of Michigan three times and unsuccessfully ran for president in 1968.
Stay Focused. Columnist Nolan Finley of the
Detroit News predicts that if nominated,
Dick DeVos will stick to two issues--jobs and the economy--and that DeVos will be in trouble if the campaign focuses on his personality or on social issues like abortion.
What's Happening in Washington
Congressmen Debate Social Security. At a forum in Scio Township, two members of Michigan's congressional delegation
offered contrasting views on President Bush's Social Security proposal. Representative John Dingell (D-Dearborn) called private accounts "dangerous" and said that they wouldn't reduce the federal deficit. But Joe Schwarz (R-Battle Creek) said that private accounts were a small portion of an effort to overhaul the entire system.
Levin Leads Fight Against Base Closings. Although Michigan fared relatively well in the latest round of military base closings,
Senator Carl Levin made argued against cuts that would affect two Michigan bases. He was joined in the effort by Representative Joe Schwarz (R-Battle Creek), whose hometown faces the closing of an Air National Guard station.
Senator Levin also
continued his fight with the Pentagon over the administration's Iraq policy. He warned that he might block the nomination of a new defense policy chief unless he gets the documents he ask for. The documents could show that former policy chief Douglas Feith and his staff trumped up a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks.
In addition, the senator and his brother, Representative Sander Levin (D-Southfield)
were profiled by Ken Thomas of the Associated Press.
Downing Street Memo Hits Freep's Editorial Page. The lead editorial in Wednesday's
Free Press said that the Downing Street Memo was "still too significant to be dismissed as simply old news" and called Bush's Iraq policy "marketing" rather than "thoughtful policy." It also ran
portions of the memos, as well as
excerpts from John Conyers's letter to President Bush questioning his decision to go to war.
Condemnation: What Goes Around, Comes Around. Twenty-four years ago, the Michigan Supreme Court upheld the demolition of an entire neighborhood in Detroit to make way for a Chrysler plant. Its so-called Poletown decision, which gave government wide-ranging authority to condemn property, was endorsed on Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court. In
Kelo v. City of New London, the high court ruled that government could condemn property as long as it was in the public interest to do so. But, as the
Free Press's Brian Dickerson notes,
the Michigan Supreme Court last year did a U-turn on Poletown, ruling unanimously in
County of Wayne v. Hathcock that land can't be condemned for purely economic reasons.
In Brief.The Supreme Court
ruled that Michigan's $100 annual fee on truckers did discriminate against interstate commerce, and
struck down a Michigan law barring free legal assistance to defendants who plead guilty but later decide to appeal....Ellie Clark, a four-year-old from Grandville,
appealed to a Senate committee to loosen restrictions on stem-cell research. She and her mother suffer from juvenile diabetes....Senators Debbie Stabenow and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) want the Federal Trade Commission to investigate
whether oil companies are gouging motorists....Newly-confirmed judges
will tilt the Sixth Circuit to the right.
Legislature Update
Thousands Rally for School Funding. An crowd estimated at 11,000--more than twice the number organizers expected--
rallied in support of school funding legislation. The legislation, proposed by Senators Robert Emerson (D-Flint) and Representatives Dianne Byrum (D-Onondaga) and Hoon-Yung Hopgood, (D-Taylor), would guarantee public schools a funding increase equal to the inflation rate or five percent, whichever is less.
Meanwhile, the House
passed legislation that would give an extra $200 per student to school districts that have traditionally received less in funding. It now goes to the Senate, which opted to increase per-student grants by $175.
GOP: Phase Out Single Business Tax. Senate Republicans unveiled legislation
that would phase out the Single Business Tax over the next 19 years. Governor Granholm's reform plan would continue the tax past its 2009 expiration date but reduce the rate from 1.9 percent to 1.2 percent. Her plan also would give a tax credit to companies with manufacturing and research and development property. GOP lawmakers also plan to ask voters for a constitutional amendment tying state spending to inflation and population growth. A similar measure is on the books in Colorado.
Lawmakers Propose "Selling" Tobacco Settlement Money. GOP legislators are considering "securitizing" future revenue from the state's settlement with tobacco companies and selling it to investors. The
Detroit News was unimpressed with the idea, saying that it gives lawmakers the easy way out and merely borrows from the future.
Speaker's Comments Raise Eyebrows. House Speaker Craig DeRoche (R-Novi) committed a gaffe during an interview with an Upper Peninsula radio station.
DeRoche said that the U.P.'s three Democratic representatives sided with "Detroit Democrats" in voting to keep two U.P. prisons open. Representative Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing) criticized DeRoche's comments for their racial overtones, and DeRoche eventually apologized to the House Black Caucus.
Lawmakers Propose "Wal-Mart Tax". Representative Alma Smith (D-Salem Township) and two other Democrats introduced legislation
that would impose a Single Business Tax surcharge on companies with more than 50 workers. The added levy would equal the cost of providing Medicaid benefits to those employees. Smith and her colleagues proposed the tax after finding out that thousands of workers earn so little that they qualify for Medicaid. They estimate that the state pays at least $75 million a year for those workers.
Drug Company Immunity Under Fire. Lawmakers are revisiting
a 1996 law that bars lawsuits by victims of FDA-approved medications. Revelations that drugs such as Vioxx had dangerous side effects have shaken some lawmakers' confidence in the FDA's ability to protect patients. On the other hand, former governor John Engler, who signed the measure into law, would like to see Michigan's drug-immunity become the law of the land. Engler now heads the National Association of Manufacturers.
In Brief. A Senate panel
passed a bill making it harder for people with criminal records to work in nursing homes....Hospital groups and advocates for the poor
urged GOP lawmakers to look for other ways to balance the state budget without further welfare and Medicaid cuts....A House committee voted to
exempt stores with easily accessible scanners from the item-pricing law....A House committee
approved legislation that would delay the start of the school year until after Labor Day....House Democrats
failed once again to force a floor vote on a measure that would hike the fee on incoming Canadian trash.
Around the State
Sizing Up Engler's Record. The unveiling of former governor John Engler's official portrait led the
Detroit News's George Weeks to assess Engler's 12 years as governor. Weeks noted that
Engler delivered on his promise to give the state a dose of "strong medicine", which included welfare reform, overhauling school financing, and restructuring state government.
Cox Nixes Community Service Requirement. Attorney General Mike Cox issued an opinion concluding that
the Merit Award Board can't require students to do community service as a condition of receiving a $2,500 college tuition award. While the community-service requirement is down, it's not out. Community service is part of the governor's plan to overhaul the merit scholarship program.
In Brief. Peter Luke of Booth Newspapers
lamented the meanness and partisanship in Michigan politics at a time when Michiganders need to work together and reinvent the state....In an unscientific survey, readers of the
Lansing State Journal listed school funding as their number-one priority....Milton Mack, a Wayne County judge,
wrote a Detroit News op-ed urging the state to use proportional representation to select state legislators....Ten years after voters approved Proposal A, the
Oakland Press notes that
there are still vast inequalities among Michigan school districts in the construction and maintenance of facilities....A task force on mercury pollution
submitted its report to Governor Granholm, who now must decide between regulation and incentives to reduce emissions....It was revealed that trial lawyer Geoffrey Fieger
contributed more than $400,000 toward television ads attacking Justice Stephen Markman, who was re-elected to the Supreme Court in 2004....Michigan
has many of the same problems that plagued Ohio's 2004 presidential vote, according to a report by the Democratic National Committee....Dorothy Jones, whose reappointment to the State Board of Canvassers was blocked by the Senate,
has been appointed chairwoman of the Michigan Task Force on Elder Abuse.
Don't Forget: Kossack Gathering Tonight
There will be a gathering of Michigan, Ohio, and Ontario Kossacks at the Sidetrack Bar and Grill in Ypsilanti's Depot Town this evening at 7 pm. Ypsilanti is just east of Ann Arbor, about 10-15 minutes west of Metro Airport, and about 30 minutes west of downtown Detroit.
Follow the hyperlink for directions.