I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The Michigan House of Representatives adjourned for the night shortly after 11 pm, after approving a bill not directly related to the budget problem — SB 777, a $25 million tax credit for the old Ford facility at Wixom to be transformed into an alternative energy park. The Senate adjourned several hours earlier.
Wednesday promises to be a busy day. Several important and very controversial budget bills remain to be considered, including the K-12 school funding budget and the governmental operations budget, which includes deep cuts in local revenue sharing. The other major outstanding budget bill is the Department of transportation bill, which has yet to be voted out of its conference committee.
According to the Detroit Free Press, the DOT budget is being held up as the conference committee debates the issue of a second bridge between Detroit and Canada. Matty Maroun, the owner of the Ambassador Bridge, wants to build a second span next to the already existing one, but there is a competing plan for a publicly-owned bridge a quarter mile to the South of the Ambassador.
The DOT budget includes $8 million for preliminary work on the public bridge project and Maroun is seeking to kill that budgetary item, which has the conference committee working on the budget sharply divided. The question is whether a second bridge should be paid for and owned largely by a private company or by the government.
With less than 24 hours to go before a mandatory government shutdown, there isn’t much time to resolve these issues. Gov. Jennifer Granholm increased her involvement Tuesday evening, meeting in private with House Speaker Andy Dillon and with the whole Democratic caucus in the House.
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