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 Detroit Free Press reports that efforts to amend the state’s term limits on legislators to make them considerably longer than they are now appear to be stalled as it has proven difficult to convince voters of what knowledgeable political observers know — that term limits has proven to be a very bad idea.
Here’s one of the reasons why:
A Wayne State University study released this past week notes that Michigan lawmakers said in interviews conducted from 1998 through 2004 that they spend less time monitoring state agencies and are more likely to turn to lobbyists as a source of information and guidance now that term limits are in place.
“Term limits were sold to Michigan voters on the notion that they would sever close ties with lobbyists and cause legislators to be more independent. In reality, we found them to have the opposite impact,” political science professor Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson, one of five study authors, said in a release.
This is hardly a surprise to anyone who deals with legislators and lobbyists close up. A candid lobbyist, perhaps after a drink or two, will tell you that term limits have greatly increased their influence over legislators because they are pretty much the only people with institutional memory or a real understanding of how the process works.
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