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.
In a study of how transparent the 50 states are with their budget data, prepared by the Public Interest Research Group, Michigan is one of 18 states to receive a failing grade. The study evaluated the states on how closely they met the guidelines of Transparency 2.0, a standard requiring a comprehensive, searchable database of budget information.
In the executive summary of the report, PIRG says:
The ability to see how government uses the public purse is fundamental to democracy. Spending transparency checks corruption, bolsters public confidence in government, and promotes fiscal responsibility.
It is a particularly important tool for journalists and activists to be able to track how the public’s money is being spent. Michigan was cited as one of 14 states that have no transparency website at all.
And getting budget information from the state the old-fashioned way, through FOIA requests, is a hit or miss prospect. Some departments are quite cooperative, while others seem to invent reasons to prevent giving out information on how public money is spent.
A good example is the Michigan Department of Community Health’s invocation of terrorism as an excuse for not releasing what turned out to be entirely mundane information on how the state spent money for H1N1 treatment and prevention (though, to be fair, at other times the MDCH has been perfectly cooperative about such information).
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