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 May revenue estimating conference in Lansing on Friday gave legislators good news — and perhaps some relief from the pressure to make more steep cuts in the budgets for 2010 (which ends in September) and 2011 (which begins in October). You can read the full report here (PDF).
As anticipated by the individual reports from the House and Senate Fiscal Agencies and the Department of Treasury, the General Fund is expected to come up short for the end of this fiscal year but the School Aid Fund is expected to show a surplus. The General Fund is now expected to have a deficit of $243 million, while the School Aid Fund is expected to have a $292 million surplus.
That likely means no need to make deep budget cuts in the middle of the fiscal year, as the legislature had to do often the last few years. And the news for next year is even better. The projection is for the General Fund to show an increase of $442 million over previous estimates, while the School Aid Fund is now expected to show an $83 million surplus.
When you combine those projected increases in revenue with the expected savings from the new school retirement package — just over $600 million in the first year — the projected $1.5 billion deficit for FY 2011 may be less than one-third that size. This has to come as a huge sigh of relief to legislators on both sides of the aisle, who now may manage to avoid a bruising budget fight in an election year.
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