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.
A conference committee in the Michigan legislature agreed last night on a spending bill for FY 2011 that boosts funding for K-12 education by $11 per pupil, avoiding the kind of drastic cuts that have made life difficult for school administrators the last few years. The Detroit Free Press reports:
A House-Senate conference committee agreed to keep most of a $300-million surplus in the School Aid Fund, rather than use it to defray a $300-million deficit in the state general fund. The fund would distribute $12.8 billion to schools during the spending year that begins Oct. 1….
What to do with the surplus, which was identified when state Treasury officials analyzed higher-than-anticipated sales tax revenue, had been in dispute. Majority House Democrats wanted to reserve all of it for schools, while Senate Republicans pressed to use it to erase the general fund deficit.
Both sides will continue wrangling over the surplus as they complete the state budget. But schools should be able to count on stable funding.
The breakthrough was apparently the agreement of House Speaker Andy Dillon (D-Redford Township) to try to pass a plan that would offer all state employees a similar retirement plan to the one offered to school teachers. That bill would save the state around $100 million a year, but House Democrats had opposed the bill.
The House and Senate are expected to pass the K-12 funding bill today before adjourning for the July 4 recess. That will be a great help to local school districts, which have to finalize their budgets for next year by today.
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