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 one of her first actions as director of the Michigan Dept. of Human Services, former state Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan has promised to speed up state payments to counties that have backlogs of dead poor people they can’t afford to bury.
The Wall St. Journal reports that DHS will process a backlog of applications for state burial aid with a goal of helping the Wayne County morgue get 50 bodies buried within 30 days.
Wayne County has about 185 bodies in storage awaiting burial, some dating back to 2008. Because of state budget cuts, the county can afford to bury only about half as many bodies as it needs to, Albert Samuels, chief investigator for the county’s medical examiner’s office, told the Journal last week.
Wayne County is among many cash-strapped localities around the country scrambling to deal with the cost of indigent burials amid budget cuts at the state and local levels.
The Journal reports that Michigan spent about $4.2 million on indigent burials for about 17,000 bodies in fiscal year 2009 and that Toledo has approved a plant to cremate indigent people, a move that could save that city $600 per body.
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