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.
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing will officially challenge the U.S. Census finding that the city of Detroit — once the nation’s fifth largest — now has only 713,777 residents.
“Personally, I don’t believe that the number is accurate and I don’t believe it will stand up as we go through with our challenge,” he told the Detroit News. “The census has a history of undercounting residents in urban cities like Detroit.”
City Council President Charles Pugh appealed to the census to count Detroit’s lawbreakers. There are thousands of Detroiters in prisons around the state who should be counted as city residents, he said. Pugh argued that Detroit’s population is also undercounted because “we know that there are thousands of people, because of car insurance, that have addresses in the suburbs.”
Detroit’s smaller population will mean the loss of both state and federal representatives and it will also mean a loss in revenue sharing. According to Bing over the course of a decade each person counted brings in about $10,000 in public funds for hospitals, roads, schools and social service program.
Part of the revenue sharing cash given to cities by the state is based on population. Detroit’s share of that pot of money was $60.3 million in the 2009-10 budget year. While the formula is complex, the cash-strapped city could lose millions of dollars each year because of the new census figures, said Jim Stansell, economist with the Michigan House Fiscal Agency.
That loss will be felt as early as next month, when the state sends out its next bimonthly revenue sharing checks to cities.
Because the budget year is half over, the remaining state checks sent to Detroit not only will reflect the lower revenue sharing figures, but will be cut even more to make up for the cash that Detroit was overpaid.
The 2010 census shows Detroit’s population declined by 25 percent over the last decade.
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