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.
Traverse City Commissioner Jim Carruthers and Traverse City Schools Superintendent Stephen Cousins were among the local officials who gathered at the town’s public waterfront Monday to announce support for efforts to repeal the Emergency Manager law.
“Our new governor is pushing his corporate model and trying to take over what we elected people do,” Carruthers said. “This is something we should fight to stop and keep the power in the peoples hands.”
Cousins said that the school funding crisis was created by moves to use $900 million of the School Aid Fund for other purposes.
“It makes no sense to me that we would enact a law that would strip the power of elected officials … It is a rejection totally of our community values when we say that we are going to create a scenario that bankrupts government and then we are going to bring in people that are going to just slash and burn.”
A better solution to budget problems in local communities is to encourage broader citizen involvement, he said.
“I personally was told by my state representative that this was not something we in Northern Michigan needed to worry about. That this wasn’t for us,” Reject Emergency Managers spokeswoman Betsy Coffia said. “But low and behold the specter rises, schools as close by as Central Lake, Alba and Bellaire, all in Antrim County our neighbor, were named just this last week by their state representative Greg McMaster as very much in danger of their very own emergency manager.”
The State Bureau of Elections has accepted petition language calling for a referendum on the Emergency Manager law.
Opponents of the law must gather about 161,000 signatures in order to suspend the law and have it placed on the ballot.
The Coalition to Build Michigan has planned a June 1 training session for petition circulators.
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