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.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop is challenging Gov. Jennifer Granholm over her threats to use the line-item veto to strike out spending items in order to save money to fund her own budget priorities, particularly the Promise scholarship, local revenue sharing and Medicaid reimbursement. Michigan Public Radio reports:
The Michigan Senate passed a bill to create an amnesty period during which those who owe back taxes to the state can make good without additional fines or any threat of imprisonment. The law applies to those who failed to file a return, those who did not pay taxes that they owed and those who [...]
On Monday, Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed three more budget bills that provide funding for the Department of Corrections, Department of Education and Department of Transportation. While doing so, she also issued several line-item vetos on specific provisions in those bills. A press release from her office spells out the details. On the DOC funding bill, [...]
Gov. Jennifer Granholm turned up the heat on state legislators, particularly Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop and the Republican-controlled Senate, by declaring on Monday that she will use the line-item veto in order to free up money to reverse or reduce spending cuts, including cuts in the Michigan Promise scholarship, Medicaid reimbursement and revenue sharing [...]
The compromise budget bill passed by the Michigan Senate on Thursday and the House on Friday will be signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, the Detroit News reports. The House, however, did not give that bill immediate effect when they passed the bill this morning, so it may be next week before the bill is signed. [...]
A compromise plan to reduce the funding cuts for K-12 schools in part by reducing the Earned Income Tax Credit for the state’s low income families has the Michigan League for Human Services, a non-profit organization that advocates on behalf of Michigan’s poor, crying foul. In a press release, the MLHS says:
The Michigan House of Representatives just passed the second conference report for the committee overseeing the budget for K-12 schools. This was the report that contained a compromise reached last night that reduced the budget cuts from $218 per pupil to $165 per pupil. The bill passed on a 66-42 vote with a mixture of [...]
A joint House-Senate conference committee in the state legislature reached an agreement on Thursday night to reduce the severity of the cuts in K-12 funding found in the original school budget bill that failed to pass the House last week as time ran out on budget negotiations.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed three minor and relatively uncontroversial budget bills on Thursday, bills that were passed by both houses of the state legislature before negotiations on the more contentious budgets broke down last week. The three bills were for the following budget items:
The fallout has already begun for some students in the state who were relying on a Michigan Promise scholarship to help pay for college. Grand Valley State University has started billing students for the additional tuition that would otherwise have been paid by the scholarship in anticipation of the grant being the victim of budget [...]
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