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.
Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing) slammed the GOP education budget Wednesday in a speech on the floor as the state Senate prepared to pass the contentious budget deal that cuts education funding significantly. “It is a budget that robs our kid’s future. Taking 400 million out of a fund that was supposed to [...]
Peter Luke writes in the Grand Rapids Press that the steep cuts in state funding for K-12 education is going to be a very difficult sell for legislators in their home districts — especially with the School Aid Fund showing a big surplus in revenue.
Apparently not satisfied with cutting state aid to public schools by nearly $500 per pupil next year, one state senator wants to deny even that lowered state aid to those school districts that have planned well and kept money in reserve.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop delivered the GOP’s response to Gov. Granholm’s State of the State speech Wednesday night, and where Granholm’s speech made virtually no mention of taxes or state revenues, Bishop left no doubt that the Republican leadership in Congress still adamantly refuses to even consider any measures to stabilize state government revenue. [...]
Gov. Jennifer Granholm decided to delay a $127 per pupil cut to K-12 funding that she ordered in addition to the $165 per pupil cut that was passed by the state legislature in October. She ordered the additional cuts because there was a $100 million unfunded mandate in the education funding bill and the Treasury [...]
The fallout from the failure of the state legislature to provide adequate funding for schools continues. Several local school districts are now considering adding furlough days to the remainder of the school year, the Lansing State Journal reports:
With a Nov. 21 deadline looming for the legislature to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to K-12 school funding, one Republican Senator has come up with an idea for how to raise the revenue to do so: Make the teachers pay for it. Peter Luke reports at MLive.com:
Anger over more than $500 million in cuts to school funding in the latest budget seems to be spreading in the state. Tuesday morning more than 1,500 students, teachers and parents rallied at the state capitol, demanding that the legislature restore those cuts. The Detroit News reports:
Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Thursday night that if the state Senate passes the bill the House passed to use $184 million more in federal stimulus funds to reduce the depth of cuts for K-12 education in this year’s budget, she’ll sign it. But she said the same thing we said about it last evening:
The Michigan House of Representatives voted today to restore a large portion of the cuts in per-pupil spending on K-12 education by using $184 million in federal stimulus funds that were set aside to help balance next year’s budget. In a press release from the House Democrats, Rep. Terry Brown (D-Pigeon) said:
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