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.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm vetoed one bill and part of another that were part of the budget compromises for FY 2011, which began nearly two weeks ago on Oct. 1. She vetoed completely a bill that would have allowed sales of liquor on Sunday mornings, saying that she supports the bill but it contained language that [...]
Gov. Jennifer Granholm held a press conference on Wednesday to propose ways to fix the budget shortfalls for the current fiscal year, 2010, and for the FY 2011, which begins on October 1. As is routinely the case, some cuts or shifts are necessary in the middle of the current year as a result of [...]
Gov. Granholm on Thursday announced that she had signed a compromise bill passed by the Michigan House and Senate for K-12 funding in FY 2011. The bill offers schools a modest $11 per pupil funding hike, a welcome respite after deep cuts to school funding last year forced schools to hastily cut programs and layoff [...]
Both chambers of the Michigan legislature passed the compromise public school budget for FY 2011 — a budget with a slight increase in K-12 funding — on Thursday. The legislation now heads to the desk of Gov. Granholm, who is expected to sign it soon. The votes were overwhelming, with the bill passing 37-1 in [...]
A conference committee in the Michigan legislature agreed last night on a spending bill for FY 2011 that boosts funding for K-12 education by $11 per pupil, avoiding the kind of drastic cuts that have made life difficult for school administrators the last few years. The Detroit Free Press reports:
Is it? Could it be? Actual cooperation going on in the Michigan legislature to avoid steep spending cuts? Yes, it could very well be. The Detroit News reports that Republican and Democratic legislators are working on an education funding bill that would avoid more cuts for K-12 education in next year’s budget.
With the failure of the unemployment extension bill — aka the jobs bill or the extenders bill — late last week, at least in its current form, Michigan may be forced to cut another $500 million from the budget. Along with extending unemployment benefits, the bill also would have given billions more in Medicaid funding [...]
This week, with Congress back from the Memorial Day recess, legislators will again push for a $23 billion aid bill to keep public-school teachers in their classrooms. Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-Iowa) proposal, the Keep Our Educators Working Act, would help prevent the firing of as many as 300,000 educators. The states’ fiscal crises are peaking [...]
The Democratically-controlled Michigan House of Representatives may want to use the anticipated $292 million surplus in the School Aid Fund to restore some of the cuts made to state funding for K-12 education this year, but one of the Senate leaders on the subject would rather use that money to fill gaps in other state [...]
A proposal to send $23 billion in federal aid to the states for the purpose of boosting local school budgets to avoid teacher layoffs looks likely to die after sponsors of the plan acknowledged they don’t have the votes to get it passed in either chamber. Michigan was not counting on that aid, but it [...]
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