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.
The Michigan Court of Appeals has rejected a Michigan Farm Bureau attempt to limit the Dept. of Environmental Quality’s authority to require pollution discharge permits from concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs.
The Michigan Farm Bureau announced yesterday that it supports maintaining adequate funding and staffing for the Dept. of Agriculture program that conducts inspections of housing provided to migrant and seasonal farm workers. The group warned that just four staff members are now responsible for inspecting housing units used by 22,000 workers. The announcement came in [...]
The Michigan Farm Bureau said today that it agrees with Governor Granholm that the old Michigan economy is gone and budget cuts are necessary but it chastised the governor for ignoring the state’s agriculture industry in her State of the State address last night. The farm advocacy group said that the governor failed to acknowledge [...]
Financial trouble pushed state and national leaders to suggest abandoning longstanding environmental programs this year and some even blamed air and water quality regulations for Michigan’s economic problems.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm is facing opposition to her Oct. 8 executive order that restructures government by combining the departments of Natural Resources and Environmental Quality. The order also removed the power of the Agriculture Commission and the Natural Resources Commission to appoint the directors of their departments. The move was presented as a way to save money but farmers, sportsmen and conservationists say they are worried that it will improperly concentrate power in the governor’s office.
As the Halloween budget deadline looms, concerns are growing over signs that the governor may veto funding for agricultural research and extension programs seen as critical to the state’s agricultural sector.
Republican State Senator Patty Birkholz of Saugatuck Township says that she is “cautiously optimistic” that a bill she plans to introduce on Thursday will keep the state’s wetland program running for a few more years. Gov. Jennifer Granholm has called for the elimination of the program as a cost-savings measure, appropriations committees in the legislature have zeroed its budget, and the Department of Environmental Quality has prepared layoff notices for staff that work in wetland permitting.
A Newaygo County judge has upheld the legality of regulations imposed by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality that require large farms called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) to obtain permits that limit the amount of pollutants they can release into surface waters in the state.
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