Rick Pluta

This week on It’s Just Politics, we delve into a secret project dubbed “skunk works.” The name means a project done in secret, usually to get something complex or controversial done quickly, without getting mucked up in organizational bureaucracy.

Skunkworks: A History

The name is actually trademarked by the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Lockheed’s Skunk Works was created to handle aircraft projects that needed to be wrapped up quickly during World War II. Now, jump ahead almost 70 years, and it was revealed last week by The Detroit News that Michigan has recently had its own skunk works project. But this time: education rather than aircrafts.

Skunkworks Closer to Home

The group involved members of Governor Rick Snyder’s administration and was led by Richard McLellan, a well-known attorney in Lansing known as a Republican deal-maker and conjurer of political plots.

Governor Snyder had already asked McLellan to devise a plan to revamp Michigan’s school funding system. But Skunkworks was a separate operation. This plan was to create a string of low-cost charter schools authorized by a tribal community college with statewide reach. The group involved in the plan did not include the education lobby – teachers’ unions, administrators and school boards.

McLellan was the one who tagged the project “skunk works" (a name we’re pretty sure he has come to regret) and in an email that was leaked to The Detroit News, he details what the project was about. Education lobbyists saw this as a plot to undercut them and create a new pipeline of charters competing for school funding. These schools would be middle and high schools, something that would be ground-breaking as charter operators typically don’t run middle and high schools. That’s because they tend to be more expensive than elementary schools (they have to pay for things like chemistry labs and big gyms).

Education Lobby None Too Pleased

When the Lansing education lobby found about this – they cried foul at not being part of the discussions, especially ones involving people so close to the governor. One of Governor Snyder’s political brands has always been the ‘hands-on CEO” so, it’s interesting to note that the governor distanced himself from the group pretty quickly after it was made public.

The Michigan Senate has approved legislation that could circumvent a referendum on wolf hunting.

The bill would give a state commission the authority to name the wolf, or almost any other species, as a game species.

That's separate from the wolf-hunting law that is the target of a referendum drive. That referendum would appear on the November 2014 ballot once petitions signed by 250,000 voters are certified by a state elections board.

*This post will be updated.

Update April 23rd, 2013

State House Republicans have given up on efforts to punish school districts and other public employers that agreed to labor contracts that delayed the effects of Michigan’s right-to-work law.

The House Republican majority allowed budget bills to move forward without threatened reductions in state payments.
    
State Representative Joe Haveman (R-Holland) chairs the House Appropriations Committee.

"We decided this was the time to back off and say, 'let’s let it go.' We made our point. That’s as much as we can do right now," he said.

The effort did, however, dissuade some universities and schools from agreeing to the contracts.

"We wanted to limit or really restrict people from going into new contracts to circumvent right-to-work, and when you look at the number of colleges, schools, local jurisdictions, there were so few that did it, we think we accomplished what we needed to," Haveman said.

Haveman says, in some cases, the extended contracts resulted in savings to taxpayers.  Contracts in place before the law took effect on March 28th have to be honored.

There’s at least one lawsuit challenging a contract extension.

March 19th, 2013 - State lawmakers move to cut school and university funding over right-to-work debate

Some Michigan universities could lose 15 percent of their state funding over new union contracts. A state budget panel today voted to sanction schools that approve long-term contracts before the state’s new right-to-work law takes effect.

That’s unless the contracts include cost savings of at least 10 percent.

Representative Al Pscholka  chairs the subcommittee that passed the university cuts.

“What we are concerned about are these long-term contracts, really meant to kind of circumvent state law, that don’t give any savings to taxpayers, and just pass along more and more expenses to students, taxpayers, and parents.”

Representative Sam Singh is the top Democrat on the panel. He says the schools did not break any laws and should not be punished.

“The management has been negotiating with their employee groups and have actually been getting cost savings for the general public. And we should be allowing them to do that instead of meddling in their affairs.”

Wayne State University and the University of Michigan could each lose tens of millions of dollars in state funding if the cuts are passed.

The state’s right to work law does not take effect until the end of the month.

Governor Rick Snyder says he’s pleased with an official opinion from state Attorney General Bill Schuette.

It says the state constitution does not allow the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund to pay for dredging and other types of maintenance on public harbors.

The governor says that affirms his position.

"As we look at, let’s look out to the future, I would not use the trust fund at all. That is not a place that I would look to for resources for this," he said.

The Governor and the Attorney General say the Natural Resources Trust can only be used to acquire and improve property for the public’s use.

Snyder and the Legislature reached a compromise earlier on an emergency dredging bill that taps into the Waterways Trust Fund and the state’s General Fund.

The money will be used for dredging this spring to clear harbors suffering from record low water levels. Low water levels could affect Great Lakes shipping and recreational boating.

This week's It's Just Politics is all about the politics of gas taxes; there’s a turbo-charged effort this week at the state Capitol to pull together a transportation funding package that will most likely include some kind of increase in the gas tax. Governor Snyder continues to say that he wants at least $1.2 billion dollars more in annual transportation funding. And, even though everyone seems to agree that Michigan’s roads are in dire condition… not everyone can agree on how to pay for the repairs.

It is a complicated state of affairs. Everybody hates the disease. But no one likes the cure: more money for infrastructure. That’s a good reason why the gas tax hasn’t been increased in Michigan since 1996, under then-Governor John Engler.

It’s not as simple as just raising the state gas tax (which is currently 19 cents per gallon). As we know, raising taxes is not typically part of the recipe for reelection, and every House member and state Senator who is not term-limited is up for reelection in November 2014, along with Governor Snyder.

Dealing with this road funding conundrum is complicated by the fact that we pay a lot of different taxes at the pump. There’s the state gas tax and the federal gas tax. We also pay the state sales tax, which goes to schools and local governments. It doesn’t pay for roads. That’s why a lot of people want to either exempt fuel sales from the sales tax or turn a portion of it over to road funding. But that’s a problem because then you’re taking a billion dollars from schools and local governments, both of which are not feeling a lot of love from Lansing lately. So, cut the sales tax from the cost of buying fuel and you’ve suddenly got yourself a new (billion-dollar) problem.

State officials say they don’t expect they’ll have to lay off employees due to the loss of $150 million dollars in federal funds this year and next. That’s how much the state is expected to lose because of the budget standoff in Washington.

The state budget office says it has a plan that averts public employee layoffs.

But Governor Rick Snyder says the state has no plans to replace the money lost because of sequestration – which amounts to about four-tenths of one percent of total state spending.   

The state kicked more than 500 people off food assistance and other welfare programs over the past 12 months because they won the Lottery.

But, a member of Governor Rick Snyder’s cabinet wants thousands more people be kicked off public assistance because of their Lottery winnings.

A new report says 14% of Lottery winners in Michigan live in a household where someone is on public assistance. There’s a law that requires the state to check the name of everyone who wins more than a thousand dollars against the rolls for many programs.

A newly awarded presidential permit will allow Michigan to wrap up an agreement with Canada to build a new international bridge. The bridge will connect Detroit and Windsor-Ontario. Michigan, U.S. and Canadian officials cheered the news today. 

We really hadn’t heard much about referendum-proofing since back in December and the Legislature’s now-infamous “lame duck” session. But the wait is over. We now have a new controversy and a new referendum-proofed bill before the state Senate which could be voted on as early as next week.

We’ve talked about referendum-proofing before on It’s Just Politics, it’s when the Legislature wants to make sure a controversial bit of business can’t be reversed by voters using the referendum, lawmakers put a little spending in it. That makes the legislation an appropriation, and to protect the full faith and credit of the state, the Michigan Constitution says that’s the only kind of law that can’t be challenged by a referendum.

Referendum-proofing has been going on for a long time but, it’s really picked up steam in the last three years. The Republican-majority ruled state Legislature now regularly makes its controversial work immune to referendums – the repeal of the item pricing law, the income tax on pensions, and the controversial right to work law, just to name a few.

Strangely, the Legislature did not referendum-proof the first emergency manager law it passed in the last session, and after voters rejected it last November, turned around and passed a new emergency manager law with a referendum-proofing appropriation in it.

The referendum effort to stop a wolf hunt in Michigan has been called "a radical agenda" by those opposed to it.

Now, new legislation introduced by State Senator Tom Casperson (R-Escanaba) seeks to deflate that referendum drive.

The Michigan Legislature listed the wolf as a potential game species late last year. The group "Keep Michigan Wolves Protected" says they collected enough signatures to put the question in front of voters.

We’re more than a year away from the next statewide election – November 2014 – but, we’re already seeing plenty of hand-wringing among Republicans and Democrats over who will run for statewide offices.

Success for Democrats will depend a lot on voters in an off-presidential year. They need to hit or come close to hitting the 62 percent turnout – about 7.5 million voters across the state - that was part of the Democrats’ winning formula last year.

Republicans meanwhile, want to – need to – alter their message to capture a bigger share of whoever turns out without adulterating their values on gay marriage, affirmative action.

So that’s the backdrop as both parties try to sort out who will run. There’s no shortage of Republicans interested in that Senate seat that’s open because Carl Levin is retiring. There’s a sense that Congressman Mike Rogers could clear the field if he decides to run. We're not totally convinced that’s the case. An open Senate seat in Michigan is pretty rare. There’s some early, somewhat conflicting polling on this.

Republicans in Michigan, at least some of them, are trying to reposition their  party vis a vis gay rights, and especially gay marriage. It’s one of the issues that has been killing Republicans among younger voters.

This week, Michigan Republican National Committeeman David Agema put that dilemma front and center with a post on his Facebook page. It was an old and pretty much discredited piece that outlines “facts” about homosexuality; like gay people are responsible for half the murders in large cities.

As a national committeeman from Michigan, Agema helps set the direction at the Republican National Committee. He was elected last year by a Republican state convention; swept in by a Tea Party insurgency. This Facebook post took the simmering conundrum facing Republicans and turned up the heat. The rest of the public is watching as Republicans try to resolve this question: Is it possible to simultaneously be against gay marriage and against discrimination that targets gay people?

Some Michigan Republicans are calling on Agema to resign. But Agema and his position certainly still have plenty of supporters in the Republican Party.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has called for a grand jury investigation into an outbreak of meningitis and other illnesses caused by tainted steroids.

The contaminated medicine has been linked to 259 cases of illness and 14 deaths in the state.

The attorney general filed his request with the Michigan Court of Appeals. If the court says yes, a judge and up to 17 grand jurors would conduct the inquiry into whether any crimes were committed. The proceedings would be secret.

It’s an unusual step, but Schuette says the grand jury would have sweeping authority to do its job.

“Now, this grand jury can be empowered to fully investigate this human tragedy, these 14 deaths and painful illnesses, with the greatest power extended under Michigan law. "

The grand jury would meet in secret. It would have the power to compel people to appear and testify. And it could ask a Massachusetts court to order employees of the pharmacy that made the drug to cooperate.

The judge to lead the investigation and the grand jurors would be drawn from Macomb, Genesee, Livingston, and Grand Traverse counties.

Those counties are where the clinics that administered the contaminated steroid injections are located.

Two utilities have been given permission to build new coal-fired power plants in northern and western Michigan. The state Court of Appeals has tossed out legal challenges to their permits. But, that doesn't mean the plants will be built.

Environmental groups went to court to challenge the permits. The state Department of Environmental Quality says the utilities demonstrated there was a demand for electricity. And the agency says the proposed coal plants in Holland and Rogers City met state and federal pollution standards.