Politics & Government

Governor Rick Snyder plans to, "discuss legislative accomplishments and future plans" at a press conference scheduled for tomorrow morning in Lansing. Lt. Governor Brian Calley, Republican state Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, and Republican state House Speaker Jase Bolger will be there as well. The Detroit News reports:

It's a sign of Republican unity amid continued signs that pieces of Snyder's Feb. 17 budget could be in trouble in the Legislature. For example, enough GOP senators have said they don't support Snyder's pension tax as he has proposed it, which could keep it from passing if Democrats vote against it as a bloc.

Snyder said he, Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, and House Speaker Jase Bolger, R-Marshall, will talk about "what we've accomplished so far this year," and what "we're still working on."

Snyder made his remarks today after signing the 15th bill enacted into law by the Legislature since he took office Jan. 1.

"If you go through the State of the State, we've accomplished most of those items," Snyder said, referring to the January speech he gave to lay out his legislative agenda and broader vision for the state...

Earlier bills signed into law eliminated an item pricing requirement for retailers, strengthened the powers of emergency managers appointed by the state to oversee financially troubled cities and school districts and provided incentives for environmental self-regulation by farmers.

Two days ago a friend of mine called me in a semi-panic. Her unemployment benefits were about to run out, and she had eighty-seven dollars to her name. She wasn’t going to be able to make the modest payment on her small house, and didn’t know what to do. Nor did she understand what was going on in the legislature. Someone had told her that the governor was signing a bill to extend unemployment benefits. Somebody else told her he was going to shorten them. Which, she wanted to know, was it?

Well, both, I said. The governor signed a bill Monday that extends eligibility for federal extended unemployment benefits for up to ninety-nine weeks.

That’s only, however, for people like my friend Karen, who already is collecting unemployment.

Next year, however, things will change drastically. Any Michigander who loses his or her job after January 15, 2012 will only be eligible for state unemployment benefits for a maximum of twenty weeks. That’s less than five months.

For years, jobless workers in Michigan have been able to collect benefits for a maximum of twenty-six weeks, or six months. They can collect them for longer periods of time now because the federal government decided to temporarily provide benefits, because of the lingering effects of the recession. Those effects are still hanging on in Michigan, where unemployment is still more than ten percent. Economists expect that to come down a little by next year, but we’re likely to continue to be a long way from full employment. What that means is that for many people, twenty weeks is not going to be enough time to find a job.

So why is our government making it tough for jobless workers? Interestingly, nobody is really coming forward to defend this. Governor Snyder said he signed this bill because it was necessary to extend benefits for those who are jobless now. He said he would have been happy to leave eligibility at twenty-six weeks, and blamed the legislature for shortening the time period. Why did they do this? Well, nobody is rushing forward to claim credit.

So-Long Price Tags

Retailers will no longer have to put price tags on almost every individual item they sale. Governor Snyder signed a bill yesterday that repeals the requirement. Michigan was the only state in the country to have such sweeping price tag laws, Rick Pluta reports. Item-pricing was popular with much of the public. The law just signed by the Governor has a provision that makes sure the new law cannot be reversed by a citizen referendum, Pluta reports.

Shared Sacrifice Among Lawmakers

Republican state Senator Rick Jones has introduced a bill that would require state legislators to pay 20 percent of their health insurance premiums. With the state facing a $1.4 billion budget deficit in the coming fiscal year, Governor Snyder wants state employees to  pay 20 percent of their health care insurance and, so, Senator Rogers thinks state lawmakers should have to do the same. Senator Jones has also introduced a bill to alter the lifetime health insurance that legislators receive after serving only six years, calling it “obscene,” Tracy Samilton reports.

Price of Homes Continues to Fall

Homes values in Metro Detroit declined to a new low in January. From the Detroit News:

Among the 20 major cities surveyed for the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, Detroit ranked last with an index of 66.02. The region's previous low was 66.47 in December. Case-Shiller uses home values from January 2000 as a starting point of 100 — anything higher shows a gain, and anything lower is a loss. Compared with other major cities, Detroit is much lower.

According to Home Price Index, home values in Metro Detroit are the lowest since 1993.

A state law that would require punishment for Michigan teachers who go on strike appears to be on a fast-track in the state legislature, Steve Carmody reports. Republican State Representative Bill Rogers has authored one of two bills that would require a two year license suspension and a large daily fine for striking teachers. Carmody reports:

Rogers expects the anti-teacher strike bills will move quickly through the legislature and may reach the governor's desk before a possible statewide teachers' strike next month. The state's largest teachers' union is mulling possible job actions, including teacher walk-outs, to protest cuts in school funding and other issues.

A press release on Rep. Rogers' website explains the rationale behind the measures:

Teacher strikes put the education of students and teachers' jobs at risk and have recently been encouraged by Michigan Education Association (MEA) President Iris Salters. Striking is illegal in Michigan, although penalties for doing so are hard to enforce.

House Bill 4466... will fine the Michigan Education Association $5,000 per teacher for each full or partial day that public school employees are engaged in a strike or strike like activities. The bill also orders employees to pay a fine in the amount equal to one day of pay for every day or partial day in which an employee participates in a strike...

House Bill 4465... requires that state superintendents suspend a teacher's license for a period of two years or permanently revoke their license, if caught breaking existing strike laws.

"This legislation discourages teachers from striking by putting teeth into the current strike law," said Rogers, R-Brighton. "We need to put the focus back onto educating our children. Children are the ones who suffer from teacher strikes and this legislation makes sure those who choose to participate face consequences for their actions."

Governor Snyder says he hopes teachers won’t authorize their union to call a statewide strike in response to his budget plans. Snyder proposed a $470 per-pupil-cut in state education spending earlier this year.

State lawmakers are on a Spring break until April 11th.

Governor Rick Snyder says he hopes teachers won’t authorize their union to call a statewide strike in response to his budget plans.

The Michigan Education Association is in the process of collecting answers to a member inquiry.

The MEA is querying its 155,000 members and 1,100 local bargaining units.

Union members are mad over Michigan’s new emergency manager law that could threaten collective bargaining agreements in financially troubled school districts. And many of them oppose Governor Snyder’s proposed big cuts to K-through-12 education and requiring teachers to pay more for their pensions and health coverage.

The governor says he’s confident the controversies will not spill over to classrooms.

"We have fabulous teachers in our state and I have confidence that the teachers in our state understand, and really appreciate – because they’re doing it for a living – that the most important thing in front of them is the students they’re teaching, and I don’t think they’ll look at using their students as a pawn in a broader game," said Snyder.

It is illegal for teachers and other public employees to strike in Michigan, but the MEA says cuts in school funding and rollbacks in collecting bargaining rights may demand drastic actions.

They've asked its bargaining units to authorize job actions that could include picketing or walkouts.

They expect to have all responses in hand by mid-April.

Governor Snyder says he expects consumers will benefit from lower prices and better service now that retailers do not have to assign workers to put price tags on almost every item on sale.

The governor signed a law today that repeals the requirement.

Michigan was the only state in the country to have such a sweeping price-tag law.

The new law requires retailers to prominently display prices near items on sale.

Governor Snyder says he does not expect consumers will be inconvenienced:

"And I always like to ask the question: When people went out of state, when we went on vacation, or people went out of state and went into a grocery store, I don’t know many of us who as we purchased these goods, we stopped in the aisle and yelled we were outraged because there wasn’t a sticker on them," Snyder said.

 Mark Murray, the president of the Meijer retail chain, says his stores do not expect to lay off people because of the new law.

He says the new law will allow his stores to compete with shopping clubs that were not covered by the item-pricing requirement, and retailers in neighboring states.

"They don’t have to item price. This is a competitive leveling of the playing field, and we believe we can take advantage of it to grow sales in every store and have that, in turn – hours are related to how much we sell," said Murray.

But retail employee unions say they fear there will be layoffs.

Item-pricing was popular with much of the public. The law just signed by Snyder has a provision that makes sure the new law cannot be reversed by a citizen referendum.

Republican state senator Rick Jones says many schools may soon demand that teachers pay at least 20-percent of their health insurance premiums. 

Jones has introduced a bill that would keep a school’s per-pupil funding intact, if teachers agree to the cuts. 

But he says teachers shouldn't be the only one making the sacrifice.

"I learned that senators and representatives pay anywhere from 5% to 7.6%, and I thought, how is that fair that we’re paying that and teachers are being asked to pay 20%?"

Jones says his new bill would require state legislators to pay 20% of their health insurance premiums. 

He has also introduced a bill to alter the lifetime health insurance that legislators receive after serving only six years, calling it “obscene.”

The bill would phase in the benefit, beginning at ten years of service.

On Monday, Governor Snyder signed into law a bill that would extend unemployment benefits by 20 weeks to some 35,000 Michiganders. However, the bill also cuts six-weeks of state unemployment benefits for new filers beginning next year. The measure reduces jobless benefits in the state from 26 weeks to 20 weeks as of 2012. That reduction means, beginning next year, Michigan will provide the shortest number of weeks of unemployment out of any state in the nation.

Snyder’s signing of the bill has gained the state quite a bit of national attention.

From The New York Times:

Democrats and advocates for the unemployed expressed outrage that such a hard-hit state will become the most miserly when it comes to how long it pays benefits to those who have lost their jobs. All states currently pay 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, before extended benefits paid by the federal government kick in. Michigan’s new law means that starting next year, when the federal benefits are now set to end, the state will stop paying benefits to the jobless after just 20 weeks. The shape of future extensions is unclear.

The measure, passed by a Republican-led Legislature, took advocates for the unemployed by surprise: the language cutting benefits next year was slipped quietly into a bill that was originally sold as way to preserve unemployment benefits this year.

From NPR’s political blog:

Few states were hit harder by the Great Recession and unemployment than Michigan, a state that faced profound economic challenges, including relatively high unemployment, even before the national downtown.

So it could strike some as ironic that Michigan, of all places, just enacted into law a reduction of the number of weeks it will pay unemployment insurance to 20 weeks from 26 weeks starting next year.

The reduction will make Michigan the state that provides jobless benefits for the shortest number of weeks. And that's in a state whose jobless rate was 11.3 percent in February compared with the 9.5 percent national rate….

Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican who took office this year, and GOP legislators said the reduction was necessary because the state's unemployment insurance fund is $4 billion in the hole as a result of its economic woes. Michigan borrowed from the federal government to keep the program afloat.

Since employers contribute to the state's jobless fund and were facing higher taxes to repay the federal loan, they supported the benefits reduction.

And, in a story picked up by USA Today, Chris Christoff with the Detroit Free Press, takes a hard look at the fact that Michigan owes, "the federal government about $3.96 billion that the state borrowed to pay unemployment benefits during the worst economy since the Great Depression. That's on top of the regular unemployment tax businesses and other employers must pay."

Snyder's signing of the bill also led some to speculate on whether or not other states would follow Michigan's lead in shortening benefits. An article in Examiner.com asks,"Will Ohio follow Michigan lead on reducing unemployment benefits?" And, in an article last week, the Washington Post noted:

This month, the Florida House approved a measure reducing the maximum benefit period from 26 to as little as 12 weeks while curbing increases in unemployment taxes paid by employers. The jobless rate in Florida is 11.9 percent.

“We are sending a message to the business community that Florida is quickly becoming the most business-friendly state in the country,” said state Rep. Doug Holder (R-Sarasota), the sponsor of the Florida bill.

It would go into effect Aug. 1.

In Arkansas, lawmakers are moving toward freezing unemployment benefits levels while trimming the maximum benefit period for state benefits from 26 to 25 weeks.