For the majority of Michigan's home-based care-givers, the Medicaid checks they receive in March are expected to be the last ones from which union dues will be deducted.

Based on statements by high ranking officials of the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) the end of the forced unionization of workers orchestrated in 2005 by the Service Employees International Union when Jennifer Granholm was governor, seems imminent.

In 2006, union dues started being taken from the Medicaid checks of the caregivers and sent to the union. To date, the SEIU has taken more than $34 million from the elderly and disabled in Michigan.

"We want to bring about an end to the dues,” MDCH Director Jim Haveman said. "I think that after the February checks (which are sent out in March), you'll see a very big fall-off."

These remarks were made by Haveman Thursday, following the Michigan Quality Community Care Council's January board meeting. The MQC3 is the agency that was established to help facilitate the dues skim. Gov. Rick Snyder last year appointed new board members who were not beholden to the SEIU.

Haveman pointed out that at the December MQC3 meeting the MQC3 board announced that the contract with SEIU Healthcare Michigan (the union affiliate involved) would end as of Feb. 28, and that MQC3 would cease to exist in April.

Following the actions taken at the December meeting, one of the remaining loose ends appears to be a related lawsuit, which is currently before the U.S. 6^th Circuit Court. An update of the settlement negotiations on that lawsuit, was provided at Thursday’s meeting by Kurt E. Krause, director of the MDCH Bureau of Legal Affairs.

"I've recently received an email from the Attorney General's office," Krause said. "The only questions the SEIU attorneys have brought up involve payment of services through February 28 [and some other technical issues]." 

The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation also has asked the Michigan Employment Relations Commission to award $3 million back to workers who have had their money taken as dues. The Legal Foundation says the SEIU engaged in unfair labor practices. MERC has not yet reached a decision on that case.

At the MDCH meeting Thursday, it was established that the February checks would be going out sometime around March 4.

"The legal prospects seem pretty clear," Krause said."“So now it looks like it's really down to the mechanics of doing it."

Based on the board discussion, that could include some payments that are behind, which might involve a trickle of future checks that could still have dues deductions.

Following the meeting, Krause said the situation wouldn't be completely over until the case in the U.S. 6^th Circuit Court is resolved. However, he added that, with the contract ending and MQC3 folding, he said he couldn't see what grounds the union would have to press for continuation of the dues deductions.

Haveman said he considered Gov. Snyder getting rid of the old MQC3 board as the key to putting an end to the dues deductions.

"I think they (SEIU) saw the handwriting on the wall after the governor replaced the board," Haveman said.

Gov. Snyder announced the changes the week before the Nov. 6 general election.

By replacing the MQC3 board Gov. Snyder basically used the union's own apparatus to undo the unionization.

Replacing the MQC3 board was the third attempt to end the dues flow.

In 2011, the state legislature tried to end the forced unionization by de-funding the MQC3. That attempt failed when the SEIU gave the MQC3 money so it could survive. Then, in the spring of 2012, the legislature passed, and Gov. Snyder signed, a bill to outlaw the forced unionization. That attempt initially failed when SEIU took its case to court and won. The appeal of that ruling seems to be the only unresolved element of the situation.

The newly-comprised MQC3 board declared there would be no contract extensions, and that it would dissolve the MQC3.

Nonetheless, the SEIU bankrolled Proposal 4 in November, which would have locked the forced unionization into the state constitution. However, voters saw through the union's attempt to guarantee itself special privileges and they overwhelmingly defeated Proposal 4.

In its final weeks of the MQC3's existence, MDCH officials are working on a plan to put a home help worker registry under the auspices of a different program. Part of the plan includes expanding the registry beyond the parameters of those needing home care.

Former House Appropriations Committee Chair Terry Geiger is heading the project.

At the meeting, Geiger and Haveman sought information from MQC3 employees who have been involved with the registry. They established that the most current count of those subject to the forced unionization was more than 59,000. Meanwhile, the number of names in the registry, which hasn't been promoted in recent weeks, has fallen to 379 (from only 933 when the union was claiming a registry was a primary reason to change the state constitution).

At the meeting, according to the MQC3, 63 percent of those in the Home Help Program are being cared for by relatives or other loved ones. That helps explain why there has been comparatively little demand for the registry.

Geiger said he thinks responsibility for the registry can change hands without requiring the addition of any new employees.

Gov. Rick Snyder has proposed increased spending on Michigan roads, which is surely a discussion worth having.

No one at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy will argue that Michigan roads don’t need to be improved. The Mackinac Center has long said the state should place a higher priority on roads and has authored two lengthy studies on the subject, in 1995 and 2007, respectively. Much of what was said in those reports is as useful today as when they were published. 

The question of how to go about raising the needed revenue to fund $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion in additional road spending needs to be answered. Last year, Gov. Snyder floated the idea of a tax on the wholesale price of gasoline and major hike — a 67 percent increase by one accounting — in auto registration fees. These ideas remain on the table in 2013. 

Two points about these proposed tax and fee increases must be stated up front.

First, gas taxes and car registration fees are very close to a true user fee and much better than funding road improvements through, say, a general sales tax hike. A user fee attempts to more closely tie the cost of a government service to those who most enjoy its benefits. Other related options, such as toll roads or some odometer-based user fee, have great merit, but probably not in the short-run. Michigan needs more and better infrastructure investment and making this policy a priority is a sound decision. 

Second, a net tax and fee increase simply isn’t necessary. It is wise to tie additional road funding to something akin to a true road user fee, but the hikes should be offset with dollar-for-dollar cuts to state personal income taxes (as just one possible example). Ideally, the net result of such tax changes will be a cut in the burden, not merely a shift. Gov. Snyder has a record of such dramatic tax changes. It does not strain credulity to suggest that he could do so again. 

Revenue losses from the offsetting personal income tax cut would require reducing government spending, but as the Center has pointed out time and again, the money is there to be had if only lawmakers are willing to make the cuts happen. 

Let us start with one simple idea: Eliminate Michigan’s department of corporate welfare and crony capitalism, otherwise known as the Michigan Economic Development Corp. 

The state could save a conservative $100 million (estimate premised on Fiscal 2013 budget as enacted) by closing this shop and redirecting its 21st Century Jobs Fund money and Indian Gaming dollars in support of personal income tax relief. The great irony in this is that investing these savings in state roads and bridges might actually produce a positive return on investment, something the MEDC probably hasn’t done in the whole of its existence. 

This is just one idea and it gets us more than 10 percent of the way to the lower estimate of necessary road repair dollars. The fact is, the Mackinac Center has made hundreds of suggestions over the years for saving (and in some cases, generating) billions of dollars in savings. 

The Center has authored three formal budget studies recommending more than 200 ideas for saving $2 billion without reducing the School Aid Fund. Since the last was published we have suggested even more ideas, big and small, controversial and not. 

Two ideas for saving money listed in our 2007 transportation study include repealing the state prevailing wage law and competitive contracting for road maintenance. Prevailing wage laws artificially raise the cost of government construction projects. One estimate published by the Center in 2007 was that repeal of this law in 2002 could have saved Michigan taxpayers some $107 million in public construction costs that are not related to schools. Savings like that are worth chasing. 

Michigan’s infrastructure system needs repair. We have been saying that in print for almost two decades. Tying the repairs, however, to a net tax increase is unnecessary. The best alternative is to offset hikes a fuel tax with spending and tax cuts elsewhere. 

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Michael D. LaFaive is director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute headquartered in Midland, Mich. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and the Center are properly cited.