News Story

Analysis: Follow the Money - No Wonder Corporate Welfare Bosses So Defensive

The website AnnArbor.com reports that Michael Finney, the newly-appointed director of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, will get an annual salary of $250,000, in addition to "deferred compensation equal to 18 percent of his salary in lieu of a retirement plan.”

The online publication compared his salary to what the directors of regional arms of the state’s corporate welfare bureaucracy earned in recent years, including Saginaw Future Inc.’s JoAnn T. Crary ($198,939 in 2009), Kalamazoo-based Southwest Michigan First’s Ron Kitchens ($439,859 in 2009) and Grand Rapids-based The Right Place’s Birgit Klohs ($282,320 in 2008).

Prior to his MEDC appointment Finney was the director of the Ann Arbor branch of this establishment, where according to AnnArbor.com he was paid $258,423 in 2008.

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.

Commentary

State Legislators' Guide to Repealing ObamaCare

The American Legislative Exchange Council has just published a “State Legislators Guide to Repealing ObamaCare.” However, the 15-point summary prepared by ALEC staff and posted below is a Mackinac Center/MichCapCon.com online exclusive, because to our knowledge this bullet-point version not been published except in hard copy:

Executive Summary: ALEC’s State Legislators Guide to Repealing ObamaCare

1. Introduce ALEC’s Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, the primary legislative vehicle for state pushback of the individual mandate and Canadian-style, single-payer health care.

2. Introduce a resolution supporting repeal of ObamaCare, an effective way to communicate the repeal message to members of your state’s Congressional delegation.

3. Enact a moratorium on ObamaCare rulemaking, which will allow your state to focus its limited regulatory resources on core functions of government.

4. Introduce legislation authorizing a federal waiver on ObamaCare’s medical loss ratio requirement, which will help your state delay implementation of this provision until 2014.

5. Reject ObamaCare discretionary grants that aid in the federal takeover of state health insurance regulation.

6. Decline to enforce ObamaCare’s “consumer protections” if such enforcement authority does not already exist.

7. Commission independent research to track and measure ObamaCare’s impact at the state level.

8. Hold public hearings and establish standing legislative committees to examine ObamaCare’s implementation and impact.

9. Participate in the ObamaCare rulemaking and comment process to the extent possible.

10. Serve as a legislative check on agency and executive branch implementation of ObamaCare.

11. Introduce study bills or make public calls for Medicaid “opt out” in 2014, which has already shifted the debate to the unintended consequences of ObamaCare’s Medicaid mandates.

12. Introduce study bills or make public calls for “public employee opt out” in 2014, which has already focused attention on the unintended consequences of ObamaCare’s employer mandate.

13. Recruit unlikely allies and demonstrate broad-based opposition to the individual mandate.

14. Engage key stakeholders in an “adult conversation” about ObamaCare’s impact on state funding priorities.

15. Introduce ALEC model legislation and chart a course for patient-centered, free-market health policy.

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.