A video of a Michigan educator telling politicians that parents may not know what was best for their children was making national headlines when Michigan Government TV told the people who bought it they were violating terms of the agreement.

The video showed Debbie Squires, the associate director of the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association, telling a House education committee: “You know, educators go through education for a reason.  They are the people who know best about how to serve children. That's not necessarily true of an individual resident.  I'm not saying they don't want the best for their children, but they may not know what actually is best from an education standpoint.”

The video made numerous national Web sites and was picked up by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh on Feb 15.

But the video was taken down by the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, which posted the video on YouTube. The organization was asked to take the video down by Michelle Webb, the acting executive director of MGTV, a non-profit corporation that is financed through cable subscription fees.

Webb said someone alerted them to the video on YouTube. She said she called the Michigan Association of Public School Academies and told them they had to remove the video or play the entire video “gavel to gavel.”

“We don’t allow our programming to be edited in any way,” Webb said.

The Association had paid $60 for the CD of the meeting.

"We wouldn't have posted the video unless we felt we had a legal right to do so,” said Buddy Moorehouse, director of communications at the Michigan Association of Public School Academies. “We still feel we had a legal right to post it, but in this case, when MGTV asked us to take the video down, we decided to honor the request. The only reason we posted the clip in the first place was to highlight an attitude that far too many people in the traditional school community have — that parents don't know what's best for their own children when it comes to picking a school. We strongly disagree with the sentiments that were expressed in that clip. Parents absolutely do know what's best for their children, and they deserve the right to pick the school that works best for them."

The video was the subject of a commentary posted by Michigan Capitol Confidential on February 10. It was put back up on YouTube by another user and can be viewed here.

While Mayor O’Reilly’s salary stayed relatively the same — his gross income increased by $500 in 2011 from the previous year, seven top administrations saw their gross income increase by 8 percent to 12.8 percent from 2010 to 2011.

Those pay increases came when the city’s General Fund had a structural budget deficit of $8.6 million for fiscal year 2011. Not all of the city of Dearborn’s workers were as fortunate.  

“When they’re pushing tax hikes, residents hear a lot from local government officials about ‘shared sacrifice,’ ” said Jack McHugh, the legislative analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “These figures give the appearance that the sharing stops at the City Hall door.”

Some of the city's key officials saw considerable boosts in pay:

Matthew Zalewski, an attorney for the city of Dearborn, said gross earnings included things such as mileage, annual longevity checks (yearly bonuses paid to long-time employees) as well as some employees “selling” vacation days offered in the city’s cafeteria benefit plan.

City of Dearborn employees don’t pay anything for health insurance until later this year. Two unions have filed a lawsuit to prevent Gov. Rick Snyder’s law that required public employers to pay no more than 80 percent of the annual cost of medical benefits from taking effect until their contract with their insurance companies expires at the end of June.

Mary Laundroche, spokeswoman for the city, said the top administrators are appointed positions by the mayor and are not in a union and do not receive overtime.But Laundroche said the annual raises for the appointed positions mirror any increases the union gets. So when those union contracts were settled, retroactive payments were made to the top administrators as well as the union members.

In a June 2011 letter included in the city’s budget, Mayor O’Reilly told Dearborn’s citizens, “we know the kinds of sacrifices you’ve made to weather these difficult times in your own households. Like you we’re continuing to seek cutbacks including personal sacrifices from the entire City workforce.”

Mayor O’Reilly then stated the city was raising the millage rate to the legal limit and would ask to raise that limit by putting it on the November 2011 ballot.

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Editor's Note: This story was corrected to say that Dearborn Mayor John O'Reilly asked to raise the millage rate on the November 2011 ballot, not November 2012 as previously reported. Voters approved that ballot measure.