For the second time in a month, Michigan Education Association President Steve Cook claims there is a teacher in Michigan with a master’s degree making $31,000.

Cook made his assertion April 25 in a Detroit News column where he wrote that a Lenawee County teacher made $31,000 a year. In a March 28 column also in The Detroit News, Cook also claimed that teacher was in his second year on the job.

Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, checked the salary schedules for the school districts in Lenawee County and said there was no full-time teacher making $31,000 with a master’s degree.

“The average teacher salary in Lenawee County in 2011 was $58,857, according to the Michigan Department of Education,” Van Beek said.

Blissfield has the lowest salary schedule for the first two years in the county. A teacher just starting with a master’s degree would earn $34,750. A teacher in the second year on the job would make $35,447 with a master’s degree. A teacher with a master's degree at the top of the scale would make $65,607.

Cook hasn’t responded to emails seeking comments.

State Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, said the MEA has been disingenuous in the past, but now that public schools are required to put union contracts online, it is easier to check the union’s claims.

“There was a time they could say stuff like that and nobody could verify [it],” McMillin said. “Nowadays, it can be proven factually. They are just not used to that. That used to work in a time when we didn’t have openness of government [and] you couldn’t check and verify. Maybe he is still living in that era.”

For the first time in four years in Michigan, the gap in compensation between public sector employees and private sector employees declined, according to research by James Hohman, fiscal policy analyst with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

The average compensation of public sector employees (state and local government, public schools and universities) dropped from $60,620 in 2010 to $58,400 in 2011. At the same time, private-sector workers had an increase in average compensation from $55,922 in 2010 to $56,234 in 2011.

“Throughout the decade, Michigan’s state and local government workers enjoyed robust increases in the value of their wages and benefits while the private sector fell substantially,” Hohman said. “It looks like these trends have begun reversing as the private sector average compensation increased slightly in 2011 while state and local government average compensation fell.”

Hohman said the end of federal stimulus dollars in 2011 as well as public sector early retirements that erased the highest paid government employees could explain why there was a drop in public sector compensation.

For years, private sector compensation had been well above of the public sector. That changed around 2005 when public sectors employees began earning more. From 2008 to 2011, the gap between private and public sector compensation increased.

Charles Owens, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, said it was “unconscionable” that while private sector compensation was falling for years, taxpayers were still supporting higher pay and benefits for public sector jobs.

“These (public sector) payrolls and benefits were on an unsustainable course,” Owens said.

Despite a bill being signed in to law by Gov. Rick Snyder that ends the "home health care dues skim," money is still being collected from worker paychecks.

With May on the horizon, it is hoped "dues skim” will officially be brought to an end. Until then, the Michigan Capitol Confidential's skim-tracker will not be turned off.

Senate Bill 1018, aimed at stopping the dues flow was passed by the legislature in March and signed into law by Gov. Snyder earlier this month. It is presumed that certain administrative steps need to be taken before the dues will finally stop being taken from unsuspecting workers' paychecks.

A union scheme perpetrated while Jennifer Granholm was governor led to the “skim.” A dummy employer and a stealth election to force 43,000 so-called home health care workers into the Service Employees International Union were used to set up the "skim." That 43,000 eventually grew to include as many as 60,190.

Once the forced unionization was achieved, money was extracted from the taxpayer-provided checks received by the so-called  “home health care workers.” Most of those people were relatives and friends caring for homebound patients.

The “skim” has been going on for about six years and the SEIU has taken in more than $29 million. Since the bill was signed by Gov. Snyder on April 10, more than $215,000 has been taken from paychecks.

However, a recent disclosure report by the union indicates that count could actually be on the low side. Every dollar the union receives from the “skim” can be used for political purposes. It now seems likely that many of the dollars will go toward the SEIU effort to lock the “skim” permanently into Michigan's constitution through a ballot proposal.