State Hired More Employees To Administer SEIU 'Dues Skim' Than Oversee Right-to-Work Law
'Where were they when the unions were running around creating fake employers so they could siphon off money?'
It's not often a state workers' union representative complains about the state adding government jobs.
But that's what happened when the Detroit Free Press published an article with the headline: "Michigan right-to-work law creates at least two jobs; taxpayers to foot bill."
The article said there will be one new specialist position and one or two clerical positions in the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs in response to the enactment of the state's new right-to-work law. It quoted one union official critical of the hiring.
"It's ridiculous," Ray Holman, legislative liaison for UAW Local 6000, the largest state employee union, said in the Free Press. "I'm looking here every day seeing the people I represent doing the work of two or three people. … For that type of money, you could hire two DHS (Department of Human Services) front-line workers."
However, Mackinac Center for Public Policy Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh said new laws are enacted all the time that require changes in staffing.
"Last year a new law was enacted requiring the state to develop educational materials related to student athlete concussions; another expanded fingerprint and background check requirements for municipal bus drivers; and a third authorized $613 million new borrowing and spending for state university construction projects," McHugh said. "These and countless others enacted every year give government employees more to do, and may well require hiring more of them. Yet I don't recall unions (or mainstream media reporters) complaining about those expansions — so why did they suddenly become tea-party like spending hawks on this one?"
Holman declined to comment.
Union representatives were silent in June 2004 when the Michigan Quality Community Care Council was created when Jennifer Granholm was governor. The MQC3 worked with the Service Employees International Union to manage the collection of dues taken from more than 44,000 home-based caregivers. The MQC3 created at least four employees with a combined salary of $177,000, according to state documents. The MQC3’s funding came from the state's Community Health Department.
The unions benefited from those jobs and that agency because it allowed the SEIU to take more than $33.7 million from the Medicaid checks of the state's elderly and disabled.
"All these people are now all of a sudden monitoring the governor's jobs creation," said Patrick Wright, senior legal analyst for the Mackinac Center. "Where were they when the unions were running around creating fake employers so they could siphon off money?"
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.
Love CapCon?
The best way you can help support our work is to become a donor. Give monthly or one-time. What do you say — buy our reporters a cup of coffee?
Caregivers protest union effort to skim home helpers’ pay
Michigan House approves bills to resurrect dues skim for home health care providers
Union targets home health helpers’ paychecks under the guise of collective bargaining
Birmingham Latest District to Exploit Schools of Choice
District gets $430,000, only six students can attend
Birmingham is the latest district to participate in Michigan's Schools of Choice program. But, according to school board members and Superintendent Daniel Nerad, the move isn't really about letting students who don't live in Birmingham attend a better school — it's about money.
As Nerad put it during Tuesday's board meeting, "This proposal should not be viewed as a public policy recommendation in favor of Schools of Choice. If it didn't have the possibility of helping the district's budget situation, this would not be before you."
The state of Michigan provides incentive money to school districts that adopt seven of the state's eight "best practices." One is to participate in Schools of Choice, by allowing students who do not live in the district to attend. State funding follows nonresident students to the district, meaning that those students are not, as some allege, free-riding.
Though Birmingham will be a Schools of Choice district, few nonresident students will be let in. Just six spots were made available, and only for 11th grade nonresident students to attend the district's alternative high school.
With that small move, Birmingham will now meet seven of the state's best practices. The district will receive $430,000 in state incentive money for the change, in addition to the state foundation allowance money tied to each nonresident student.
This isn't the first time that nonresident students will be allowed in to Birmingham schools. Birmingham has long allowed nonresident students to attend its schools — as long as they fork over up to $13,150 in tuition.
The difference is, these six students will not have to pay tuition on top of the state and federal money the district will receive for educating them. For that privilege, the six students can only attend the district's alternative school, and for just two years.
Other districts have also contorted the state's best practices incentives to extract the most money for educating the fewest students:
It is unfortunate to see public school officials, whose mission should be to provide the best education possible for students, act in this manner.
As some advocate against education reform legislation by alleging that it will increase segregation in Michigan public schools, others, like Birmingham, are using the artificial relationship between between home values and school quality to keep potentially lower-income students out.
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.