A Pure Michigan ad urges workers to “play hookey” and enjoy Michigan’s outdoors because it's too easy to get caught up "scaling mountains of paper work …" 

But the state agency that produced the ad that promotes skipping out on work doesn't point to one cause of all that paperwork: government regulations.

The state of Michigan had 18,012 administrative rules that businesses had to follow in 2012. Reducing regulations was a key goal of Gov. Rick Snyder and he created the Office of Regulatory Invention to reduce the state's red-tape. The office trimmed state administrative rules by 1,218, down from 19,230.

Michigan had the the 21^st most burdensome licensing laws in the U.S, according to an Institute for Justice study in 2012. Michigan is the most difficult place in the country to become a security guard, requiring three years of education and experience, according to the IJ study.

There is some irony that the state of Michigan is pointing out the headaches of red tape, said Jack McHugh, senior legislative analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

"So we have one government agency spending taxpayer dollars urging folks to escape mountains of paperwork on Michigan beaches, and all the other agencies adding to those mountains of paperwork. What's wrong with this picture?" McHugh said.

But over-regulation isn't just a state issue.

The federal government has its owns list of rules. According to The Wall Street Journal, the 2012 Federal Register, which is the official directory of regulation, is 78,961 pages. It was 44,812 pages in 1986 and 2,620 pages in 1936.

For every $10,000 a school district pays an employee in the upcoming 2013-14 budget year, the state government and school district will send the retirement system $2,935 to cover health care retirement and pension costs, said James Hohman, a fiscal policy analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Yet, only $122 of that $2,935 actually goes to fund the benefits of that employee. The rest goes to pay an increasingly multi-billion dollar unfunded pension and retiree health care liability for all others in the system, Hohman said.

Last year, Michigan legislators enacted reform measures to help reduce the costs of the Michigan Public Schools Employees Retirement System (MPSERS). However, that MPSERS’ unfunded liability still increased to $24.3 billion in 2013 from $22.4 billion in 2012, just for pension liabilities. That unfunded pension liability was $835 million in 2007.

The cost to state of Michigan employers — such as school districts, community colleges and libraries — to pay for MPSERS pension is capped at 24.79 percent of its employee payroll. In 2012, those employers paid $1.45 billion just to cover pension liabilities. However, that wasn’t enough because the unfunded liability has become so big that the state must pay an additional 4.5 percent over the 24.79 percent to cover the costs above that cap.

"One concern we have is the fact that even though there is additional money coming into the school aid fund as our state is slowly recovering, those funds are being eaten up by this off the top required payment," said Dave Martell, executive director of the Michigan School Business Officials.

Martell said after the MPSERS costs are covered, there is a concern there won’t be enough money left to provide the districts with more foundation allowance funding to cover even inflationary cost increases.

Hohman said the state of Michigan has to admit it has a problem with MPSERS unfunded liabilities and close the retirement system. He said the state should switch from the MPSERS defined benefit program that pays an annual pension, to a more manageable defined contribution plan that makes an annual payment into a retiree savings account.