According to the latest revenue estimates, Michigan state government expects to pay out $1.03 billion this fiscal year to companies awarded refundable business tax credits under programs that were repealed in 2011. Even for Lansing, this is a huge transfer of taxpayer resources to favored interests.

Compare the amount to the $1.1 billion the state expects to collect this year in corporate income tax revenue. Nearly all the business tax money collected this year from thousands of companies both large and small will be doled out to a handful of mostly large firms who were fortunate enough to swing special deals with the Granholm administration.

Worse, state economic development officials keep secret the names of the companies collecting these payments. They claim releasing the names would violate the beneficiaries’ taxpayer confidentiality, but this relies on a thin and tendentious reading of the law (and one the Legislature could reverse).

Meanwhile, agency officials continue to ignore legal reporting requirements that require the names and amounts to be disclosed. Apparently, government secrecy, shrugging off statutory rules and continued special treatments for special interests is standard procedure for state economic development programs, and not a problem to the lawmakers who fund them.

Donald Trump and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder may be aligned on the issue of increasing the number of work visas issued to foreigners with college degrees.

Trump startled his supporters by appearing to reverse course on the issue during a March 3 candidate debate in Detroit.

“I'm changing. I'm changing,” Trump said in response to a question from Fox News personality Megyn Kelly. He continued:

We need highly skilled people in this country, and if we can't do it, we'll get them in. But, and we do need in Silicon Valley, we absolutely have to have.

So, we do need highly skilled, and one of the biggest problems we have is people go to the best colleges. They'll go to Harvard, they'll go to Stanford, they'll go to Wharton, as soon as they're finished they'll get shoved out. They want to stay in this country. They want to stay here desperately, they're not able to stay here. For that purpose, we absolutely have to be able to keep the brain power in this country.

While many Trump voters probably regard Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder as part of the Republican Party’s “establishment,” on this issue he and Trump appear to agree. Among proposals for returning Detroit to greatness, Snyder has called on the federal government to issue “50,000 employment-based visas for skilled immigrants and entrepreneurs.”

Whether the Snyder-Trump alignment is real on even this narrow slice of the policy debate remains to be seen. After the March 3 debate, Trump posted a statement reasserting his opposition to more visas for low-skill workers, but also attacking the H-1B visa program for workers with college degrees.