LSJ Blogs: Derek Melot is Just Asking

Should Michigan 'stoke' economy with pot?

Here’s a topic to stoke family conversations over the holidays: In Michigan’s current economic state, would it make sense to decriminalize marijuana — if it would generate millions of dollars in economic activity and state and local taxes?

Rep. Meadows vents

I think State Rep. Mark Meadows is a little peeved. Take these remarks in his most recent newsletter to constituents:

“Let me begin at the end: The 25 hour session; the lamest of lame duck events. The results of that marathon highlight:  what is wrong with the legislative process, certainly not what is right.”

Then there’s this about the fate of a taxation bill for local school districts:

“The State Chamber simply lied in its letter to legislators. This issue has been debated for many years and passage of this legislation is supported by every school district in the state. It is opposed only by the State Chamber of Commerce and a Charter School organization. The State Chamber is very disingenuous in its opposition. The State Chamber has actively promoted a 9 cent per gallon gas tax increase. If the sinking fund legislation passed and the Chamber’s estimate that $3.5 billion in increased taxes would result is correct, the actual savings to the taxpayers would be $1.1 billion. The cost of the gas tax increase is estimated to be 580 million a year for 10 years. That equals $5.8 billion. Who said logic plays any role in politics!!”

I believe I have previously praised Meadows, D-East Lansing, for issuing these newsletters. He often says what he thinks (admitting error for his initial vote for the original Blue Cross bills, for example). It’s not all the usual political puffery or fence-straddling.

And he’s absolutely right on one thing: Lame-duck sessions of the Michigan Legislature are a farce of representative government. Rank-and-file legislators are expected to simply vote how leaders tell them, not actually review the bills in question. And you can forget about the public getting a look at final versions before they actually become law.

Voters should bar these sessions, and reduce legislative meeting days, through constitutional amendment, since it’s absolutely ridiculous for state residents to expect lawmakers to act on reform for simply for the sake of reform.

A breakthrough on city benefits?

While the mayor and City Council continue to argue over $200,000, a new labor contract with city workers may point the way to saving $2 million a year.

Randy Hannan of Mayor Virg Bernero’s staff said that the city has come to an agreement with Teamsters Local 214 on a new contract. This unit, one of the smaller ones in the city work force, has agreed to concessions on health benefits.

Among the changes, a three-tiered prescription drug coverage system and, brace for it, actual premium payments from members.

While it’s standard for private-sector insurance plans to require premium payments from workers, such fees have been a huge hurdle to clear at City Hall. (Back in 2007, the city’s own Elected Officers Compensation Commission rejected a bid by the mayor to have elected officials pay 5 percent in health-care premiums, for example.)

Hannan said that if all the city’s bargaining units agreed to the health insurance provisions accepted by 214, the city would save $2 million per year in health costs.

For some perspective, $2 million a year is more than what the city usually budgets for plowing the snow off the streets.

There is a real chance for some community consensus here. I don’t believe Lansing taxpayers want city workers treated unfairly. But as city resources are pinched, it makes sense for the city and its employees to forge health-care benefits that are more market-oriented. Individual premiums are not unusual or onerous.

In exchange for these concessions, the city frees up money to provide key services. And services are provided by people ... translation: jobs.

And improved city services mean better relations between residents and city government. That can create more fertile ground when the city has to come to taxpayers for investments in the future (a consolidate police and courts center, for example).

Woo-hoo ... street was plowed

Looking out my front window Saturday morning, I give generally good marks for the city’s snow removal effort. Not great, mind you, but good.

The big positive was my street actually was plowed. What a surprise. I don’t live on a major artery, so I knew that any plowing would come only after the big streets were done. Yet, sometime early Saturday morning the plow came by.

Detracting from that pleasant surprise was the fact that the same plow actually added snow to the several inches already covering a stretch of city sidewalk down the block. I’m an odd duck about sidewalks — if the city expects me, by law, to keep my sidewalks clear, then it fully expect the city to live by the same standard.

Still, the street was plowed, so it was a good day. Though a neighbor did make a disturbing point: What does it say for our city when routine street plowing is deemed noteworthy? Isn’t that the least, he argued, we should expect?

What do you think?

What's nice and what's necessary

It’s days like this one — and this is an admittedly odd day — when I wonder why so many folks are worried about golf courses or a southside community center or another pet spending project for City Hall.

City government should be first and foremost about basic public services. Would anyone like to argue that Lansing has the basics covered?

Wasn't there something in 'My Fair Lady' about this?

John Schneider and I were having a discussion today about the line between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor. Or rather, I was making the case for such distinctions, while John, with his much more compassionate heart, was resisting them.

We did agree that a child in poverty is clearly deserving and that a physically and mentally healthy adult male who isn’t working isn’t deserving.

Beyond that, John argued that it’s not black and white. So, where is the line between deserving and undeserving?

I have a few rules of thumb:

1. Children are more deserving than senior citizens. Seniors have had a lifetime to make provision, kids didn’t ask to be born.

2. Women who conceive when they already have children in poverty are not deserving (though their kids still are).

3. Men who father children they can’t provide for — regardless of the physical, mental or emotional disability excuses these “dads” may proffer — are undeserving.

4. Adults who approach you on the street or in your front yards seeking help are undeserving. In this day and age, between government and private charities, deserving people can get help if they really want it. (Someone on the street is far more likely to get my pocket change by honestly saying they want booze then by regaling me with some ridiculous tale about needing to buy a bus ticket to visit a sick relative or parole officer.)

What would you add to the list? Or are people in difficult straits always deserving, regardless of how they got there?

This is an ugly Christmas rush

A legislative conference committee was scheduled to start a meeting moments ago over bills to help out Blue Cross Blue Shield. Both the House and Senate have sessions scheduled to start at 10 a.m. The pieces are in place for a last-minute rush to fundamentally alter insurance law.

Do you, as a citizen, know exactly what these changes wold be? Of course not. The little people aren’t supposed to know what’s going on ... at least not until the changes are signed into law.

Stop. Go. Annoy.

I’m sure there’s a reason why the city of Lansing has not restored a traffic light to the intesection of Michigan and Grand Avenues. I wonder what it is.

All I know is that the three-way stop system going right now is an invitation to trouble, since an inordinate number of drivers don’t seem to understand how to negotiate three- or four-way stop intersections.

Bang for your lobbying buck

You know, if I happened to be a Blue Cross exec, I’d be peeved with the Michigan Legislature. What does it take to get lawmakers to toe the line these days? What mojo did Consumers Energy and Detroit Edison have with the Capitol set that Blue Cross does not?

After all, the state’s two big utilities “convinced” the Legislature and Gov. Jennifer Granholm to rewrite utility law in ways that are most favorable to those two firms.

All Blue Cross wants is similar consideration. Last year, the insurer went to all the trouble to write up legislation to alter health insurance law and rules governing the Accident Fund. The House and Senate just had to vote yes and let Granholm sign it.

And since 2001, the AP reports, Blue Cross has spent more than $2 million on lobbying state officials. That should get plenty of attention.

Yet, the Blues bills got stuck in the Senate last year and the firm’s been trying to extricate its agenda ever since.

Is this a matter of Blue Cross being a little too forceful in its requests? Is this a matter of Blue Cross’ “solution” being harder to sell to the public than what the utilities sold? (Remember, the energy package was generally touted as an investment in alternative power, even though its biggest impact will be on competition and rates in the traditional electric market.)

Or is the difference the fact that Edison and Consumers could deploy unions to aid them in their lobbying?

Or is the difference found in the fact that Blue Cross isn't the only large insurer lobbying the Legislature, while the big utilities didn't have anywhere near the same level of well-heeled opposition?

Anyone have some wisdom?

Bernero and Shelby, peas in a pod

Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero ceded some ground to auto loan critics such as Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby this week. In fact, you could say Bernero and Shelby are following the same policies.

How could that be when they have filled the airwaves with diametrically opposed stands on the auto industry?