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It takes guts

rgoins — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:47:18 +0000

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Winning The Day

It takes guts

May 17, 2013

Q. What is the best way to say “thanks but no thanks” to an invitation – or inclination – to throw your hat in the ring for an elected seat or appointed position?

A. As we were writing this month’s column Detroit’s Mayor Dave Bing announced his decision not to seek a second term. We can only imagine how tough it was to make this decision; but he did it. He essentially said “no thanks” to what was bound to be a tough, divisive campaign. Granted Detroit is at a crossroads and Mayor Bing and Governor Snyder are at odds, at least publicly, over the installation of an emergency manager. Let’s push that, and much more, aside for the moment.

Often, it is harder to say “no” than “yes” when it comes to an opportunity to serve the public good. If reading polls, talking to voters and listening to trusted advisors paints a less than favorable picture, take the high road and seek different ways to serve. Mayor Bing has opted to clear the path for a new leader for Detroit, a city that is fast-becoming known as America’s Comeback City, a national media moniker for which Mayor Bing deserves a share of pride and credit.

From a communications perspective, our advice to the mayor – and anyone else declining an opportunity – is, take the high road. When you announce your decision, forgo placing blame, advice we hope Mayor Bing will heed. Be the “bigger guy”. Focus instead on accomplishments during your tenure. People will remember you for the good things you have done and, perhaps support you in your next endeavor. (Mayor Bing has formed a committee to explore a run for Wayne County Executive.)

From where we write, Mayor Bing is known as an honest mayor during one of the toughest times in Detroit’s history. This is an enviable and well-earned legacy. Mayor Bing, do not ruin it with a bad exit.

Paula Blanchard Stone and Patty McCarthy are partners in McCarthy Blanchard, an executive training firm specializing , an executive training firm specializing in presentation skills and executive presence. Visit mccarthyblanchard.com or call (517) 339-7447 or (313) 882-9200. | Website

The Canary in the Coal Mine

rgoins — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:40:48 +0000

Columns

Tom Watkins

The Canary in the Coal Mine

May 17, 2013

Continual budget problems will face Michigan schools until the unsustainable, structural funding issues surrounding them are addressed.

The latest school funding crisis stems from the 420-student Buena Vista school district in Saginaw County. It pertains to their three-month state aid payments having been withheld by the Michigan Department of Education because “the district took $401,962.51 to educate students from the Wolverine Secure Treatment Center who no longer attend the district.” Was this an honest mistake? Or a purposeful misapplication of funds.

The loss of funds resulted in the closing of the school, denying children their state constitutional right to an education.

The local district, with state assistance has patched together an “acceptable” deficit elimination plan that will free up state school aid money to allow Buena Vista to reopen school- as soon as today. This bubble gum patch was needed to get the kids back in school — and for the state to fulfill its constitutional responsibility. It clearly is NOT a long term solution.

To say, as some state officials have, that the Buena Vista financial crisis was unexpected is disingenuous at best. The structural funding problems facing our schools have been brewing and ignored for nearly a decade.

To be clear, the patchwork plan to allow the Buena Vista students to finish out the school year is simply a temporary fix to a state-wide, systemic structural problem in need of addressing by bold leadership.

There are nearly 50 out of 550 school districts operating in a deficit – most for several years. Many Michigan school districts are so close to being underwater financially, that the slightest wave may sink them.

Yet the attention focused on Buena Vista should raise bigger questions: “Should we be perpetuating 550 local school districts, some as small as Buena Vista, as state officials tell me, with 420 students with 40 seniors, only 26 of whom qualify for graduation with only 2 being tested as “proficient?”

Deja Vu

While serving as Michigan’s State Superintendent of Schools in December, 2004, I drafted and released a report entitled, Structural Funding Issues Facing Michigan Schools in the 21st Century (http://www.michigan.gov/documents/michiganschoolfunding_110803_7.pdf) which clearly demonstrated that our school funding model was unsustainable and offered ideas for necessary change.

Stop Pretending

Rather than addressing these issues, educational leaders and policymakers acted like Rip Van Winkle. As we well know from the histories of GM, Chrysler and the City of Detroit, if you have a hole in your roof, pretending to fix it does not keep the rain out. Sooner or later you have to truly fix the problem.

The report called for drastic changes to make districts more efficient, saying an influx of new school revenue is unlikely, and schools still needed to improve academic achievement. True then and remains true today.

The report pointed out that two-thirds or more of each new dollar provided to schools is consumed by health care and pension costs and nearly any new resources committed to education were being eaten up by rising costs in these areas.

The report stated, “A new approach will require everyone to let go of deeply entrenched constraints and the ‘we’ve always done it this way’ mentality. We are challenged to take a fresh look at how the educational business is conducted. The inability or unwillingness to act is detrimental to Michigan, its communities, families, and most importantly, its children.”

The 2004 report called for two significant steps:

Then Governor Jennifer Granholm should create a bipartisan committee to review district boundaries, sizes and costs to identify administrative inefficiencies and school district consolidation.

The Legislature should determine exactly what it costs to educate a child. The last such study was in 1968 and prompted a revamping of school funding in the 1970s.

Neither recommendation was addressed – the problem remains today.

The report also acknowledged, “Widely recognized is the fact that an overhaul of the school finance system is meaningless if it is not accompanied by comprehensive efforts to improve efficiency, effectiveness and equity.”

Simply calling for additional money for schools will not be productive without addressing the structural issues facing our schools. It would be the equivalent to pouring water in a glass with a hole in the bottom and wondering why the glass can never be filled.

The report continued, “Let’s clean the slate and approach this challenge as if a new territory has been discovered with 1.7 million children desiring a quality education. How would the billions we currently spend be invested to assure that children obtain the education necessary to thrive in a 21st century knowledge economy?”

Flash forward eight years – what happened as a result of the report, which most definitely stirred things up when it was released?

Not much. Actions taken to-date have been anemic and skirt the structural changes necessary if the system of public education is going to be sustainable moving forward.

Our current governor has inherited a boatload of “deferred maintenance” — a bevy of problems neglected for a decade or longer.

Problems are often avoided, until they can be neglected no longer. Governor Snyder has not shied away from confronting problems (Some would argue he has exacerbated the school funding challenges by his budget cuts to schools). He has taken on more than his share of long-ignored state issues. Addressing this long neglected issue may not be able to be deferred much longer with many school districts teetering on insolvency.

The day is here and we need a plan to consolidate the 550 local school districts and establish a system where limited dollars are directed at teaching and learning rather than perpetuating costly structures from previous eras. We need an education system that prepares students for their future –not our past.

Sure we’ve taken some baby steps in local districts, but nothing at the scale that is needed system wide. For the most part, local districts cannot and will not make the tough decisions necessary without the demand for such changes from the state.

Local education leaders know the difficulty of closing or consolidating schools: There is a joke: What do you call a superintendent and school board that proposes the closure of a school? Fired and recalled. It would be funny– if it were not true.

During the prior administration, rather than using the federal stimulus money to begin the change process, it was used as a lubricant to protect the status quo. And as we are witnessing, the status quo will not take us where we need to go.

Buena Vista is another canary in the coal mine.

The time for bold state leadership on this issue has arrived. It is Governor Snyder’s- Kalkaska/Proposal A” moment.

It is an opportunity to go from Proposal A– to Proposal A+.

A crisis, even one that has been neglected and ignored for a over decade is a terrible thing to waste.

Tom Watkins served as Michigan’s state superintendent of schools, 2001-05. He is a US/China business and educational consultant and can be reached at tdwatkins88@gmail.com

Voter Disenfranchisement

rgoins — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:20:28 +0000

Columns

Jack Lessenberry

Voter Disenfranchisement

May 17, 2013

Once upon a time, legislators felt they had to try to give voters the laws they wanted. True, once in a great while some took stands on principle that risked angering their constituents. But not very often.

For many years, getting reelected meant pleasing a majority of the voters most of the time.

Today, however, there’s evidence that’s less true.

In fact, in Michigan, some lawmakers seem to be trying to openly thwart the will of the people.

Gerrymandered districts mean Republicans have solid control of both chambers of the legislature, even though a large majority of the voters chose Democratic candidates last November.

Michigan’s harsh term limits mean lawmakers have no incentive to make decisions that might help them have long legislative careers. Unlike Ohio, where legislators must take a break after two terms, in Michigan, you can serve at most six years in the house, eight in the senate … and then you are barred from further service for life.

That means there is little institutional memory, and lawmakers increasingly rely on information from lobbyists, the one group for whom there are no term limits.

There’s also little incentive to defy special interest groups; they are, after all, a major source of employment for legislators who reach their maximum length of service.

Take former State Rep. Paul Opsommer. As chair of the House Transportation Committee, he opposed a new bridge across the Detroit River, even though the project’s biggest backer was his fellow Republican, Governor Rick Snyder.

When term limits ended Opsommer’s legislative career in December, he took a job as a lobbyist for the bridge’s main opponent, Matty Moroun, the billionaire owner of the Ambassador Bridge. Political payoffs are seldom that brazen.

But what may be an even bigger problem is lawmakers who actively work to give the people the opposite of what they want, with little fear of voter retaliation.

“That‘s because most districts are strictly one-party districts today. The only contest comes in the primary,” said Phil Power, founder of the non-partisan, non-profit Center for Michigan.

Even worse, some lawmakers are now trying to prevent reversal of what they do by inserting a small appropriation into controversial bills. Under Michigan’s Constitution, bills appropriating money can’t be repealed by referendum.

The best-known example of this may have been the shocking way in which legislation outlawing the union shop and making Michigan a right-to-work state was rammed through in a single day during last December’s lame duck session.

Michigan voters had shown few signs they supported the GOP’s agenda.

On Nov. 6, 2.4 million voters voted for Democrats for the state house of representatives.

Republican candidates got 400,000 fewer votes. But Republicans drew the district lines in a way that translated into only 51 Democratic seats to 59 Republicans.

Still, that was a five-seat gain for the Democrats. Knowing a few Republicans opposed right-to-work, the leadership and the governor shoved this momentous law through –without even a committee hearing — before the newly elected representatives could take part.

Earlier this month, there was another successful attempt to take decisions out of the public’s hands. This time, it had to do with conservation.

Seven years ago, there was a public outcry over allowing hunters to shoot mourning doves.

People gathered signatures for a referendum, and 69 percent of the voters said no to hunting doves.

This time, the issue involved gray wolves, once all-but-extinct in Michigan’s sparsely populated Upper Peninsula.

For years, they were an endangered species. But careful wildlife management has brought their numbers back from only six wolves in 1973 to an estimated 658 today. The government took the wolves off the endangered species list in January — and hunters began to demand that the state allow them to be hunted as a trophy game animal.

That provoked an outcry from the Humane Society of the United States. Jill Fritz, the society’s director, began a campaign to collect signatures for another referendum to protect the wolves.

But State Sen. Thomas Casperson (R-Escanaba) quickly introduced a bill to take the right to designate an endangered species away from the legislature and give it to the National Resources Commission (NRC), which is appointed by the governor.

He argued that wolf hunting was necessary to protect people and livestock. However, there is no indication Michigan wolves have ever attacked any human, and it was already legal to shoot or trap a wolf endangering livestock.

Nevertheless, a bill was quickly passed. Mr. Casperson’s attempt to put appropriations money into the bill did die in committee.

However, the bill does specify that even if a referendum preventing wolf hunting gets on the ballot, the voters have no power to undo any decision to hunt them.

Governor Snyder immediately signed the bill transferring control of what species are hunted, saying it wasn’t about wolf hunting at all, but about “sound scientific principles.”

The very next day, the NRC announced a wolf hunting season and said that hunters were welcome to kill up to 43 wolves.

The point is not that a wolf hunt is necessarily bad, or that there aren’t arguments to be made in favor of right-to-work.

The problem is that political redistricting means that a party that has been decisively rejected by a majority of voters nevertheless remains solidly in control of the Michigan legislature.

And that, thanks to term limits and one-party districts, lawmakers have little incentive to please the people — and voters have little chance to try and bring about meaningful change.

If this continues, it’s easy to imagine voters eventually becoming cynical, bitter and feeling disenfranchised.

And what will that mean for democracy?

Veteran journalist and national Emmy Award winner Jack Lessenberry teaches at Wayne State University, serves as Michigan Radio’s senior political analyst and writes regularly for several publications. He also serves as The Toledo Blade’s writing coach and ombudsman and is host of the weekly television show Deadline Now on WGTE-TV in Toledo.

A Determined Effort to Crush Quality Education

rgoins — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:10:53 +0000

Columns

John Covington

A Determined Effort to Crush Quality Education

May 17, 2013

I’m afraid Rep. Ellen Lipton was less than candid with Jack Lessenberry when she described what’s going on in the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan (EAA): http://domemagazine.com/lessenberry/jl051013

For example, she alleges that “the new authority has borrowed at least $12 million since September from its parent, the already cash-strapped Detroit Public School district” and that the borrowing shows that the “EAA is anything but financially solvent.”

That is not true on two fronts. First, the loans did not involve a dime of DPS funds. They were made to the EAA through the Michigan Finance Authority. Every year, the authority arranges loans totaling $600 to $700 million for hundreds of school districts all over the state to help them work through cash flow issues. This was one of those routine loans. Nothing more.

The loans were routed through DPS because the EAA is not codified in state law as a school district. It was a pass through. In fact, DPS was paid processing fees of more than $168,000 just to process the loans. They are being repaid on schedule, with only $2.6 still outstanding, and will be fully repaid in July. DPS does not have to worry about being stuck with the loan because the payments come directly out of the EAA’s state school aid payments.

Secondly, the EAA is on sound financial footing. Many start-up operations, whether in the public or private sector, have cash flow issues and we are no exception. The borrowing was to cover start-up costs because the EAA started operating in July, hired 400 teachers and started training them Aug. 1 but didn’t start receiving state aid payments until October.

As far as her FOIA request is concerned, it was very detailed and required a good deal of effort, including culling through more than 10,000 emails, to compile the information she sought. The information was forwarded to her as it was accumulated and she had it within a month of filing her request, so it can hardly be described as stonewalling.

The EAA was formed to transform schools that have been failing Detroit school children for years. The schools that were assigned to the EAA were the 15 lowest performing schools in DPS and were all in the lowest 5 percent of schools in the state.

At the beginning of the school year, baseline testing showed only 2% of elementary and middle school students coming into the EAA were proficient in math — none in the sixth grade — and only 18% were proficient in reading. Clearly something needs to change if these young people are to receive the education they are entitled to and must have if they are to prosper in a 21st century economy.

A fundamental part of the student-centered approach to education is regular testing of students to make sure their work continues to match their achievement level. We use these tests to adjust each student’s educational plan, moving students who are achieving forward and determining what needs to be done to work with those who are making slower progress.

A second set of tests were administered in late January and February of this year. After just four months under the new system, more than 27 percent of EAA students in grades 2 through 9 already had achieved one full year’s growth or more in reading and 22 percent had already achieved one or more year’s growth in mathematics.

The most significant growth was in high school math scores for grades 9 and 10, where 40 percent of students already had achieved one or more year’s growth and an additional 16 percent were on track to achieve one or more year’s growth by the final assessment in late June.

We are testing the students again now to determine their progress and will be releasing those test results once they are completed.

In addition to the overall test results, we have experienced so many inspiring individual stories of young people who in past years have been disengaged and created discipline problems who are now engaged and eagerly learning. It’s proof on a very fundamental level that children, no matter what background they come from, want to learn, can learn and will learn if they are provided the right environment and support system. That is what student-centered learning can accomplish.

After his recent visit to an EAA school, Brenda Scott Elementary/Middle School, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who has visited schools all over the country, said, “Obviously I’m just in for a day but talking to some of the young children today at this school compared to last year, they feel safer, they’re learning more. They feel they’re in an environment where they have a chance to be successful.”

He added, “The idea of hoping someone fails is a little mind boggling to me. These children deserve the best.”

Yet much of the education establishment and their allies, including Rep. Lipton, have been on a determined effort to crush this new approach to provide students the quality education they have been denied for too long.

You would think that people professing to care about urban students would welcome this increase in student performance, not look for ways to nit-pick it to death and return students to the old schools that have been failing them. It’s a sad commentary when we fail to want for other children what we would demand for our own.

But the very least we should expect from critics, if they are determined to criticize for whatever reason, is that they base their arguments on truth, not fiction. They are, as the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan once said, entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

Our kids deserve better from them. They deserve for us to fight for their chance to succeed in life – to create an environment, as Secretary Duncan put it so well, “where they have a chance to be successful.”

Each of us at the EAA is working every day to see that is exactly what they get.f

John Wm. Covington, Ed. D. is Chancellor of the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan (EAA), a new system of schools designed to dramatically redesign public education in Michigan’s lowest performing schools. A career educator, Dr. Covington previously served a total of 11 years as superintendent of the Kansas City, Missouri schools, the Pueblo City Schools, Pueblo, Colorado and Lowndes County Public Schools, Lowndes County, Alabama.

M&M: Front-Page News

rgoins — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:05:52 +0000

Columns

Eric Freedman

M&M: Front-Page News

May 17, 2013

– “Family of 3 charged in meth lab,” front page of the Cadillac News
– “Man arrested on multiple drug charges: Operates lab within drug-free school zone,” front page of the Three Rivers Commercial-News
– “Meth dump site found,” front page of the Alpena News
– “7 get prison in marijuana case,” front page of the Lansing State Journal
– “Ordinance approved for Evart marijuana dispensaries,” front page of the (Big Rapids) Pioneer

Meth and marijuana are jockeying as the drug of choice on the front pages of Michigan newspapers.

Each press organization’s exercise of news judgment – editorial decisions on which stories to print or broadcast and how to play them – involves hard-to-quantify factors such as timeliness, proximity or nearness, conflict, human interest, impact on the public, involvement of noteworthy people, economics and media competition. That’s why, say, the Detroit News and Free Press or WOOD (TV 8) and WZZM (TV 13) in Grand Rapids may play the same story in dramatically different ways.

Thus it’s interesting to observe a sharp dichotomy in how the press in Michigan covers the two big M drugs, marijuana and meth.

Not so long ago, pot was clearly the front page favorite amid controversy about medical marijuana, restrictive zoning ordinances and proposals at the Capitol to change the voter-approved 2008 medical marijuana legalization law. Those topics still snare prominent media attention.

But as the cooking and sale of meth became big business in Michigan, the media has focused on law enforcement aspects – raids, arrests, trafficking, convictions, safety and fire hazards from illegal labs. On a recent Tuesday, the Cadillac News ran two such front-page stories: “Suspect sought after meth lab discovered” and “More charges in meth lab found near school.” Overall meth incidents – such as seizures of labs, dumpsites and discoveries of chemical ingredients and equipment – are projected to be 20 percent higher in 2013 than last year, which was up from 2011, according to State Police estimates.

Law enforcement agencies began seeing meth labs in the early 2000s starting in Allegan County and elsewhere in Southwest Michigan. It’s now spread as far as the Upper Peninsula, says Detective Sgt. Steven Spink of the State Police’s Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division. Unlike heroin and cocaine, most meth is a made-in-the-USA red-white-and-blue product, easily cooked up in basements, garages and outbuildings.

The only region in Michigan where labs aren’t found is Metro Detroit, “but we do have a problem there” with meth smuggled from California and Mexico “and sold on the street rather than cooked on site,” Spink says. Wayne County also has the state’s highest rate of hospital emergency room admissions for meth overdoses.

There are no statistics on what proportion of meth consumed in Michigan gets cooked locally but authorities can track its progression across the state by the particular recipes used. “The recipe one cooker uses might be a little different than another,” Spink explains. “A lot of that movement is because somebody learns it and moves for whatever reason and takes that with them and teaches somebody else. If these guys say ‘use Red Devil lye,’ they’ll use Red Devil lye.”

The meth problem is by no means limited to Michigan. As the federal General Accountability Office reported earlier this year, meth lab incidents had dropped after Washington and state governments restricted the sale of pseudoephedrine (PSE), which is frequently found in over-the-counter allergy and cold medicines.

But incidents climbed again after 2007 “after changes to methods in acquiring PSE and in the methods to produce meth,” GAO said, citing Drug Enforcement Administration data. The primary reason? “The emergence of a new technique for smaller-scale production and a new method called smurfing – a technique used to obtain large quantities of PSE by recruiting groups of individuals to purchase the legally allowable amount of PSE products at multiple stores that are then aggregated for meth production.” GAO also said electronic tracking systems haven’t reduced meth lab incidents, and “meth cooks have been able to limit the effectiveness of such systems” through smurfing.

Marijuana remains in the news in Michigan, but largely because of regulatory and legislative controversies. Even the Lansing State Journal’s recent front-pager about federal prison convictions involved seven defendants involved in growing medical marijuana. And when the press covers a “normal” marijuana-type arrest nowadays, it’s often because more dangerous drugs were involved as well, as the Traverse City Record-Eagle reported on the Kalkaska arrest of three suspects on heroin, cocaine and marijuana trafficking charges.

On the political front, Reps. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor), Mike Callton (R-Nashville), Mike Shirkey (R-Clarklake), Phil Cavanagh (D-Redford Township), Marcia Hovey-Wright (D-Muskegon), Jon Switalski (D-Warren) and Rose Mary Robinson (D-Detroit) recently introduced a bill that would decriminalize personal possession of small amounts of pot. Announcing the proposal, Irwin said, “Communities across the state have passed local ordinances decriminalizing marijuana or have voted to treat marijuana possession as the lowest priority for local law enforcement. It’s time for the state to recognize what local communities and citizens already have,” adding that legalization would free up “limited state and local resources for more critical priorities like public safety or education.”

However, House Democratic Leader Tim Greimel of Auburn Hills opposes decriminalization, whether statewide through legislation or locally through such petition drives underway in Ferndale, Jackson and Lansing.

Local controversies continue around the state. For example, the Evart City Council okayed a zoning ordinance that allows medical marijuana dispensaries in a designated district of that small Osceola County community.

Meanwhile, the Michigan Supreme Court plans to hear a case from the city of Wyoming about whether the medical marijuana law preempts – trumps – local zoning ordinances and whether federal drug laws preempt the medical marijuana law. And Attorney General Bill Schuette has issued an advisory opinion saying that parents who use medical marijuana aren’t automatically disqualified from custody of their own children in child protection proceedings. Schuette’s opinion does allow judges to determine whether that marijuana use “creates an unreasonable danger to a minor that can be clearly articulated and substantiated.”

As for how newspapers use their editorial judgment to allocate turf, the Three Rivers Commercial-News recently put both M&M on the same day’s front page: “Two nabbed on drug charges” reported on arrests for making and possessing meth, while “Candy was laced with marijuana” told about a police investigation of high school students suspected of having candy containing marijuana.

Eric Freedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is associate professor of Journalism and director of Capital News Service at Michigan State University. He and Domemagazine.com columnist Stephen A. Jones are co-authors of Presidents and Black America: A Documentary History (Congressional Quarterly Press).

Ms. White’s Dilemma

rgoins — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:00:42 +0000

Columns

Lawrence M. Glazer

Ms. White’s Dilemma

May 17, 2013

On April 8, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to confirm Mary Jo White as the new Chair of the Securities Exchange Commission. White, a diminutive woman in her sixties, had served for ten years as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, appointed by Bill Clinton as successor to Rudy Giuliani. As the chief federal prosecutor in New York City, she had earned a reputation as a tough adversary, getting convictions against mob boss John Gotti and the conspirators in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. She had then joined a prominent New York law firm and specialized in defense of white collar crime cases.

After Bernie Madoff’s long-running Ponzi fraud was exposed, the SEC took a well-deserved beating for ignoring repeated warnings about his actions, causing nearly unanimous demands for new leadership, and White appears a perfect fit.

She will have a full plate. Congress has enacted statutes requiring the SEC to issue rules implementing the Dodd-Frank reforms and regulation of “crowd-funding” of startups (as pioneered by the Kickstarter website).

Beyond these legal mandates, White made several promises to individual senators during her confirmation. She pledged to consider reforms in regulation of the rating agencies, whose granting of high ratings to questionable securities issued by big clients played a role in the 2008 economic meltdown. She also stated her intent to reform the oversight of money market funds.

All of these reforms are long overdue and while each will meet resistance from the affected industries, she should be able to build support for them among the public and members of Congress.

But lurking behind the curtain is an 800-lb. gorilla — a provocative proposal with large and growing public support, originated not by the SEC’s staff or by members of Congress, but by a group of corporate law professors; a proposal to walk through a back door that the U.S. Supreme Court left open in its hugely controversial decision, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission.

In that 5-4 decision, the majority held that the First Amendment protects a corporation’s right to contribute corporate funds for political speech, including “issues” campaigns, in which the identity of corporate donors may legally remain secret.

The scope of “issues” ads has been stretched to include thinly disguised negative campaign blasts, that don’t expressly endorse candidate Jones, but end with phrases such as “Call candidate Smith and tell him to stop voting for job-killing bills.”

The impact of the Citizens United ruling has been huge. As the Boston Globe puts it, “Almost immediately after being sworn into office — or in some cases even before — targeted politicians in both parties have been forced to defend themselves against negative attacks, bankrolled, in many cases, by the growing array of groups freed to spend without limit on elections by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.”

But the Supreme Court majority that ruled that government cannot suppress political speech by corporations also ruled that government can require corporate disclosure of expenditures to pay for that same political speech. The majority went out of its way to make this clear:

“With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of
expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with
the information needed to hold corporations and elected
officials accountable for their positions and supporters.
Shareholders can determine whether their corporation’s
political speech advances the corporation’s interest in
making profits, and citizens can see whether elected
officials are “‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”

“The First Amendment protects political speech;
and disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react
to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way. This
transparency enables the electorate to make informed
decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and
messages.”

The above-quoted section was mostly overlooked amid all of the criticism of the Citizens United decision. But several law professors who read the opinion decided that there might be a way, not to reverse the decision (which was effectively impossible), but to use the ‘disclosure’ language to ensure exposure of who spent how much, and for whose benefit – in other words, to excise the secrecy.

The law professors (most of them teaching at Harvard, Yale and other prominent schools) formed “the Committee on Disclosure of Corporate Political Spending” and formally petitioned the SEC to issue rules requiring corporations to disclose all of their political expenditures.

The reaction was well-organized and harsh.

In April, House Republicans introduced a bill to prohibit the SEC from requiring disclosure of corporate political expenditures. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce presented the SEC with a 30-page statement in opposition, supported by the American Gaming Association, Associated General Contractors of America, National Association of Manufacturers, National Retail Federation and other national and regional business groups. Their main argument was that the SEC’s job is to protect investors, and a corporation’s leaders already have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, so that any political expenditures automatically benefit them. The law professors responded with a 43-page article in the Georgetown Law Review, which included a succinct answer to the Chamber’s main argument:

“It will not be possible for researchers, and more importantly
investors, to determine whether corporate spending on politics is beneficial for
investors until there is adequate disclosure of such spending. At present,
because much corporate political spending occurs under the radar screen,
it is not possible to evaluate the extent to which such spending is consistent with
investor interests.”

SEC staff has publicly stated that the commission is actively considering the professors’ request for disclosure rules. The request has been the subject of nearly 500,000 overwhelmingly supportive comment letters — an unprecedented number.

Mary Jo White and her fellow commissioners have a lot of work to do already. Will they take on this additional burden? We may find out soon.

Lawrence M. Glazer is the author of Wounded Warrior, a recently published biography of former governor and Supreme Court justice John Swainson. He is also a retired Ingham County Circuit Court Judge and former legal advisor to Gov. James J. Blanchard.

The EAA Continues to Raise Questions

rgoins — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:30:46 +0000

Columns

Jack Lessenberry

The EAA Continues to Raise Questions

May 10, 2013

DETROIT – Ellen Cogen Lipton didn’t get a lot of notice during her first two terms in the Legislature. She is small, soft-spoken, and competent; a reliably liberal vote from the solidly Democratic suburb of Huntington Woods, a town of restored older homes inhabited largely by professors, attorneys, and young professionals.

This year, however, that all changed. Lipton, the Minority Vice-Chair on the House Education Committee, became interested in the Educational Achievement Authority (EAA), the experimental agency Governor Rick Snyder launched to try to fix what were said to be 15 of Detroit’s lowest performing schools. Initially, the Legislature didn’t get any say in the formation of the EAA; the Governor bypassed them to set up an “interlocal” agreement with Eastern Michigan University. But now, after less than a year, the Governor wants to expand its reach statewide, initially to 50 schools. A bill to do that narrowly passed the House last month. The Senate is expected to take it up next month, and since Republicans have more than two-thirds of that body, its passage would seem to be a foregone conclusion.

But Ellen Lipton isn’t convinced. A former teacher who comes from a family of educators, she says the more she looks into the EAA, the more questions she has. When she asked for some basic information—such as the number of teachers the EAA employs who are certified in their subjects—she says she was stonewalled. After weeks of making Freedom of Information Act requests, she finally began getting hundreds of pages of documents last week. “They aren’t organized at all, and will take some time to study,” she told me. “But they raise as many questions as answers.” One potentially troubling revelation that has surfaced so far is that the EAA is anything but financially solvent. Documents the district reluctantly released as a result of her FOIA requests indicate that the new authority has borrowed at least $12 million since September from its parent, the already cash-strapped Detroit public school district. There were also signs that EAA officials took pains to try to prevent the loans from being noticed.

Though she is a patent attorney by profession, Lipton, who grew up mostly in Alabama, comes from a family of educators, and was briefly a chemistry teacher herself. Now 46, she has a son and a daughter in the public schools in Berkley, a very middle-class district. Originally, she intended to follow her brother to medical school but then thought better of it and took a job as a science advisor to two congressmen. Almost on a whim, she applied to Harvard Law School. When she was accepted, both congressmen told her she’d be crazy not to go. While at Harvard, she met and married a classmate from Detroit.

She was drawn into politics by the statewide referendum in 2008 to permit embryonic stem cell research in Michigan. “I had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and this meant a lot to me.” The voters approved stem cell research, and Lipton also ran for—and won—an open seat in the Legislature. Early on, she worked on legislation to protect the mentally ill and children, something for which she was honored by the Michigan Probate Judges Association. But after her first two years, Republicans took control of the House and Democratic bills and initiatives were most emphatically not welcomed.

What first drew her attention to the EAA was her observation that those backing it, “were largely the same people who were behind the voucher plan John Engler and Dick DeVos were pushing,” back in 2000, a plan overwhelmingly defeated by voters that fall. She also heard testimony from a courageous teacher at Detroit’s Mumford High School, who wrote to the House Education Committee to say that, “the reality is nowhere close to the dream that they are trying to sell you.” Other teachers and a group of Mumford students calling themselves the “Social Justice League,” said their concerns and questions were treated condescendingly.

Though she has become more and more skeptical about the EAA, Lipton is not one of those who claim that the Detroit schools were doing an adequate job. She knows there are many failing schools, and not all of them in Detroit. “I am just very leery of the idea that this is the answer to the fact that schools are struggling,” she told me as she prepared to dash off to her son’s soccer match Sunday. “In fact, based on what I’ve seen, this is not the answer.”

But she says that in opposing the EAA, “it’s not enough to just say no.” She is currently spending every spare minute investigating how other states have handled their failing schools, hoping to come up with material that can help educators in Michigan find their own model. Thanks to Michigan’s strict lifetime term limits, Ellen Cogen Lipton’s career in elected office seems likely to end in December. She hasn’t yet decided what she will do next.

But, if Democrats are looking for a conscientious candidate for the State Board of Education, it’s hard to think they could do better.

Veteran journalist and national Emmy Award winner Jack Lessenberry teaches at Wayne State University, serves as Michigan Radio’s senior political analyst and writes regularly for several publications. He also serves as The Toledo Blade’s writing coach and ombudsman and is host of the weekly television show Deadline Now on WGTE-TV in Toledo.

Detroit Protestors Don’t Understand Economics

rgoins — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:10:51 +0000

Columns

Bill Johnson

Detroit Protestors Don’t Understand Economics

May 10, 2013

My first inclination was to laugh at the absurdity of another protest group calling on Detroiters to participate in a, “don’t buy” boycott of alcohol, gasoline and lottery tickets. It had to be a joke. Detroiters aren’t about to forego these things at the behest of a fringe group of polarizing malcontents.

The latest in a string of civil disobedience activity took place in the chamber of the Detroit City Council against Governor Rick Snyder’s appointment of an Emergency Manager. The fact that only a handful of protesters came out to decry a $3.3 million contract with the Jones Day law firm spearheading negotiations restructuring the city’s debt spoke volumes. After an affirmative vote by Council, gadfly Malik Shabazz called on Detroiters to show their disaffection by engaging in an economic boycott.

Aggrieved Detroiters have the right to show displeasure in whatever legal way they see fit. The most successful economic boycott in recent memory was the Montgomery bus boycott. But Detroit is not Montgomery, the year is not 1955 and the notion that people will be restrained from shopping based on the Governor’s rescue plan is irrational.

To say that the lottery boycott is an exercise in futility underscores the obvious: A sizable chunk of public education in Michigan is funded by the lottery…and Detroit gets a huge slice of that pie. Detroit schools, suffering from declining enrollment, would be disproportionately harmed by any appreciable reduction in revenue. So where’s the logic in that? With millions of dollars to be won in the lottery jackpot, it’s doubtful that the scores of poor people who “chase the dream” daily will buy fewer tickets.

Of course, protest leaders could busy themselves adopting as a mission the reduction in number of fatherless homes that cause more damage to the social and economic fabric than any Emergency Manager ever could.

They haven’t.

They might have more credibility and converts working to reverse black infant mortality and illiteracy rates comparable to underdeveloped countries.

They either can’t or they won’t.

Or, they could embrace a mission that examines why scores of young men are destined to be incarcerated rather than educated.

Obviously, these few “citizen advocates” don’t see that such problems have reached crisis proportions. They would rather launch meaningless initiatives than remind parents that their responsibilities and obligations to their own children go beyond just having them. No, the protest voices are not voices of authority that strive for community standards that tell young mothers that “marrying the state” is not an acceptable substitute for “parental responsibility.”

At the end of the day, this protest/boycott strategy is little more than a catchall receptacle for political gripes – more “pandering” than “substance.” And by relegating economic empowerment to the back seat of progress, the organizers are offering what amounts to dead-end agendas. Thriving cities have two essential roads to prosperity: recruit and relocate companies and jobs, or grow their own companies from within the community.

Detroit does neither.

In the real world, businesses are not only a key to self-sufficiency, they are critical to ending joblessness. Self-employment enables people to feed and educate members of their family. It also helps reduce the need for social services. It’s never made more sense to cripple rather than enhance the economy. “Enterprise” is a proven means of strengthening communities so the poor can begin to put poverty behind them. It results in cities having adequate funds to provide essential services because a robust economy attracts investment and generates the profits and tax revenue that ends over-reliance on government.

Obviously some Detroiters – some demonstrators – are paranoid about change. Rather than see it as an opportunity, they fear something will be lost. The clamor for change, however, must not be stifled. The city’s future hinges on the pace of evolution beyond the protest de jour.

Detroit won’t get too many more chances to make a clean break from the political apartheid of the past and create a right-sized government that allows the free market to flourish.

Bill Johnson is founder of Bill Johnson Group, a public affairs, public relations and media consulting firm. The former Wayne County administrator is an award-winning journalist who formerly worked for The Detroit News and Detroit area broadcast news organizations.

Detroit Protestors Don’t Understand Economics

rgoins — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:10:22 +0000

Columns

Bill Johnson

Detroit Protestors Don’t Understand Economics

May 10, 2013

My first inclination was to laugh at the absurdity of another protest group calling on Detroiters to participate in a, “don’t buy” boycott of alcohol, gasoline and lottery tickets. It had to be a joke. Detroiters aren’t about to forego these things at the behest of a fringe group of polarizing malcontents.

The latest in a string of civil disobedience activity took place in the chamber of the Detroit City Council against Governor Rick Snyder’s appointment of an Emergency Manager. The fact that only a handful of protesters came out to decry a $3.3 million contract with the Jones Day law firm spearheading negotiations restructuring the city’s debt spoke volumes. After an affirmative vote by Council, gadfly Malik Shabazz called on Detroiters to show their disaffection by engaging in an economic boycott.

Aggrieved Detroiters have the right to show displeasure in whatever legal way they see fit. The most successful economic boycott in recent memory was the Montgomery bus boycott. But Detroit is not Montgomery, the year is not 1955 and the notion that people will be restrained from shopping based on the Governor’s rescue plan is irrational.

To say that the lottery boycott is an exercise in futility underscores the obvious: A sizable chunk of public education in Michigan is funded by the lottery…and Detroit gets a huge slice of that pie. Detroit schools, suffering from declining enrollment, would be disproportionately harmed by any appreciable reduction in revenue. So where’s the logic in that? With millions of dollars to be won in the lottery jackpot, it’s doubtful that the scores of poor people who “chase the dream” daily will buy fewer tickets.

Of course, protest leaders could busy themselves adopting as a mission the reduction in number of fatherless homes that cause more damage to the social and economic fabric than any Emergency Manager ever could.

They haven’t.

They might have more credibility and converts working to reverse black infant mortality and illiteracy rates comparable to underdeveloped countries.

They either can’t or they won’t.

Or, they could embrace a mission that examines why scores of young men are destined to be incarcerated rather than educated.

Obviously, these few “citizen advocates” don’t see that such problems have reached crisis proportions. They would rather launch meaningless initiatives than remind parents that their responsibilities and obligations to their own children go beyond just having them. No, the protest voices are not voices of authority that strive for community standards that tell young mothers that “marrying the state” is not an acceptable substitute for “parental responsibility.”

At the end of the day, this protest/boycott strategy is little more than a catchall receptacle for political gripes – more “pandering” than “substance.” And by relegating economic empowerment to the back seat of progress, the organizers are offering what amounts to dead-end agendas. Thriving cities have two essential roads to prosperity: recruit and relocate companies and jobs, or grow their own companies from within the community.

Detroit does neither.

In the real world, businesses are not only a key to self-sufficiency, they are critical to ending joblessness. Self-employment enables people to feed and educate members of their family. It also helps reduce the need for social services. It’s never made more sense to cripple rather than enhance the economy. “Enterprise” is a proven means of strengthening communities so the poor can begin to put poverty behind them. It results in cities having adequate funds to provide essential services because a robust economy attracts investment and generates the profits and tax revenue that ends over-reliance on government.

Obviously some Detroiters – some demonstrators – are paranoid about change. Rather than see it as an opportunity, they fear something will be lost. The clamor for change, however, must not be stifled. The city’s future hinges on the pace of evolution beyond the protest de jour.

Detroit won’t get too many more chances to make a clean break from the political apartheid of the past and create a right-sized government that allows the free market to flourish.

Bill Johnson is founder of Bill Johnson Group, a public affairs, public relations and media consulting firm. The former Wayne County administrator is an award-winning journalist who formerly worked for The Detroit News and Detroit area broadcast news organizations.

An Oakland County Woman On The Move

rgoins — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:26 +0000

Columns

Tom Watkins

An Oakland County Woman On The Move

May 10, 2013

Liz Bauer is a human rights advocate on the move or, I should say, driving change.

I first met Liz, an Oakland County resident, back in the late 70′s when I was a grad student and she was Director of Training for a state institution that warehoused persons with developmental disabilities inappropriately named the, “Plymouth Center for Human Development.”

Liz was on a mission then—advocating for persons with disabilities—and remains so to this day. Liz Bauer is on a mission to ensure that persons with disabilities receive the services, dignity and respect they deserve as citizens of the United States. She has spent her life fighting for this and is a former member of the Michigan State Board of Education, former Executive Director of the Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service and a board member of Mental Disabilities Rights International (MDRI).

Liz has been waging the fight for all people to take part in all that life has to offer. She is perhaps the strongest and tenacious advocate I know. She is always leading or in the middle of fixing problems impacting the lives of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Fortunately for me, our paths have continued to cross over these many years. During every waking hour Bauer spends her time, energy, money and intellect attempting to make the world a better place. Do not attempt to argue with Liz about disability rights issues in Michigan, the U.S., or around the globe: She has either personally fought the good fight or has the issue well-documented in files that rival those of the National Archives when it comes to disability issues.

Liz Bauer (right) and daughter, Anna McTigue, who came from Newton, Massachusetts to join the run.

She knows the halls of power in Michigan and the nation well, having championed enlightened public policy and the development of inclusive, consumer-directed, culturally competent, community-based services and supports for people with disabilities. Sadly, the rights of the disabled population are still being violated in Michigan and around the world. She has fought to end the use of seclusion and restraint which is still used in far too many of schools throughout Michigan. Liz’s Rolodex is a virtual “Who’s who” of advocates, consumers and powerful political people on whom she can call at a moment’s notice in her quest to uphold basic human rights.

Always Willing To Take The Extra Step To Brighten Smiles

Liz Bauer knows dental care is essential to good health for all people, especially the disabled who often have complex oral hygiene needs but lack adequate access to care. To help meet these needs, Macomb Oakland Regional Center (MORC, Inc. www.morcinc.org) for which Liz serves as Board Chair, recently held their annual 5K Run/Walk in the Independence Oaks (Oakland) County Park. Hundreds of participants of all ages—and using all forms of mobility—participated. Significant funds were raised to provide dental care partly due to a number of generous sponsors: 220 Merrill Restaurant, Crystal Dental, Dairy Queen, Expertcare, Harley Davidson, Jimmy John’s, Kruse and Muer, MGM Grand Casino, New Balance, New Gateways, Nino Salvaggio, Oakland County RICC, Overtyme, Panera, Patterson Dental, Smidi Drugs, The Shark Club, Wachler Estate Collection and a number of individuals. As a result, the dental health care needs of many people with disabilities will be met going forward.

Liz Bauer embodies Margaret Mead’s famous quote: “Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world – indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” To make a donation or to help the cause, contact Jennifer Lasceski 586-416-2075 or Joe Dzenowagis at 586-263-8700.

Liz Bauer seems to have been living Lee Iacocca’s mantra, “Lead, follow or get out of the way” long before he made it famous.

Liz Bauer is the Board Chair of WAY Academy (www.wayprogram.net) This unique, blended learning, Charter school provides needy students in South West Detroit with a world-class education so that they are prepared with the tools they need to succeed after graduating with a high school diploma. This global learning model fosters academic excellence and lifelong learning for young people. WAY is a place where every student is provided with personalized, student-centered learning, a unique in-school and online/computer environments, as well as 24/7 live access to educators year-round. Each student is given an Apple computer to assist with their learning.

WAY offers an alternative approach to education; one that encourages self-esteem, independence, and the development of 21st century skills that facilitate a college education and subsequent career paths.

Tom Watkins Watkins served the citizens of Michigan as state mental health director and state superintendent of public education. He is a US/China business and educational consultant and can be reached at tdwatkins88@gmail.com