The state Senate has approved its $1.5 billion plan to boost road funding.
Lt. Gov. Brian Calley cast two tie-breaking votes on bills to gradually raise Michigan’s gas tax by 15 cents over three years. Calley says those votes were meant to move the process along toward reaching a final compromise on road funding.
“I think this was a positive step toward actually getting our roads fixed,” Calley told reporters shortly after casting the rare tie-breaking votes.
Michigan’s film incentives could soon end with the stroke of Gov. Rick Snyder’s pen.
The state House and Senate approved a bill to phase out the film credits on the last day before lawmakers go on an intermittent schedule for the summer.
Supporters of House Bill 4122 say the level of economic activity generated by the program doesn’t justify its cost. And they say the film industry has never taken hold in Michigan.
UPDATE 5:15 pm: State lawmakers have sent Gov. Rick Snyder a bill that would ban local minimum wage and benefit laws. The bill does not apply to ordinances adopted before this year.
Local minimum wage and benefit ordinances in place before this year would no longer be preempted by a controversial bill in the state Legislature.
A federal appeals court says a northern Michigan Indian tribe does not get to set its own labor rules at the casino it operates near Manistee.
The Little River Band of Ottawa Indians claimed tribal sovereignty allowed it to adopt its own laws that ban strikes and discourage union organizing by casino employees. The Teamsters challenged the tribal act, and the union won before the National Labor Relations Board.
But the Little River Band says the board has no jurisdiction in this instance.
Small distillers in northern Michigan would get a big tax break under a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate last week by Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI).
He visited Traverse City Whiskey Company on Tuesday to promote the legislation, which would lower the federal excise tax on liquor from $13.50 per gallon to $2.70.
The U.S. Supreme Court will soon hand down a ruling that may decide whether thousands of Michiganders can afford health insurance.
The court could strike down insurance subsidies offered under the federal health care law. That’s in states like Michigan where the federal government runs the health care exchange.
The ruling is expected this summer. But some state lawmakers are already debating whether to set up a state-run health exchange.
May 17th, 2002 was the official date when tart cherry trees reached full bloom in northern Michigan that year. The orchards looked normal but most of the cherry buds had been destroyed in April by freezing cold.
The Leelanau Enterprise ran a headline that summer that said “No Cherries.”
Ben LaCross is a second generation grower on a farm north of Cedar. He says nobody could recall a cherry crop failing so completely.
A Lake Michigan icon sets sail today with a new lease on life.
The Ludington-based car-ferry S.S. Badger will still give passengers the experience of riding a historic, coal-fired vessel. But the largest coal-fired passenger ship operating in the U.S. will no longer dump its coal ash into the lake.
The deer herd in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is so depleted the state is even talking about closing the firearm season this year. It’s just one option listed in a report to the Natural Resources Commission about possible responses to the situation.
Wildlife biologists estimate the population of deer in the UP is at its lowest level in 30 years. Extremely cold winters, particularly in 2014, are to blame, according to the report.
Things are going to be brighter in Warren. Literally.
The Macomb County city plans to swap out all of its streetlights to LED. DTE Energy Co. says this will be the largest collaborative municipal LED conversion yet.
Warren Mayor Jim Fouts said that in total, the city has around 11,000 streetlights. Of those 11,000 , 6,329 are mercury vapor lights.
Spring has a lot of faces around the country, like the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., and the sap run in Vermont. On one Michigan island, it's horses that are the harbinger of the season.
Mackinac Island draws a million visitors a year for its scenery, fudge and horses. Cars aren't allowed on the island, and every spring, hundreds of horses are ferried from their winter hiatus in the Upper Peninsula for a good grooming and harness fitting, before beginning their summer jobs pulling carriages.
If you’ve ever driven through the town of Honor on U.S. 31, you’ve likely seen the “Question Mark Building.”
It’s a dilapidated old structure that had a bright pink facade with a large question mark painted on the front.
Well, the building is finally coming down.
Talk to the locals in the town of Honor, and you’ll realize that there is a bit of a love - hate relationship with the building on the corner of Henry and Main Street.
Automobile insurance rates are expensive in Michigan. The state regularly places in the top ten for highest rates in the country.
But Republicans in Lansing say they have an answer that could lead to lower premiums. The state Senate passed a bill last week that would overhaul Michigan's no-fault insurance system by targeting the way insurers deal with healthcare providers, among other changes.
Rick Pluta, the capitol bureau chief of the Michigan Public Radio Network, explains how the plan would work:
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Rick Pluta explains a Senate bill that would reform Michigan's no-fault insurance system.
The Michigan Senate has taken an initial step toward overhauling Michigan’s no-fault auto insurance system.
The legislation would set limits on what hospitals could charge insurance companies. It would also cap what insurers can be charged for in-home care for people severely injured in car accidents.
“The best approach to bringing down insurance rates in Michigan is to get costs out of the system – to get costs out of the system,” said state Senator Joe Hune (R-Fowlerville), who chairs the Senate Insurance Committee,
Michigan’s unemployment rate has dropped to 5.6 percent. That’s a reduction of three-tenths of a percentage point, which is a bigger-than-usual adjustment.
But that decline in the monthly rate is due to a reduction in the workforce, as it’s measured by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the state Bureau of Labor Market Information and Strategic Initiatives. Actual month-to-month new hiring was flat, but there were fewer people competing for those jobs.
That didn’t stop Governor Rick Snyder (R) from trumpeting the new jobs numbers in a prepared statement:
Vintners in Michigan could have another disaster on their hands this year. Last year, Michigan vineyards produced about one fourth of the grapes grown in a normal season. The results could be about the same this year and that might leave wineries with little in the their cellars.
There's a hotel boom happening in downtown Detroit. Once-abandoned buildings are now gleaming new hotels, or will be soon. But will these plans give Detroit too many hotel rooms or not enough? And there have been lengthy discussions over the two hotels near the new Red Wings arena site just north of downtown.
Affordable housing is hard to find up north. If you want a vacation rental for a week, it's not too difficult to find one. But it can be tough to find an apartment or house to rent in the long term, especially if you're lower or middle-income.
Huge ice chunks stacked some 8 feet deep on Lake Superior have left 18 freighters stuck. The U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards have gotten involved, sending Canadian icebreakers and American vessels to help the ships break free from Whitefish Bay.
Michigan has a number of wind farms because the state basically made them mandatory in 2008. That was when lawmakers decided a certain amount of our electricity must come from renewable resources, and utilities built wind turbines to comply.
Now, wind energy is, by some measurements, among the cheapest ways to keep the lights on. But nobody seems to be rushing to build more.
In fact, the man who has developed the wind farms we have in northern Michigan says his enthusiasm for wind is waning.
Dan Gilbert has added One Detroit Center to his impressive portfolio of downtown Detroit properties, making it more than 70 downtown properties that Gilbert and his partners now own.
The purchase has caused Ally Financial with its 1,300 employees to move to One Detroit Center instead of Southfield. This announcement was accompanied by Ally's CEO conceding that the downtown location will be more expensive than the suburbs.
