Category Archives: State Government

Dang, maybe Michigan is the next Wisconsin

Posted on March 12, 2011 by | 7 Comments

Update: There’s a facebook group called Recall Rick Snyder for Michigan and they are featuring a Darth Snyder t-shirt (though I can’t seem to actually find it for sale on cafepress).  It looks cool though….

While surfing through various things I haven’t had a chance to read lately online, I’ve come across a couple of scary (and perhaps alarmist?) things about some of what’s going on at the state-level under Rick Snyder.  First, there’s this clip from the Rachel Maddow show:

This whole “financial martial law” thing came up on one of the more popular blogs on the internets, here at boing-boing.

And local blogger Mark Maynard has a good post about all this here.

And as I recall it, looking through my email just now, EMU-AAUP President Susan Moeller sent around this alarming email to faculty the other day; here’s a quote:

1) A number of faculty have asked me if EMU faculty are considered State public employees and the answer is yes.  The Michigan Legislature is considering two bills which will impact our wages and benefits.  One bill will mandate a 5% pay cut and the other will mandate we pay 20 to 25% of our health care.

In addition, if Michigan becomes a right to work State, the Administration does not have to negotiate with their employees.  Some faculty have told me they support Michigan being a right to work State but they would still pay dues.  That is not the issue – the issue is that that Administration will not have to bargain with us.

2) We need help organizing events in Lansing and on campus.  Please let me know if you are interested in helping and I will call a meeting of the Organizing Committee.  Many students want to participate with us so we now need faculty to help with this.

So, I am kind of at a loss here.  I wasn’t crazy about Snyder getting elected, but I thought we were getting more of a moderate pragmatist kind of Republican rather than a gut the poor/teabagger kind of Republican.  Moeller says EMU employees are public employees, but I know that someone commented here the other day about how we aren’t– at least not “public employees” the same way that people who work at the DMV are.  This financial ”martial law” thing sounds pretty bad, but the way that I’ve heard this described in most media outlets isn’t that extreme.

To use a Star Wars analogy here:  is Snyder like Emperor Palpatine, the Dark Sith Lord who played it cool and innocent until the third movie and he then turned Anakin Skywalker into the evil Darth Vader and a reign of terror began?  Or, is Snyder more like Anakin/Vader, the guy who started with bad politics but good intentions and then found himself sucked into the whole evil structure until the very end where he is killed by his own son?

Well, maybe that analogy doesn’t work….  But what is going on here?  Any theories?

→ 7 Comments

Posted in Budgets, EMU-AAUP, State Government

More craziness in Wisconsin

Posted on March 10, 2011 by | 1 Comment

I was up way too late last night working (a long story), and before I did finally go to bed, I received an email from one of the various lists I’m on alerting me to the political moves in Wisconsin; this morning, there’s this from Inside Higher Ed, “Defeat for Academic Labor.” Basically, the Wisconsin legislature went through some political tactics in the middle of the night to pass the law that takes away bargaining rights for teachers and faculty in the state.  Here’s a quote from the opening paragraphs:

The bill — proposed by Governor Scott Walker, a Republican — also severely limits collective bargaining rights of most other public employees in the state.

While faculty unions were not the focus of the debate, the legislation now appears poised to kill what had been a major victory for academic labor: the potential to organize University of Wisconsin faculty members. After years of trying, labor advocates in 2009 won state legislation that permitted the organizing of faculty members at the university system.

Since then, faculty members at four of the system’s campuses — Eau Claire, La Crosse, Stout and Superior — have voted to unionize, all with the American Federation of Teachers, which has made the unionization of UW campuses a major goal. The latest union vote, at Stout, was announced on Wednesday — just before the Senate moved in a way that could make the action moot.

The state vote, like those of other campuses, was not close. Faculty voted 196-31 to unionize.

Needless to say, a sad day, and for me, the only comfort here is that I think that Walker et al are over-reaching on this and are likely to face consequences later.  As I just heard from one of the Democrats who left the state in Wisconsin (he was interviewed on NPR), this does prove that this had nothing to do with the budget.  And let’s just keep reminding Snyder that Michigan isn’t Wisconsin….

 

→ 1 Comment

Posted in EMU-AAUP, In the media..., State Government

Great– budget cuts might even be worse than we thought

Posted on March 5, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Here’s a nice and depressing article for a gray, rainy Saturday:  From The Detroit News web site, “Budget cuts to Michigan colleges deeper than expected University officials are upset proposed state aid reduction is 21%, not 15%.” Here’s a quote from the opening paragraphs:

As colleges poured through the fine print of the budget plan released two weeks ago, they discovered the cuts will be an average 21 percent — possibly the biggest cut ever to higher education in the state — and range from 23 percent for Central Michigan University to 19 percent for Eastern Michigan University. Since 1979, the largest cut in state aid was 8.5 percent, according to the Senate Fiscal Agency . Snyder told lawmakers there would be an across-the-board 15 percent cut to Michigan’s 15 state universities. He also recommended $83 million in “tuition incentive grants” accessible to universities who hold a cap on tuition hikes. But universities have learned the incentive is more stick than carrot: If they hold tuition hikes at or below 7.1 percent, an incentive grant will reduce their cut to 15 percent.

“I find it less than honest that you would portray the cut as 15 percent, and call additional money an ‘incentive’ if you keep tuition less than 7.1 percent,” said Mike Boulus, executive director of the Presidents Council, State Universities of Michigan. “It’s clearly less than transparent in the way it’s been presented.”

Three thoughts about this article: first, the fact that this is the worst cut to state universities since the late 1970s says a lot about the dire nature of what’s going on here. Second (perhaps more optimistically), the confusion about just how much these cuts will add up to suggest to me that the dust on all this hasn’t quite settled yet.

And third, at what point do public universities just stop taking money from the state? Here are the closing paragraphs of the article:

Grand Valley State University President Tom Haas said the school will hold tuition under the cap to avoid the 21.9 percent cut outlined in Snyder’s proposal, which would reduce its appropriation to $48.4 million from $61.9 million last year.

“There has been a shift from the taxpayers in support of higher education to the students and their families,” Haas said.

Haas was among several university presidents who testified Wednesday before House and Senate committees.

“You’ve asked us to use privatization to save money, and we are,” Haas told lawmakers. “But when it comes to the operating appropriation, the state of Michigan has largely privatized Grand Valley State University.”

Now, this shifting of the cost of higher education is not unique to Michigan and it is far from new, but I think that Haas and (I presume) other university presidents really need to start asking the privatization question.  What do privatized versions of universities like Grand Valley, Central, and Eastern look like?  Because I don’t think you have to be a genius to see that this is where we’re heading.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, In the media..., State Government

“Hands off higher ed in the statehouse? Hardly.”

Posted on March 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

A loyal EMUTalk.org reader sent me a link to this CHE piece to share here– though I had also seen it earlier too, and I can’t get to the link in my email right now since EmuMail appears to be down again.  But I digress.  The article is “State Lawmakers Seek More Say Over Colleges,” and it’s behind the CHE firewall– the link here is one with the EMU proxy that will prompt you to log in.  Here’s a passage that will give you a flavor:

Although significant budget cuts still loom for higher education in many states, much of the recent legislation aims to curb what some lawmakers apparently imagine as commonplace excesses of faculty employment: six-figure salaries, light teaching loads, frequent sabbaticals on faraway islands.

“A lot of these political maneuvers are based on outdated assumptions,” says Daniel J. Hurley, director of state policy for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. He and others believe that the bills amount to state government’s unnecessary meddling in campus governance.

There are many forehead-smacking-the-table sort of frustrating passages like this here, and I guess I have two contradictory responses.  First, is there any way I can get in on this conspiracy that these (mostly) Republican legislators have about faculty work?  I will grant you that being a professor is a great job– beats the heck out of shoveling coal– but where’s my six figure salary being pissed away on a tropical island while on sabbatical and researching belly-button lint?  I mean, I went to school for almost 10 years after high school and I’ve been teaching college for over 20 years, and I still haven’t been let into this secret society that these people are fighting against; what do I have to do to get into this club?!?

Second, and on the more realistic side of things, why is it that faculty have done such a poor job of depicting and explaining what we really do?  Why are we continually subjected to these kinds of baseless attacks?  I guess the stuff going on in Wisconsin proves that it’s not just college professors being unfairly targeted– all those cushy public jobs like fire fighters, police officers, DMV workers, park rangers, and K-12 teachers are taking the brunt of it– but honestly, it seems to me that faculty ought to be able to offer a more robust defense of the work we do.  Why is this so hard?  Why are we so unconvincing to so many people?

Are these legislators still mad about that “C” they got in my freshman writing class?

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Academics, Faculty Life, In the media..., State Government

Meanwhile, Michigan is not Wisconsin

Posted on February 28, 2011 by | 1 Comment

A couple of interesting articles this morning about the turmoil among our cheesehead public worker friends to the west.  First, forwarded to folks from Michigan AAUP folks, is “Really Bad Reporting in Wisconsin: Who ‘Contributes’ to Public Workers’ Pensions?” from Tax.com. Now, I found myself getting a little sleepy while reading through this, though I am not exactly a tax news fanatic.  But the basic point that David Cay Johnston is making is that a lot of the reporting on what’s going on in Wisconsin has been sloppy and/or flat-out wrong.

Second, I heard on Michigan Public Radio this morning that Rick Snyder sent around an email to 50,000 state employees to point out that “Michigan is not Wisconsin.” Besides the obvious, what he meant was that the “tough decisions” necessary for dealing with the deficit in the state do not need to be polarizing.  I think what Snyder is saying to state workers is “Hey, please don’t protest and sink my political future before it even gets off the ground.  Thanks.”

Oh, and it’s also interesting that I don’t think anyone at EMU received this email, which means I’m not quite a state worker, I guess.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Budgets, In the media..., State Government

All campus union RALLY today at noon at the Student Center

Posted on February 24, 2011 by | 1 Comment

It’s a bit of short notice, but perhaps something worth attending if you can:  EMU-AAUP President Susan Moeller sent around the following email to faculty today:

Please remember we are having a “Solidarity Day” rally TODAY, Thursday, February 24th, at NOON at the STUDENT CENTER patio with all the other unions on campus to support Ohio and Wisconsin.  This is a state-wide initiative. I hope to see you there.

We really need your support as do all the other unions. We need to be able to negotiate not only our wages and benefits but we need to be able to negotiate our working conditions as faculty, including teaching load and tenure rights.

Hope to see you at Noon.

 

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Buildings and Grounds, EMU-AAUP, State Government

Snyder to EMU (and other state supported universities): Drop Dead

Posted on February 17, 2011 by | 27 Comments

The not exactly surprising budget cuts to EMU (and other public universities in Michigan) have been announced and they are significant. around 15% give or take.  Here’s how freep.com describes the impact and the “grants” for keeping tuition low in “Schools reeling from Snyder’s proposed cuts:”

Funding to the state’s 15 public universities would be cut by 15%, or more if universities raise tuition by more than 7% in the 2011-12 academic year. Snyder is enticing universities to keep the rate increases below 7% by offering tuition incentive grants.

The grants vary from university to university, with Michigan State University eligible for the most, at $18.3 million. Other amounts: $13.9 million to University of Michigan; $12.8 million to Wayne State University, $3.2 million to Eastern Michigan University, $3.8 million to Oakland University and $1.4 million to University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Universities that increase tuition more than 7 percent would not only have their state funding cut by 15%, but it would also be cut by the equivalent of what they would receive in the tuition grant.

Now, Susan Martin tried to put a rosy face on all this with an email to the campus (which I include in the “continued” part of this post), but I am left with two general thoughts here:

  • Since the “grant” program that Snyder is proposing doesn’t really make up for the loss of state funding, what really is the incentive for places like EMU to not raise tuition to make up costs?  I mean, I’m not in charge of these things (and it’s a good thing!), but I guess if I were, I’d say forget your grants and unreliable funding– let’s raise tuition and fees so we can pay the bills and behave like the “non-public” university we really are.
  • How’d that 0/0/0% thing work out again?  Any credit for that?  Any?

Continue reading →

→ 27 Comments

Posted in Budgets, In the media..., State Government

Eastern Michigan University braces for budget cuts

Posted on February 15, 2011 by | 7 Comments

From annarbor.com, “Eastern Michigan University braces for budget cuts.” The article hints at a rumored 20% cut to the budget. Oy. I’m sort of again wondering about the good PR we got from the state with that 0/0/0% plan and how that will play out when EMU (and every other state school) will have to raise tuition by 10 or 15% next year and cut services.

→ 7 Comments

Posted in Academics, Budgets, In the media..., State Government

Two Ypsi bits of Ypsi development news to keep an eye on

Posted on January 30, 2011 by | 1 Comment

I’ve been too busy with the pesky day job to pay much attention to anything off campus, but in browsing through annarbor.com and the local blogosphere this morning, I found two bits of Ypsilanti development news that are worth watching.  First, according to this article, the Ann Arbor developer who bought the building that Campus Drugs was in (it’s closed now, isn’t it?) has plans to restore/renovate the buildings into three store fronts and new apartments above it.

Probably not particularly fancy stores though.  According to Mark Maynard, what’s likely to go there isn’t going to be quite as grand as all that– rumor has it that O’Neal Inc. is talking to 7-11 and to Starbucks, though Maynard says that the developers would prefer a local coffee place like Sweetwaters (I would too).  Not exactly a Kerrytown-like revival of the area.  Still, a nice place for coffee shop and a clean/non-sketchy convenience store right next to campus would be a plus.

The other possible development is trains actually stopping in Depot Town.  Annarbor.com says that Amtrak is considering a stop, and Mark Maynard also reminds us that this is different from the long-standing hopes/dreams of commuter rail between Detroit, the airport, Ypsi, Ann Arbor, and perhaps points beyond.  I’m all for this too, but since light commuter rail has been “just around the corner” since I moved to Michigan a dozen years ago.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in In the media..., State Government, Ypsilanti

“Thanks, But No Thanks” (to state funding, that is)

Posted on January 17, 2011 by | 1 Comment

“Thanks, But No Thanks” is a long piece in Inside Higher Ed about what it says is the increasing trend for public institutions to “go private,” or at least change the funding structure from state government such that the institutions are more autonomous. For example, University of Oregon president Richard W. Lariviere has a plan:

It is a notable sign of the times: more college leaders are arguing that the traditional model of funding public higher education is dysfunctional, and advocates of a new way forward say they’ve reached this conclusion after frustrating years of legislative sessions that are typically defined by handwringing and disappointment. In his pitch to lawmakers, Lariviere says he’s often reduced to the same tired declaration: “We’re doing very important work for the future. We need more money to do it well. Please give us more money.”

“We’ve been doing that for 30 years, or at least I have been, and it really hasn’t pushed the envelope very far,” he says.

At the heart of Lariviere’s plan is a request that the state commit to its 2010 level of funding – about $65 million per year – for 30 years, using the funds to pay debt service on bonds worth approximately $800 million. The university would match the bonds with $800 million in private gifts to create a $1.6 billion “public/private” endowment, which would – along with the university’s current $435 million endowment and tuition revenues – sustain university operations within the first year, according to university officials’ estimates.

In other words (and if I am not understanding this right, someone please tell me), it would appear that Lariviere is willing to take much less money if it becomes more reliable, sort of like investing in really safe but low-returning stocks instead of “playing” the market.

For “flagship” institutions like Oregon (or U of M or MSU), this sort of arrangement may be inevitable, and it might be the best way to go.  The article cites the examples of the “semi-private” system for some universities in Virginia and Pennsylvania.  But how that impacts places like EMU seems quite a bit more unclear to me.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Administrator Life, Board of Regents, Budgets, In the media..., State Government