The Detroit Regional Chamber featured Geoffrey Canada at the recent Mackinac Policy Conference. A well deserved recognition for the CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone. The organization provides cradle to college services for all, predominantly low-income, children who live in…
Back to the must read new report from the Senate Fiscal Agency on state taxes and spending over the last decade or so. As you know, conventional wisdom is that the new Administration and Legislature took over from a high…
Insightful Rick Haglund column on AnnArbor.com. He makes the point that after the reset of Michigan state government this year the state faces a fundamental choice in where it goes from here. One path is to do more of what…
Terrific Larry Gabriel column in the Metro Times. It is about the causes of Detroit's horrible population decline. Now the 18th largest city in the country, down from 4th. As Gabriel points out the problems may be worse in Detroit,…
Governor Snyder will unveil his budget tomorrow. It will set the direction of state policy for years to come. The public conversation about his proposals will be about balancing the budget – eliminating a General Fund deficit of something like…
The folks at MiBiz.com were kind enough to ask me again to be one of their guest columnists on what we see happening in 2011. They got quite a distinguished group of Michiganians to write columns. Worth checking out. Below…
When I started working in economic development more than thirty years ago –time does fly when you are having fun – conventional wisdom was that the state's chief role was education and infrastructure. They were considered the foundation on which…
Our politics are characterized by hyper partisanship and an unwillingness to tackle the big issues. So at a time when leadership matters most, we get inaction. There is some good news. The State Board of Education – on a bipartisan…
In preparing for a presentation to the Michigan Society of Association Executives I took a look at what has happened to state taxes and spending this decade. Boy is convention wisdom wrong! To listen to the chatter from Lansing, despite…
SEMCOG – the council of governments in metro Detroit – has just released its 2035 transportation plan. Paul Tait, its excellent Executive Director, notes that one of the common concerns he runs into is folks – including policy makers –…