Up North Progressive
Politics and commentary for Northern Michigan
Hush Fund or Pay-To-Play: Will We Ever Know The Truth About The Nerd Fund
Friday , 20, June 2014 Nerd Problems Leave a comment
In a Mother Jones article published today, the writer speculated whether the scandal surrounding Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin could splash over to other Midwestern Republican governors elected in 2010. Snyder’s NERD fund is mentioned with the suggestion that the secret donor fund was actually a “pay to play” scheme for corporations to get kickbacks from Snyder in return for making donations. What was the real purpose of the NERD fund, which no longer exists even though a few employees who once benefited from it are now on the state payroll?
The NERD fund never disclosed donors. CVS Pharmacy’s parent company Caremark’s donation did become public but insists it had nothing to do with the $60 million pharmacy contract received from Kevyn Orr, who also was compensated through the fund with a lavish condominium in a Detroit Hotel. Kevyn Orr, state taxpayers discovered, was vetted by a man named Richard Baird, who had an office next door to Rick Snyder’s and a .gov email address, but wasn’t until after the NERD fund’s demise put on the state payroll. His salary also came from the NERD fund.
The original purpose of the NERD fund was to supplement the salaries of people Snyder wanted to hire at market rates as an incentive to work for him in Lansing. People accustomed to receiving a certain salary don’t care much for taking a pay cut. What do you do if you’re a governor who wants to hire specific people, but paying them the salary they’re used to receiving from public funds would make the taxpayers of the state of Michigan completely flip out? Set up a private anonymous donor fund and offer those people public sector jobs at private sector pay. That way you can at least have the veneer of ‘shared sacrifice’ that you promised when you became governor.
Richard Baird did the Governor’s dirty work behind the scenes so Snyder wouldn’t have to do it in public. Kevyn Orr became EM of Detroit for a paltry six figure sum, but saving Detroit as far as Orr is concerned is charity work. Orr had a luxury condo paid for from the NERD fund. He was hardly ever in it because he was in Baltimore most of the time while his kids were on summer vacation from school.
And when Snyder raised the salaries as high as 90% for two senior state treasury directors in November of 2013, was this done because the month before the governor had dissolved the NERD fund and that was how much extra those two treasury directors were getting paid from it? All we have unfortunately is speculation. The fund is gone and Snyder says he will never divulge the names of the donors, because even he never knew who they were. It would be interesting to discover if Snyder knew who the beneficiaries were.
New Michigan Democratic Party Ad: Tough Choices?
Thursday , 19, June 2014 Nerd Problems Leave a commentStop Complaining About No Money To Fix Michigan Roads
Wednesday , 18, June 2014 Community 3 CommentsMichigan does have money to fix roads. A very important road is being fixed right now in the counties of Lake and Osceola. This road not only provides a means of traveling but also supports important tourism and outdoors sporting. Look! Remember these?
Yes, orange barrels! You can’t have road construction without orange barrels. And look here:
A sign stating that road work is happening in the immediate vicinity. Can’t argue with that. There were even those ROAD CLOSED barricades standing nearby:
Okay, TRAIL CLOSED. This is Lake County, a trail is just as important as a road.
So why is MDOT working on this very important road … trail construction project? Because snowmobiles.
The Pere-Marquette State Trail runs from Clare to Baldwin along US 10. It passes through Evart, Reed City, Chase, and ends in Baldwin. The trail runs through part of the Manistee National Forest and has many pretty sights. The only problem was part of the trail was literally a grass lane. And everyone knows snowmobiles don’t work on grass.
Be happy Michigan, while you cry for your suspension months from now when the snow flies again our snowmobilers will have a fresh, newly paved trail to ride on. And look, near Reed City they’re even constructing a new parking lot so those snowmobilers will have someplace to park their trucks and trailers.
Enough whining, there is road trail construction happening in Michigan.
Muskegon Heights Schools Will Be Run By Muskegon Area ISD For 2014 – 2015 School Year
Tuesday , 17, June 2014 Section 16 Leave a comment
Muskegon Heights Schools voted to hire a superintendent and go to the Muskegon Area Intermediate School District for management of their district for the next three years. The Muskegon Heights Charter School Board will draft the paperwork and vote to approve the changes to the school district on June 25th. Muskegon Heights Schools are still under the control of a Snyder-appointed emergency manager who has final authority on the changes proposed by the school board.
In 2012 the Muskegon Heights public school system was put under emergency management. The school district separated from the ISD and for-profit management companies were invited to bid on running the schools. Mosaica Education Incorporated won the bid and during the 2013 – 2014 school year not only were unable to pay their teachers for two pay periods in a row, but needed a $1.4 million emergency loan from the state to finish the school year. Mosaica now owes the state $2 million, but after filing for bankruptcy indicated in a public statement they are finished with Muskegon Heights Schools completely.
This is another blatant example of why Michigan’s public schools need to remain public. Charter Schools and the for-profit management companies taking our tax dollars to manage the schools have an established track record of rewarding themselves with high salaries for their ‘management’, but the school’s ability to educate children is always compromised when money that should be invested into the school is instead part of an LLC’s bottom line. Another chapter of Snyder’s failed attempt to privatize Michigan’s schools and run them on a budget closes. On November 4 we will put this epic saga of failure back on the shelf for good.
Meet The Candidates: District #5 Congressman Dan Kildee
Sunday , 15, June 2014 Candidates Leave a comment
Congressman Dan Kildee has represented the people of the 5th district since 2013. Already he has made a positive impact on Washington with the people of Michigan in mind. Kildee knows the people he needs to work for are the people who contribute most to the economy and communities in the 5th district – hard working families and the middle class.
Dan Kildee is a native of Flint, Michigan. He attended Flint Northern High School and earned a degree in Community Development Administration from Central Michigan University. He is married with three children. Kildee was elected to the Flint Board of Education in 1977 when he was 18 years old. He also served on the Genesee County Board of Commissioners and as Genesee County Treasurer from 2000 to 2008. In 2002 Kildee founded the Land Bank with the purpose of redeveloping neighborhoods in cities. In 2012 Kildee ran for US Congress 5th district after his Uncle, Dale Kildee, announced his retirement.
In Washington, Dan Kildee will continue to work on the issues that Americans are most concerned about. A strong middle class with low unemployment can happen when there are enough good-paying jobs. To make sure there are people qualified for those jobs, Dan Kildee wants to help with the success of small businesses, who are the real job creators. Having qualified and well trained people to work in Michigan requires strong, well funded public schools with enough teachers in the classrooms so all students get the attention and quality instruction they need. Dan Kildee also knows healthy communities need funded services to help them thrive.
Making sure the elderly have access to affordable health care is another priority. Dan Kildee supports maintaining the Medicare guarantee. He also recognizes that women are under attack from Republicans by denying them pay equity, protection from violence, and limiting reproductive health care choices. Women are vital wage earners supporting families and they need the same opportunities as men. The idea that men are the only breadwinners for their families is an antiquated notion that needs to be forgotten. Keeping Dan Kildee in Washington will make sure women and the elderly are not forgotten, or seen as a burden. Finally, for many Michiganders in the 5th district and the state, finding a job is still a daily struggle. Having the means to pay for the basics while looking for work not only helps a family survive during a tough time, but also contributes to the economy. Dan Kildee has worked hard demanding that Unemployment Insurance be restored for people who are fighting the very slow economic recovery to find a job.
The people of the 5th district and the state of Michigan need a person like Dan Kildee in Washington D.C. working for the people instead of corporate interests. On November 4, re-elect Dan Kildee for U.S. Congress.
Visit his campaign website for more information and sign up to volunteer.
One Relentless Nerd’s desire to beat public education to death sustained another delay on Thursday when the Michigan State Legislature took their ball and went home for the summer without voting on an expansion of the Education Achievement Authority for the rest of the state. The bad news is they didn’t bother to come up with any plan to fix Michigan’s roads either so we get to have a fun summer of flat tires and broken tie rods. Shared sacrifice!
This is a really good thing, because today the chancellor of the EAA, John Covington, announced he was resigning his position for a new job offer. The fact that he and other school school administrators were discovered spending thousands of Michigan taxpayer dollars on trips and airplane rides and furniture from IKEA while the schools struggled with very little money to operate had nothing to do with it. Perhaps it was the MEAP scores when they finally came out proved the schools in the program were way below the rest of Detroit Public Schools in achievement. Then there were the discipline problems, the high teacher turnover rate, many teachers were Teach For America trainees, the class sizes were close to 50 students, the lack of special education teachers that violated federal education law and so on and so on. Three years of that probably looks like a good time to bail out.
Before Detroit Covington spent two years running Kansas City, Missouri’s schools into the ground. They lost their accreditation shortly after he left for Detroit. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Covington is a graduate of Eli Broad’s school management program. Eli Broad believes all public school districts should be run by MBA’s, because public schools should be about a product, not educating people for their future. Covington brought Eli Broad’s methods of destroying public schools to Michigan so they can then be taken over by for-profit management companies, like the EAA.
Covington leaving means someone else will replace him and the EAA with all of it’s failings and scandals will continue on. Unfortunately it doesn’t mean the end of Snyder’s corporate school reform fever dream. Despite the Michigan Department of Education distancing themselves from the EAA and many critics insisting the program is a failure, Snyder is determined to expand the EAA to the rest of the state so more schools can be taken from the sphere of their local communities and put under the control of Lansing. For now, that can’t happen until September, and by then school will be back in session. On November 4 we kick out Rick Snyder and elect Mark Schauer, who will put an end to the constant attack on our public schools.
@MarkSchauer Ad: Make Michigan’s Economy Work For Everyone
Friday , 13, June 2014 Candidates Leave a commentOne Lying Nerd: Proof That Snyder Cut School Funding
Thursday , 12, June 2014 Nerd Problems, Section 16 Leave a comment
The Senate Fiscal Agency released their report on school funding in Michigan. The proof that the Governor is lying about cutting money for schools is in black and white. Nearly every public school in Michigan had significant cuts in their per-pupil tuition in 2011, and the current spending levels per student this year are still lower than they were in 2006.
In his $400,000 Superbowl ad Rick Snyder claims he increased spending on education. If that’s true, then how did the Senate Fiscal Agency not show that in their report? Because Snyder’s lying, that’s why. Shuffling money around into different funds (For example, teacher pensions) to make it appear there was more money for education doesn’t mean there was an increase in public school funding. It means the governor tried to hide his tracks. Smart people didn’t fall for it then, and now there is evidence to back up what has been a fact since 2011 when Snyder took office. There’s less money for schools with no plans to try and bring funding to a level that would match the rate of inflation.
School districts all over Northern Michigan showed the same numbers for per-student funding. The high point came in 2010-2011, the last school year Jennifer Granholm was governor. The amount for that school year was $7,316. After 2011, the amount per student dropped to $6,846. By 2013, the amount spent per student was at 7,026. That may seem like an increase, but in fact it is still a serious cut from previous years’ levels. The report is broken down by county with amounts for every school district, including charter schools and the EAA. Kalkaska, Forest Park, Hale, Calumet, Traverse City, Cadillac, every school in Northern Michigan faced deep cuts which resulted in lost money to run districts. Schools have cut staff, closed school buildings, and in the case of Mecosta-Osceola County ISD, eliminated vital special education services due to lack of funds. All part of Snyder’s “shared sacrifice” to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
Educating children is an investment with a very important payoff. After graduation new graduates will consider the option of joining the work force or going to college. We educate our children so they can find work, have a career and contribute to the economy and their community. Rick Snyder doesn’t understand that, he only sees Michigan’s children as a drain on state funds that could be given to his rich friends and corporations. In 2010 Snyder promised to make Michigan a leader in transparency and Ethics. He has done neither. He fudged numbers and lied about cutting school funding, and our school children are suffering for his lies.
One Lying Nerd, do you smell smoke?