Coffey says he wants the state to establish a special unit to investigate state lawmakers suspected of conflicts of interests arising from their official duties. The unit would operate out of the attorney general's public integrity bureau. As a first step, the newspaper reports that lawmakers would voluntarily complete a form listing their connections to any nonprofits eligible for state funding. Disclosure requests would also apply to family members involved with nonprofits, as well as staff who share residences and office space with charities.

Making this information available, says Coffey, would prevent legislators from pushing for support for organizations that later results in troubles when the full connections to the groups are revealed. Coffey says those who choose not to disclose will find themselves subject to increased scrutiny to make sure they aren't trying to fund projects that would represent violations of public trust.

HOUSE OKS LAND BANK BILL

Legislation allowing land banks to grant tax abatements for federally supported low-income housing passed the House on Tuesday. HB 6245 gives land banks the same abatements already available to local units of government.

Abandoned property is a source of blight, crime, and disease, which in turn can result in the problem of decreasing local tax values. In the past, there was no coherent governmental approach to urban land reform and solutions to resolving these problems.

Since the passage of PA 123 of 1999, the State of Michigan and County governments have greater authority in gaining control of vacant abandoned land. Adoption of this legislation authorizes a foreclosing county to create a Land Bank, which is a key step in any urban land reform initiative. Land Banks allow local governments to overcome the legal structures that restrain rather than foster conversion of public land and public liens on private land into performing assets. The Land Bank is a public authority created to hold, manage, and develop tax foreclosed properties. These properties are then converted into productive use within the community.

Understanding the Costs and Benefits of Sharing Services with Other Local Governments
Ensure your township responds appropriately to the economic and political opportunities of collaboration with other governmental entities, including counties, other townships, and cities and villages. Explore the legal, political and economic barriers (and opportunities!) and examine the steps to initiate a successful joint service agreement along with essential contract terms to ensure successful partnerships. Identify issues specific to services such as water/sewer systems, fire and law enforcement, assessing, code enforcement, tax collections and election administration.

The University of Michigan's Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) recently surveyed local government leaders from over 1,300 Michigan jurisdictions (counties, cities, townships, and villages) as part of the Spring 2010 Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS). We have just released a new MPPS report evaluating how Michigan jurisdictions are coping with today’s fiscal, service, and staffing pressures.

The report is available on the [url=http://closup.umich.edu <http://closup.umich.edu/]CLOSUP homepage.[/url]

Local officials told us how declining fiscal health is becoming a more widespread problem for jurisdictions across the state, and that they think this will continue to worsen in the coming year. This declining fiscal health is due in part to decreasing tax revenues and state aid, with 78% of local officials reporting decreased property tax revenue and 85% reporting decreased state aid. The report also documents increasing costs, particularly related to personnel, and increasing demands for public services such as public safety, infrastructure, and human services.

How are local governments responding? Not by selling public assets such as parks or buildings (only 5% of all jurisdictions say they will increase these actions next year). Nor are many local governments planning to increase property tax rates or their levels of debt.

Some of the most common strategies that are being pursued include: increased reliance on general fund and “rainy day” fund balances; having employees cover more of their health care expenses; and reducing services provided and spending on infrastructure and public safety; In addition, more local governments expect to implement employee furloughs and 4-day work weeks in the coming year than did so last year.

Interim City Manager Warren Renando says bankruptcy is looming for the city of Jackson unless City Council acts soon to avert it. Renando told City Council this week that if present trends continue and the city keeps spending more money than it has, it will be in the red in two years.
“There is no doubt we’re going broke,” Renando said.

The city has budgeted general fund revenues of $21.1 million and expenses of $21.7 million for the 2010-11 fiscal year, which started July 1.

Renando expects property taxes to fall from $7 million this year to $6.7 million next year because of the recession and state shared revenues to fall from $4.4 million to $4 million. Renando said he might get better numbers for state-shared revenues in a few months, but the city can’t afford to wait.

Murdoch and his family are billionaires several times over, their personal contributions are private, but they do have a family foundation—the Murdoch Foundation—which are capitalized by contributions from various family trusts. Despite unimaginable wealth (the Murdoch Family Trust owned 363 million shares of News Corp. stock as of last year’s proxy statement in August 2009 and Murdoch himself owned another 339 million shares, [PDF], the Foundation is a small giver, usually giving only a handful of grants in the years that it decides to give.

Its most consistent grant recipient is the Harvard Lampoon (son James is on the Lampoon board)—$50,000 a year from 2006 to 2008 though $75,000 in 2005. Someone in the foundation likes the environment, as the Nature Conservancy received $150,000 during that period. But its RGA-sized grants go to religion and education: $996,500 in 2007 and $920,000 in 2006 to Americans for Oxford, $500,000 in 2007 to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (in Los Angeles), $191,500 in 2006 to the venerable National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (in London), and a whopping $3,330,000 to the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in 2005.