State News

 Sara Swanson

11 safety tips for deer firearms hunting in Michigan

by Bob Campbell (Bridge) With hundreds of thousands of hunters gearing up for Michigan’s deer firearms season, caution is critical. Here are some tips for avoiding tragedy: Clearly identify your target: No deer or other game is worth the risk of injuring or killing anyone. Michigan Department of Natural Resources incident reports are rife with […]

 Marsha Chartrand

Liberal super PAC sues Michigan over voting restrictions

by Riley Beggin (Bridge) A liberal super PAC that plans to spend millions in Michigan in 2020 has filed a lawsuit in federal court against Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel, arguing certain laws that restrict voter services are illegal and asking the court to stop Nessel from enforcing them. The group, Priorities USA, argues in […]

 Sara Swanson

Critics fear Michigan is promising the moon to land cloud data storage firms

By Jonathan Oosting (Bridge) LANSING –  Michigan’s next big battle over tax incentives focuses on server farms, as state officials try to lure massive cloud storage data centers that Facebook and Google are opening in other states. Four years after using a tax break to lure a Switch data center to a pyramid-shaped building in […]

 Sara Swanson

As climate change threatens Midwest cultural identity, cities explore how to adapt

by Dan Gearino (Bridge) Think of a Minnesota with almost no ice fishing. A Missouri that is as hot and dry as Texas. River and lake communities where catastrophic flooding happens almost every year, rather than every few generations. This, scientists warn, is the future of the Midwest if emissions continue at a high rate, […]

 Marsha Chartrand

No deal: Senate GOP rejects possible budget compromise

By Jonathan Oosting (Bridge) LANSING — County sheriffs, small schools, local governments, and other groups grappling with state funding cuts will have to wait several more days — or possibly weeks — for Michigan leaders to try and resolve an ongoing budget dispute. Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, on Thursday rejected a potential budget […]

 Sara Swanson

A year after pot became legal, Michigan still months away from retail sales

By Jonathan Oosting (Bridge) LANSING – Retail sales of recreational marijuana may still be months away and confined to select communities, even though Michigan began taking applications for businesses on Friday. The Marijuana Regulatory Agency last week began accepting applications for what is expected to be a lucrative new industry. That’s more than a month […]

 Sara Swanson

Enbridge vows to cover costs in ‘unlikely’ case of Michigan Line 5 rupture

By Jim Malewitz (Bridge) Enbridge is disputing Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s suggestion that state taxpayers “could be left holding the bag” for cleanup costs if the Candadian-based company’s twin Line 5 oil and gas pipelines were to rupture in the Straits of Mackinac. “The bottom line is Enbridge will take full responsibility and pay […]

 Marsha Chartrand

Attorney General Dana Nessel takes hard line in juvenile inmate rape cases

By Ted Roelofs (Bridge) For more than five years, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette was a brick wall defending the state against allegations that prison officials failed to protect juvenile inmates as young as 14 from being raped and assaulted when they were housed with adult prisoners. Schuette fought the 2013 juvenile inmate lawsuit up and down […]

 Marsha Chartrand

Measures aim to end ‘surprise billing’ for Michigan medical patients

By Robin Erb (Bridge) In the tense hours at a Grand Rapids emergency room last year — as Lisa Grinzinger struggled to form words and a medical team scrambled to rule out a possible stroke — finances were far from top-of-mind. “I never even thought about it,” said her husband Mike Grinzinger, a retired chief […]

 Sara Swanson

Michigan schools are now average. That’s progress.

By Mike Wilkinson, Ron French (Bridge) Michigan public school students show marked improvement compared to their peers in other states, according to national test results released Wednesday. On the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called “the nation’s report card,” Michigan students were firmly in the middle of the pack in eighth-grade math and reading […]