DTE chief: We’re cutting carbon because it’s ‘defining issue of our era’
by Jim Malewitz (Bridge) Coal once reigned supreme on Michigan’s electricity grid. Not anymore. Touting landmark goals to slash carbon dioxide emissions that speed global warming, Michigan’s biggest utilities are shuttering coal plants favor of cheaper generation from natural gas and renewables like wind and solar. That includes DTE Energy, which provides electricity to 2.2 […]
When Michigan school districts go into debt, kids and communities pay price
by Emily Richmond (Bridge) WHITMORE LAKE—Whitmore Lake Road is a two-lane stretch of blacktop cutting through wide fields and dense woods. In the predawn hours, around a curve, the community’s high school, a modern brick and glass edifice, beams out of the darkness. For the small, unincorporated community of 6,000 just north of Ann Arbor, […]
Whitmer seeks a $5 million Pure Michigan cut to apply to roads. GOP balks.
by Lindsay VanHulle (Bridge) Gov. Gretchen Whitmer would cut $5 million from the popular $36 million Pure Michigan travel campaign next year, instead directing the money toward her top priorities to fix the state’s infrastructure and public schools. Yet some state lawmakers, from both parties, are vowing to use the state budget process to keep […]
Whitmer and Republican leaders join forces to study Michigan jail reforms
by Lindsay VanHulle (Bridge) Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Wednesday launched a bipartisan effort to study Michigan’s crowded county jail system and recommend policy changes to cut costs and reduce the number of return offenders. Through an executive order, Whitmer created the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration, which is to report its findings — […]
Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general, plows through Lansing
by Riley Beggin (Bridge) Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel last read Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” as a senior at the University of Michigan. The book’s misogynist dystopia is now close to reality, she told a room of nodding, pink-clad women at a Planned Parenthood conference in Lansing on Tuesday. If modern politics become more like […]
2019 Academic State Champs honors Michigan schools where college is the norm
By Ron French, Mike Wilkinson (Bridge) Academic State Champs annually recognizes great schools across Michigan. It’s tough to do that this year without also praising a community. Forty Michigan high schools are 2019 Academic State Champs, with the award based this year on the percentage of grads who enrolled in a two- or four-year college. The […]
Shooter drills. Anxious teachers. Flying staplers. Michigan schools prepare.
The image that keeps Laura Roth awake at night is a door. It is metallic blue with a silver door knob and a poster filled with quotes from students in Roth’s seventh-grade history class at Tappan Middle School in Ann Arbor. At night, she pictures her classroom door locked during a school shooting. According to […]
Michigan doesn’t track school security – or fund safety office it created
by Ron French, Lindsay VanHulle (Bridge) How prepared are Michigan schools to thwart a mass shooting? It’s difficult to tell, because of minimal state-level regulation and reporting. No office collects or records what schools across the state are doing to thwart school shooters, according to Nancy Becker Bennett, director of the grants and community service at Michigan […]
Fixing typo, Michigan loosens U.P. brook trout limits — for now
by Jim Malewitz (Bridge) LANSING — Anglers this season may catch up to 10 brook trout per day across 33 Upper Peninsula streams stretching 1,200 miles, double the limit elsewhere in Michigan. But the relaxed regulation could be short-lived. The state’s Natural Resources Commission last week reaffirmed the 10-trout threshold for a select group of streams scattered […]
Yes, it takes billions to fix Michigan roads. No, taxpayers don’t want to pay.
by Ron French (Bridge) The question isn’t whether it will take a lot more money to fix Michigan roads. The question, according to an array of experts Thursday, is whether politicians have the will to do it. At a Solutions Summit sponsored by The Center for Michigan (the nonprofit organization that includes Bridge Magazine) and Public Sector […]
