Detroit News. March 30, 2017
Students win in tenure crackdown
Wayne State University started hearings this week to revoke the tenure of five professors who are “grossly under-performing” and “not doing anything,” in the words of WSU President M. Roy Wilson. Wilson is leading the gutsy move, which is rare in academia. Universities across the state should take note.
This is the first time WSU is attempting to fire several professors at once for poor performance. Only twice in the school’s history has the university sought to revoke a professor’s tenure, and in those cases the faculty won. These professors may as well; a seven-member board will decide their fate.
Tenure abuse diminishes the excellence of a university. Wayne State’s medical school - the third largest in the nation - has stumbled under a budget deficit and accreditation warnings.
In August, it announced that as many as 37 medical school professors could lose their jobs for under-performing. Two dozen of those have left. Five more are under fire in these tenure-revoking hearings. Tenure is most often awarded to full-time professors after a probationary period of seven years at four-year institutions.
At its best, tenure protects academics to think, teach, research and write freely. It provides them stability to publish and invest in a department and gives students continuity. At its worse, tenure protects incompetence and laziness, promising indefinite employment with no accountability or performance standards. Some balance is needed to ensure a robust academic environment as well as to shield institutions from faculty who take advantage of tenure.
Mark Taylor of Columbia University calculated that one tenured professor teaching for 35 years costs a private university an average of $12.2 million and a public university $10 million. Universities in 2010 averaged $168 million in debt nationwide. Removing 15 under-performing tenured professors could put a college in the black.
Students should also reap benefits of a more effective tenure system. A Stanford University researcher found replacing the lowest-performing 5 to 8 percent of teachers with an average teacher could enable American students to catch up with those in higher-performing nations. Pearson’s 2014 ranking placed the U.S. at only 14th in worldwide education system rankings.
Harvard economists came to a similar finding, concluding that dumping bad teachers would increase the lifetime earnings of students by about $250,000. Good teachers matter at all levels of education.
Fortunately, tenure is on the decline as an institution. From 1975 to 2011, the number of tenured full-time college professors dropped by half. In 2014, there were 1 million professors teaching off the tenure-track who made up 75 percent of all college professors. Financially, tenure isn’t bang for a university’s buck.
But whether tenure eventually goes extinct, it persists now. Universities should implement quality measures and basic accountability and hold tenured professors to them. Otherwise, taxpayers lose, institutions lose and students lose.
Wayne State is right to lead this charge against its under-performing faculty members. Other universities in Michigan should take a close look at their ranks and do the same.
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Times Herald (Port Huron). March 29, 2017
Lock-your-car tax is silly, should be dropped
Michigan motorists might be surprised to learn that Lansing has been working to keep down their auto insurance premiums. Using an essentially secret tax on their auto insurance policies, state officials claim they are saving the average motorist about $77 in higher premiums.
Michigan consistently places first or second among states with the most expensive auto insurance. Depending on how you look at it, Michigan may also require the best coverage. But it’s hard to imagine that premiums could be even higher.
The hidden tax is a $1 per policy levy that pays for the Automobile Theft Protection Authority. The authority was created in the mid-1980s to deal with Michigan’s auto theft rate, which was the highest in the nation. It has a board of directors, an annual convention and a budget of about $6 million a year.
It hands out most of that $6 million to local law enforcement agencies, prosecutors’ offices and nonprofit groups. Together, they and ATPA work to prevent auto theft. Before we point out that you give ATPA $1 a year so that it and its grant recipients can tell you to lock you car doors and take the keys, we should point out that maybe it is working.
Auto thefts in Michigan have fallen about 60 percent since the mid-1980s. But auto theft rates nationwide have also fallen by similar amounts - and crime in general is down everywhere as well. And the Bureau of Justice Statistics says that Michigan still has one of the highest auto theft rates in the nation. Those 50,000 cars stolen in Michigan last year suggest that paying a dollar a year for lock-your-car advice may not be enough.
Nationally, the National Insurance Crime Bureau, an insurance-industry trade group, attributes the drop in auto thefts to improvements in automotive and security technology and to improved law enforcement training. It doesn’t mention ATPA.
ATPA ought to be eliminated. Instead, lawmakers want to expand it by applying the secret tax to insurance policies written for commercial vehicles as well. They probably have not figured out a way to tax uninsured motorists.
Lock your car, enable the alarm and take the keys so thieves can’t take your vehicle. Lansing will take your money.
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Lansing State Journal. March 30, 2017
Sheriff’s office must ensure integrity of evidence
Integrity of evidence is an essential component of public safety, a key role of law enforcement and necessary to ensure justice is upheld.
In Ingham County, 77 cases dismissed because of damaged or mishandled evidence at the sheriff’s office is cause for concern - the department’s failure to report the issue sooner even more so.
This is unacceptable.
Ingham County must have a better evidence chain of command, to protect both victims and suspects of criminal activity. The justice system doesn’t work if people can’t depend on evidence entrusted to our law enforcement.
These public servants must hold themselves to the highest standard, being mindful of the people they serve. Ensuring evidence is handled correctly through standardized protocols is a minimum expectation.
There is also an expectation that leaders would be forthcoming when processes aren’t carried out as expected. The fact the evidence issues were known, but not brought to the attention of prosecutors and commissioners is troubling.
When asked why the problems weren’t shared sooner, former Ingham County Sheriff Gene Wriggelsworth said, “I don’t have a burning desire to do that, I wouldn’t be able to tell them what cases.”
Not having all the answers isn’t a good reason for withholding information.
Other sheriff’s department officials misled those making inquiries, including a major who suggested that evidence wasn’t important because many cases end in plea deals and don’t go to trial.
Let prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and juries decide whether evidence is important.
An investigation of the department’s evidence handling, initiated by former Prosecutor Gretchen Whitmer, led to 14 recommendations, which include:
. Updates to evidence retention and destruction policies
. Frequent audits of procedure
. Training in evidence procedures
. Updated methods for tagging, tracking and preserving evidence
The prosecutor’s office should continue thorough monitoring of the issue, and carefully consider next steps to sustain updates and continue efforts to ensure a clear process.
Newly elected Sheriff Scott Wriggelsworth must assure the people of Ingham County that processes are in place to protect the evidence chain of command.
Law enforcement officials must accept responsibility and make a strong statement to residents that they will purposefully move forward with changes to ensure integrity of evidence.
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Petoskey News-Review. March 30, 2017
Senate leader out of touch with public
Members of the Michigan House of Representatives served it up to their counterparts in the state Senate earlier this month. It should have been a slam dunk, or a home run, or whatever other sports analogy you want to use.
Instead, Senate leaders chose to call off the celebratory parade that was to be held in their honor.
We’re talking about a bill package that would have removed blanket exemptions afforded to state legislators and the governor’s office under Michigan’s more than 40-year-old Freedom of Information Act. Frankly, it’s a policy that never should have been adopted with such protections for the state’s top elected officials. But those corrections were ready to be made.
The plan was to move the bills through both chambers of the Legislature and onto the governor’s desk during “Sunshine Week,” which is a national celebration of the public’s right to access information from its government that takes place in mid-March.
The House did its job, but Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, R-West Olive, who controls what bills are voted on in his chamber, never moved the open records package forward.
Asked about the proposal at a Michigan Press Association event earlier this year, Meekhof said journalists “are the only people who care about this.”
We disagree and believe there is clear evidence to the contrary.
Robin Luce Herrmann, a media law expert who is general counsel to the Michigan Press Association, recently came to Petoskey and spoke to a packed room at North Central Michigan College’s luncheon lecture series. Herrmann’s discussion was focused on the state’s open meetings and public records laws, which are central to the democratic process.
With local officials and community leaders filling the seats, it was clear to all in attendance that residents of northwest Michigan are engaged and want transparency from their elected leaders.
Meekhof’s brazen statement during the press association’s event earlier this year shows the state senator is out of touch with the people he serves. And isn’t that just the problem?
Legislators exist in a Lansing bubble that, frankly, the public does not care about. People want honesty, they want access and they want openness from their representatives. An expansion of the state’s Freedom of Information Act to include legislative offices and the governor moves us in that direction.
We urge you to contact Meekhof and let him know where you stand. He can be reached by email: senameekhof@senate.michigan.gov; phone: (517) 373-6920 or standard mail: P.O. Box 30036, Lansing, MI 48909-7356.
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