The telephone tax, successfully defeated with the help of DSAM 2 years ago, has been resurrected by Michigan House Appropriations Committee Chair George Cushingberry (D-Detroit). The article below is courtesy of MIRS. Hit the read more link for the rest.

House Appropriations Committee Chair George CUSHINGBERRY (D-Detroit) told MIRS today that he's bringing back a 2007 proposal to put a tax on telephone lines, but this time he's adding a sweetener to bring the telephone companies on board.  

Instead of making his primary sale that a phone tax is needed to maintain public safety levels in Michigan, Cushingberry wants to link a phone tax to a plan that would reimburse utilities for their costs of moving lines during road construction. Currently, utilities are forced to eat this expense, but Cushingberry is considering tapping into some federal road funding money to compensate companies like AT&T to some extent.  

As you all know by now, 100 Michigan State Police Troopers are facing layoffs this summer if something cannot be done about Governor Granholm's executive order axing them.

In the face of a worsening Michigan budget outlook, efforts by Democrats in the Michigan house to save those jobs seem to have stalled prompting a vote by the Troopers union to cut their pay across the board to save those jobs until the end of the fiscal year on September 30th.

All of this is happening as the debate has once again heated up in the Legislature over the Troopers new headquarters building in Lansing. The Michigan Senate voted on an ammendment to MSP's budget, proposed by Sen. Cameron S. Brown, R-Fawn River Township, that forbids tax-payer dollars going towards the new building which would cost tax-payers around $40 million dollars.

Sen. Cameron S. Brown is quoted as saying in a Lansing State Journal article that it is imprudent to move police headquarters from existing facilities in East Lansing when the state is preparing to lay off 100 troopers. "It was ill-advised and ill-conceived from the beginning," Brown said of the project. "It was crafted from the beginning without any oversight from the (full) Legislature. ... What do we say to the troopers who are being laid off?"

GCSI has their latest edition of their GCSIntel out and in it they sit down with Senate Fiscal Agency Director Gary Olson to talk about the state's budget process, timelines and the state's revenue picture.

It is an interesting read that you can get to via the link below.

In other GCSI related news, our lobbying group has been voted the "best and most effective" multi-client lobbying firm in Lansing by a wide margin.

Hit the link below for the latest GCSIntel or the "Read More" link to see GCSI's statement about their latest accolades.

Click here to download the latest GCSIntel