Lansing State Journal. June 10, 2016
It’s not about which bathroom.
So-called ’bathroom bills’ have come to Michigan, and with them comes the buzz.
The North Carolina law that sparked the controversy has been called unconstitutional, igniting debate and elevating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights to greater national attention as both sides weigh-in.
Michigan legislators have waded into the debate, with bills in both chambers, attempting to legislate which bathroom people - mainly public school students - are allowed to use.
But it’s not about which bathroom:
. It’s about the kids.
Schools are already required to protect kids. And with too many already refusing to use bathrooms for a variety of reasons - too little time between classes, forgetting, avoiding bullies and more - accommodations must sometime be made just to keep children using the bathroom.
If accommodations can be made, the school district should be trusted to make them. School counselors are already in place to help decide these and the Michigan Board of Education has proposed guidelines that provide best practices without mandates.
. It’s about knowledge.
Senate Bill 993 calls for public schools to require students to use the bathroom designated for their biological sex, as determined by ’a person’s chromosomes and anatomy identified at birth.’
Yet those who understand science know that chromosomes do not always separate gender into two easy categories. Many psychologists and counselors agree that anatomy is not enough to assign gender.
. It’s about fear.
In House Bill 5717, only the bathroom or changing facility designated for an individual’s biological sex - that identified on their birth certificate or state-issued ID - may be used. This is followed by a litany of exceptions from custodial work to a bathroom temporarily designated for the opposite sex.
Fear is perception; using a bathroom where the opposite sex can walk in is already a reality and will not be changed by this bill. The fear of violence and sexual assault comes from the fear of someone committing a crime - already illegal regardless of gender identity.
National debate has continued to focus on which bathroom, despite the fact that fear and lack of knowledge are the real concerns. What is happening to our kids - and especially the subset of the population questioning their gender identity - can be addressed by reasonable accommodation and remembering one simple fact:
It’s not about which bathroom.
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The Detroit News. June 8, 2016
Detroit needs financial literacy.
Every drug overdose is ugly. The best possible outcome is survival. The worst is death.
Iconic pop star Prince died April 21 of an accidental self-administered overdose of the powerful painkiller fentanyl, the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office in Minnesota said Thursday. Authorities aren’t sure how or where the 57-year-old musician obtained the synthetic opiate.
The death of any superstar gets plenty of scrutiny, no matter what the cause. Celebrity drug overdoses in particular seem to capture the attention of a huge audience.
But local tragedies involving opioids, including heroin and prescription drugs, deserve just as much public attention. And they are occurring with startling regularity across northwest Lower Michigan.
Area law enforcement officers in recent months have used the drug naloxone to reverse several suspected heroin overdoses. Even before local law officers began carrying naloxone, area medical personnel were using it to save lives. The outcomes in many of those cases have been heroic - people survived the moment.
The devastating long-term effects of drug abuse, however, rarely end with a dose of naloxone. Addiction is a powerful force, against which even support-filled communities struggle with limited success.
Authorities in Traverse City are well aware that opioid abuse is a problem northwest Lower Michigan. Efforts to combat drug overdose in the region are twofold. Local services centered on addiction treatment aim to help addicts stop using. And the Traverse Narcotics Team, a multi-jurisdictional task force coordinated by the Michigan State Police, works to cut off supplies of illegal drugs.
Despite those efforts, overdoses continue to plague the Grand Traverse area and most every region in the nation.
People around the globe are mourning the loss of Prince. Perhaps the spotlight on his death will raise awareness of opioid abuse in our own backyard.
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Detroit Free Press. June 9, 2016
DPS reform bills won’t fix the problems they claim to solve.
Sometimes, compromise is healthy - a way to move forward from a position of strength.
Sometimes, it’s a nice word for betrayal.
That’s what we’d call the reform bills passed Wednesday night by 19 state senators - a betrayal of Detroit’s children. The reform package paid lip service to the notion of securing the future of public education in Detroit, to providing a safe and adequate education for the nearly 100,000 children who attend traditional public and charter schools in this city.
We shy away from simplistic explanations for complex actions. But in this case, there is too much evidence to ignore the obvious: Michigan’s Legislature is bought and paid for, too beholden to the charter lobby and its seemingly endless stream of campaign donations to act in its citizens’ best interests.
In March, the state Senate passed a reasonable reform package, based on reforms proposed by Gov. Rick Snyder, with input from a coalition of Detroit stakeholders. The state House - guided by bungling Speaker Kevin Cotter - gutted the Senate’s plan, the product of nearly a year of negotiation and research, substituting a partisan omnibus bill aimed at weakening unions, lowering standards for education in Detroit, and insulating for-profit charter operators from reasonable regulation and financial accountability.
Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekof and Snyder had the admittedly challenging task of coaxing House hardliners into the broad-based coalition behind the Senate plan, or persuading Cotter to put it to an up-or-down vote in which a bipartisan majority would likely have supported it. But in the end, they proved as craven as Cotter, choosing the narrow interests of party over those of Michigan’s largest city.
After hours of vote wheedling and an assist from Snyder, Meekhof amassed 19 votes, the minimum required to pass these shameful reforms - without a single vote from the Democratic caucus or the Detroit delegation.
“You cowards!” state Sen. Morris Hood, D-Detroit, said. “You damn cowards to even take up this legislation before us and our community and not even have one Detroiter in the room to help to negotiate this. These are kids I have to look at every day, but you want to make decisions about their life and tell them what kind of life they’re going to have. This is the crap you’re shoving down their throats. This is going to impact them for years.”
Snyder’s reported vigorous efforts to pass Cotter’s plan lead us to believe that urging the governor to veto these bills is a plea that would fall on deaf ears. Nonetheless, we’re asking: Reconsider. Acknowledge that the bills on your desk far too fall short of the minimum standards you established.
Here are the facts: The $617 million the Legislature has allotted to DPS isn’t enough. Nor does the legislation include a Detroit Education Commission, a citywide panel that would rationalize both charter and traditional public school school openings and closings, and develop accountability standards.
You needn’t rely on our assessment - ask Judge Steven Rhodes, the retired jurist who oversaw Detroit’s historic municipal bankruptcy and was appointed “transition manager” of DPS by Snyder earlier this year.
Rhodes said that the bills achieve two major goals - cutting the district’s operating debt and returning control of schools to Detroiters, but noted that the legislation falls short - and that more is required from Snyder.
“I have asked for and obtained a commitment from the governor to identify additional money from within the administration,” Rhodes told the Free Press on Thursday. “I take the governor at his word.”
That sum includes $467 million to pay down DPS’s crippling debt, and $150 million to fund the cost of starting a new, debt-free Detroit public school district.
Rhodes had asked for $300 million, calling $200 million the bare minimum necessary to assure the school system’s near-term solvency and make school buildings inhabitable.
The Legislature’s failure to establish the DEC, Rhodes added, is a moral failing.
“It was a mistake not to set up a DEC for all of education in Detroit,” Rhodes said. “The charter lobby likes to talk about the merit of letting the free market decide which kids should go to and where new schools should be set up … It’s not in my view, morally right to talk about using free market forces to educate children. Education to me is a fundamental right, and we as a society ought to be doing everything we can to enhance the quality of education that every education provider provides. Without some sort of regulation over that, it doesn’t happen. And in fact it hasn’t happened.”
Even more noxious are provisions aimed at breaking Detroit teacher unions and removing certification standards for DPS teachers.
Interim Superintendent Alycia Meriweather noted that just because the legislation allows it, the district doesn’t have to hire uncertified teachers. And she had a sharp response: “The legislation that is specific to Detroit to allow non-certified teachers into our classrooms I find to be extremely problematic,” she told the Free Press on Thursday. “Think about being on an airplane and the pilot doesn’t show up, and the stewardess says, ’Has anyone ever wanted to fly? Today’s your day.’ They’re putting the future of 46,000 plus kids at risk. We need to be very careful about that, very conscientious about … the law’s implications.”
Michiganders who don’t live in Detroit may find it easy to shrug this off.
That’s a mistake. On Wednesday, the Michigan Legislature betrayed 100,000 Detroit children. Do you trust them with yours?
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Battle Creek Enquirer. June 7, 2016
Inviting invasion on Great Lakes.
Aquatic invasive species pose huge threats to the Great Lakes, but they have no impact on national security, and legislation dealing with this menace has no place in the defense budget. Congressional Republicans, however, have different ideas.
The party that once promised to end the practice of attaching riders to “must-pass legislation” last month opened a line of attack on EPA regulatory oversight of the shipping industry.
Tucked in the $602 billion defense bill is a provision that would exempt ballast water discharge from the Clean Water Act, conveying regulatory authority to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which has been under a court order to tighten ballast regulation, would lose all authority on the issue. The bill also would nullify state oversight.
The House passed the bill in May, surreptitiously adding the “Vessel Incidental Discharge Act” - which failed to win support in October - without debate or even a voice vote.
Defenders of the Great Lakes are apoplectic.
“The Great Lakes are already reeling from the impacts of invasive species that have completely changed the ecosystem for the worse,” Rebecca Riley, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “A new invasive species transported in ballast water was just observed in San Francisco Bay last week - it’s an ominous precursor to Great Lakes arrivals that could occur as a result of this cave to special interests.”
People who live, work and play in the Great Lakes basin know well the threat invasive species and the role that ballast water plays in their spread.
Ships use ballast tanks filled with water to add stability at sea or while loading or unloading cargo. Purging those tanks releases untold number of aquatic species - including viruses - into new environments where they often thrive.
The infamous zebra mussel, native to lakes in southern Russia, has wreaked havoc on lakes throughout the Midwest, disrupting ecosystems and damaging harbors, boats, water treatment systems and power plants.
It’s just one of hundreds of species introduced to the lakes that have contributed extinction of native species and cost taxpayers billions in remediation efforts and economic impact.
A 2008 study by the Center for Aquatic Conservation at the University of Notre Dame and a University of Wyoming economics professor estimated the loss to commercial fishing, sport fishing and water supply in the Great Lakes region from ship-borne invasive species at $200 million annually.
The shipping industry, long resistant to tighter restrictions on ballast water discharge, is trying to protect its losses, as well, and has been pushing for the legislation for the past year.
Proponents say conflicting requirements across state and federal jurisdictions place an onerous burden on the industry and hurt commerce. The provision’s sponsor, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California, wants to give the U.S. Coast Guard sole authority to bring about consistency.
“There has to be one single federal rule that everybody’s required to go by,” Hunter told The Associated Press.
Call us skeptical. While we are sympathetic to the challenge of businesses navigating numerous bureaucratic requirements, we suspect that pressure on the EPA to mandate on-board treatment systems is behind this push.
The necessity of such regulation is certainly open for debate, but that’s the point. This is legislation that should rise or fall on its own merits rather than being attached to another bill.
The Senate can stop this by passing a defense budget without the provision, and we encourage it to do so. The health of Great Lakes is too important to our economy and quality of life to be compromised by political subterfuge.
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