#FactsMatter, the Citizens Research Council of Michigan podcast

Karley Abramson, health policy associate for the Research Council, speaks with Guy about her most recent paper, Upcoming Changes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Tax Credits Will Also Disrupt Michigan’s Health Care System, which details how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would likely result in about 200,000 fewer Michiganders having health care, including about 100,000 who will become uninsured be...

Guy speaks with Senior Research Director Craig Thiel about his recent issue brief looking at Michigan’s efforts to improve early literacy among low-income students, with increased funding and accountability measures. Unfortunately, while the data is still relatively new, the state’s efforts are not yielding hoped-for results. While Michigan student test scores in several other grades and subjects...

Guy and Eric Lupher delve into the weeds, discussing the pros and cons — more pros — of allowing local units of government in Michigan to have a local tax option. Michigan is one of just a few states that doesn't allow local governments to levy a local tax without state legislative approval. Most states, including those with conservative leadership such as Indiana and Ohio, provide multiple means...

Guy Gordon chats with Citizens Research Council president Eric Lupher about his study examining how an admissions tax on sports and entertainment venues could help offset some of the costs of providing public services that support these venues and their visitors. The study, commissioned by the City of Detroit’s Legislative Policy Division, focuses not only on Detroit but also on several other Mich...

#FactsMatter host Guy Gordon chats with Craig Thiel, Research Director for the Citizens Research Council, who first wrote about the impact of state budget uncertainty on Michigan’s $200 million School Meals program back in June –before passage of the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Michigan’s two-year-old School Meals program guaranteed universal access to free school breakfast and lun...

Put on your tick spray because we are headed into the weeds! Announcing “In the Weeds,” a new occasional podcast from the Citizens Research Council of Michigan Universe. As described by our host, broadcast giant Guy Gordon, In the Weeds is for “those who are a little wonkier, a little nerdier, and who want to dive deeper” into public policy issues discussed on our regular #FactsMatter podcast. Joi...

Veteran newscast journalist Guy Gordon speaks with award-winning infrastructure analyst for the Citizens Research Council, Eric Paul Dennis, about his latest update on Michigan’s roads conditions and funding levels. Their conversation covered a lot of, ahem, road, including m road conditions haven’t improved; road funding slightly improved; the challenges of creating a national road funding and pa...

Budget Currently Being Hashed Out by Legislators to Decline by $1.1 Billion; OBBBA to Eat 40% of Expected General Fund Growth by FY2032 The Citizens Research Council today released an analysis of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the massive federal legislation signed into law earlier this month that touches nearly every corner of the federal government. The analysis focuses on the likely sh...

As policymakers in Washington debate major legislation that, as written, would significantly reduce federal spending on Medicaid, Citizens Research Council released a brief primer on Medicaid in Michigan and the impact of those proposed cuts. Research Council Health Policy Associate Karley Abramson, the author of the paper, discusses the human and economic impacts of the proposed cuts with Researc...

Happy CREC Day! Catch up quickly with Research Council Director Craig Thiel and Senior Research Associate for State Affairs Bob Schneider as they take a few minutes to highlight key takeaways from Michigan's Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference (CREC), held Friday, May 16.

Detroit News politics editor and columnist Chad Livengood sits down with Citizen Research Council’s infrastructure analyst Eric Paul Dennis, PE, discussing the Research Council’s most recently released, 86-page paper: "Data-Driven Assessment of Michigan’s Road Program" which makes the case that Michigan legislators should overhaul the way the state divvies up money for road improvements. The repor...

Vic McCarty of the Vic McCarty Morning Show, WTCM Traverse City, interviews Eric Lupher, president of the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, which last week released novel research making the case that much more work is needed on the road funding issue than just securing more resources for roads and bridges. In a Nutshell: Michigan ranks 30th among all 50 states in road and 40th in road system...

Infrastructure research associate Eric Paul Dennis and senior research associate for state affair Bob Schneider catch up with Clara Hendrickson, politics reporter for the Detroit Free Press, to discuss the state of Michigan’s roads, the latest two road funding “frameworks” put forward by Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Speaker Matt Hall, how they differ and who or what the different revenue-raising...

John Lindstrom and Bob Schneider discuss a topic that has been popping up increasingly among Michigan lawmakers lately: transparency and reforming the use of budget earmarks … especially “11th hour” earmarks. Lindstrom, a former reporter, editor, and publisher of Gongwer News Service, and Schneider, senior research associate for state affairs at the Citizens Research Council recall the history of...

On this week's FactsMatter podcast, hear Citizens Research Council Senior Research Associate Bob Schneider and Ryan Wrecker of WWJ Radio in Detroit chat about the hot-off-the-press Executive Budget for fiscal years 2026-27. They discuss everything from "where's the road funding" to K-12, new "sin" taxes on vaping and patches to yet another initiative designed to cast more sunshine and transparency...

Citizens Research Council Senior Research Associate Bob Schneider sat down today with Research Director Craig Thiel following today’s Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference (CREC) to discuss updated economic and revenue forecasts and analyze what they could mean for Michigan’s current and future budgets. Officials from the Department of Treasury and legislative fiscal agencies agreed that Michiga...

Citizens Research Council health policy analyst Karley Abramson is interviewed by guest host Andrew Minegar, a reporter with MIRS News. Last year, Abramson wondered why there was a stark rise in healthcare spending by the Michigan Department of Corrections, one of state government's largest general fund budgets. In subsequently published research, she discovered that there was no data to review. M...

Gongwer News administration reporter Lily Guiney speaks with Senior Research Director Craig Thiel about his recently published, novel analysis of school-level spending patterns across the largest districts in the state, showing many schools are not being funded equitably. Approximately 55 percent of schools in the state's largest districts do not receive equitable per-pupil funding at the state, l...

State budget officials met on May 17, 2024, to finalize state revenue estimates that will be used as guideposts for ongoing FY2025 budget deliberations. The Research Council's Bob Schneider and Craig Thiel provide insights into what the new estimates mean as lawmakers wrap up the budget as well as the budget outlook for Fiscal Year 2026. Scheider said the conference experts delivered a positive ou...

Lauren Gibbons of Bridge Michigan chats with Eric Paul Dennis, research analyst specializing in infrastructure policy. While Michigan is working to ‘fix the damn roads,’ with historic levels of state and federal road funding, this effort has been undermined by unprecedented inflation in the cost of construction. And road construction inflation is not uniform: using 2015 as a baseline year, cost in...

WWJ-Detroit anchor and reporter Ryan Wrecker chats with Citizens Research Council President Eric Lupher about Detroit’s four-year financial plan to send $10 million in supplementary payments to city pensioners. Detroit cut benefits to pensioners as part of its bankruptcy settlement 10 years ago. Pension benefits, already modest pre-bankruptcy, have become meager in recent years due to inflation, a...

There are many tough decisions on the horizon for Michigan school districts. Schools are facing massive sums of federal pandemic relief funds ending at the same time that many they are facing declining enrollment, partially also due to the pandemic. Approximately 50% of K-12 budgets are allocated on staff salaries, with another 20% to 30% allocated for benefits. Added together, salaries and benefi...

Bridge Michigan data reporter Mike Wilkinson talks with Research Council infrastructure analyst Eric Paul Dennis, who recently published a report showing that Michigan's road pavement quality ranks 40th nationally and 10th out of 11 among peer states. While Michigan's roads still lag those of other states, they are improving, thanks to more funding in the system. However, challenges remain, as fut...

Annalise Frank of Axios Detroit chats with Citizens Research Council President Eric Lupher about the recent announcement by District Detroit developers that construction on their 17-story office building would be delayed. The codevelopers, New York-based The Related Cos. and the Ilitch organization's Olympia Development of Michigan, are instead changing the order of their 10 proposed District Detr...

Gongwer News Service reporter Lily Guiney sat down with Research Council health analyst Karley Abramson to discuss Michigan’s shortage of primary care providers (PCP) and how expanding the scope of practice for nurse practitioners would help address the shortage, which is projected to get worse in the coming years. On March 20, medical professionals from around the state gathered in a Senate commi...