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According to Everytown For Gun Safety, community violence intervention (CIV) programs have been shown to reduce gunshot injuries and deaths in neighborhoods most impacted by gun violence by taking more of a public health approach to fighting violence. Rep. Christine Morse (D-Kalamazoo), chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services, said after several years getting the state Office of CVI off the ground, the funding should be maintained for some time. “(Gun violence) is not a problem that is two or three years in the making,” Morse said. For Fiscal Year (FY) 2025, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has proposed allocating a total $5.5 million towards CPI in the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) budget, maintaining the $5 million in one-time federal funding for CVI grants, but bumping ongoing funding down to $500,000 from the General Fund for the state Office of CVI’s expenses. Morse said after town halls in east Detroit with Rep. Donavan McKinney (D-Detroit), Saginaw with Rep. Amos ONEAL (D-Saginaw), south Lansing with Rep. Kara Hope (D-Lansing), Kalamazoo and Kent County, she has a better understanding of individual community interventions and what those communities need. “We wanted to go and talk to the communities that are especially hard hit by community violence, to find out, what are those community orbs and governmental orbs that are working in the space. What are they doing? Why are they doing it? Is it evidence-based? Is it not? Have they gotten funding from any source?” she said. Dr. Sarah Lyon-Callo, Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) senior deputy director of public health administration, presented this week on past and current funding for the state office, starting with Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, when the office of CVI was established. In FY ‘23, the budget included an $800,000 appropriation to get the office up and running, combined with a one-time $5 million appropriation for grants, and in FY ‘24, the office was again allocated $5.8 million. Lyon-Callo said $2.5 million was used to strengthen existing CVI programs, like expanded specialized case management, workforce development, increased street outreach, mentorship, geographic data mapping and “transformational healing for people at the center of violence.” Funding was also used to support existing Wayne County programs specifically, which Lyon-Callo said was necessary due to Wayne County attaining the highest homicide crude death rate in Michigan in 2020, with 19.3 deaths per 100,000 people. “They stepped away from giving to the Michigan Republican Party,” he said. “But they’ve been very active in forming other groups to carry out the functions that they normally would have expected the MI GOP to do. “The good thing is, the work didn’t stop,” he said. “It just went through other vehicles.” Now, his faction of the party is beginning to plan for the next eight months ahead, and on how to best bring the GOP back into that network, Hoekstra said. But, he believes his faction’s recent track record is going to be a big point of attraction for these donors, including an initial win in court, an endorsement by former President Donald Trump, who won nearly 98 percent of the vote at today’s nominating convention and a Republican National Committee (RNC) certification of the state committee’s action to remove former Chair Kristina Karamo. “A lot of these major donors are business people,” he said. “They would look at this track record and say, ‘Yeah, we think it’s probably pretty likely that this is the Michigan GOP that we’re going to see through the election.’” When asked about fundraising efforts so far, and if he believes the party has begun to “catch up,” Hoekstra responded, “Are you kidding me? I just got the court order on Tuesday.” “The donors that sat on the sidelines, they want(ed) to make sure that if they wrote a check to the MI GOP, that there was no possibility it…might go back to the old MI GOP," he said, explaining how the party has since begun to fundraise. Hoekstra said his faction of the party has set up an alternate process to collect funds, because until 5:30 p.m. Friday, they didn’t have access to the bank. “So we’re making progress,” he said, though he added that he does not yet have access to all the party’s bank accounts, due to the state party’s lawsuit with the owners of the trust. Hoekstra said former Congressman and legal counsel Mike Bishop filed the paperwork this week to “establish himself as attorney of record for those lawsuits. “As soon as the judge rules on that, then we will . . . work with Comerica and the trust to remove those lawsuits, and then, you know, we still need to get access to some social media accounts and those types of things.” For now, he said, “We’re just going to come back on Monday morning and go back to work, putting in place the plans and the organization and the money to run a successful campaign in November." For her part, Karamo fired off a couple of shots on social media today. On Hoekstra’s post on X that he was looking at ways to credential some delegates because rules weren’t followed, Karamo wrote, “Rules . . . what a joke. They did follow the rules and submitted their delegate list to the elected party secretary. Additionally the Call to Convention filed with the county clerk per Michigan law listed the purpose as being a convention at the Huntington Place in Detroit. What about that law!" Karamo also responded to a tweet from reporter Jonathan Oosting about the lawsuit regarding MRP Party headquarters where she wrote, “Really . . . we never said our objective for the lawsuit was to sell the building. That was the talking point the corruption-club had to put out as a straw man, to distract people from the merits of the lawsuit. We want clarification over who owns assets and liabilities. Asking for a friend, how can an LLC, DBA as a political party? They would be conducting business, for example potentially taking out loans in the party’s name without our knowledge. I think that’s a problem. However I guess if a former congressman tells us it’s ok, and that our concerns are “insane”, we should stop asking questions!” The rate hike approved by regulators is less than half of the $216 million originally requested by the utility, although that figure was reduced to a requested $170.8 million during the review process. A key part of what the utility sought with the rate increase, its first since a $155 million hike approved in January 2023 as part of a settlement agreement, was to cover spending related to reliability improvements, a release from the PSC said. Items the increase would cover, according to the PSC, include spending on generation distribution assets, safety and legal compliance, enhanced technology, increased operations and maintenance expenses along with rising costs for financing. The average residential customer using 500 kilowatt hours of electricity per month would see a monthly bill increase of $1.53, or 1.6 percent. Within Friday’s order, there were several equity-related items to be put in place by Consumers. The utility was told to provide in upcoming rate cases and other items before the commission environmental justice and equity-related information, to develop with PSC staff a way for interested parties to request and use geographic information system data, and the provide regression analysis in support of reliability spending on its distribution system in future filings. Consumers must also provide a full summary of environmental justice and equity considerations as part of its next rate case. More information was also directed to be provided on people having contact with electric lines as well as to work with the commission, other utilities and interested parties on identifying methods for energy security and the prevention of heat-related illnesses and deaths. Consumers was directed to propose a pilot program in which it would work with a third party to provide a resource for medically vulnerable residential customers that meet low-income requirements to work toward maximizing the use of various utility and government incentives for household energy waste reduction, solar and energy storage. The company was also told to engage with affected parties and communities when getting feedback for future distribution plans so their concerns and needs can be weighed in designing distribution system programs, projects and sites. Under Friday’s order, Consumers was given partial approval for its proposed investment recovery mechanism for efforts to improve electric distribution system reliability. Its distribution spending plans must be shared with the PSC and interested parties as soon as possible for year one of its plans and by November 1, 2024, for year two of its plans. Consumers must also file information in its next general electric rate case connecting performance in operational metrics to proposed incentive compensation. The PSC said operational metrics will be reviewed more rigorously in future cases. A transportation electrification plan must also be filed by July 1, 2024, and include updated projections on the costs of electric vehicle adoption and the effects on its plans. At least two public hearings are to be scheduled on its plans. The utility is also to study penetration levels for direct current fast charging EV chargers as well as a study on the chargers and Level 2 EV chargers to see whether the chargers should have separate tariffs. Consumers is expected to include the results of these studies in its next general electric rate case. An analysis was also ordered on line-clearing cycles, to include data on the customer costs of outages, the costs of restoring service and the costs of line clearing. This analysis is due to be filed with the PSC by September 3, 2024. Attorney General Dana Nessel in a statement said her department was an intervenor in the case and had pushed back on several of the Consumers proposals and projections as being unreasonable. "Today the commission saw fit to slash Consumers Energy’s requested rate hike by more than half," Nessel said. "My department will continue to advocate for Michigan consumers at every opportunity, and we will intervene to defend ratepayers as appropriate based on our careful study of these corporate filings and consultation with industry experts." 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ARTICLES OF POLITICAL INTEREST: MSU Board Asks Whitmer to Weigh Removal of Two Board Members Trump Dominates MI Caucuses Over the Weekend, Builds Delegate Lead Gotion Submits Site Plan to Mecosta County for EV Battery Factory Justin Amash Seeking GOP Nomination for Michigan Senate Seat Michigan Presidential Primaries Offer Warning Signs for Both Trump & Biden Marijuana News, Updates, & Articles of Interest
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MORSE WANTS STEADY GUN VIOLENCE PREVENTION FUNDING
HOEKSTRA: ESTABLISHMENT DONORS WILL RETURN, BUT PARTY MUST PLAY CATCH UP
CONSUMERS GIVEN PSC APPROVAL FOR $92M RATE HIKE
THE DCD MARIJUANA TEAM: YOUR COMPETITIVE EDGE!
