2003 Senate Bill 824 (House Roll Call 70)
Passed in the House (106 to 0) on February 24, 2004, to ease the employee expansion/retention requirements for determining whether a firm qualifies for a MEGA credit, in such as way as to allow the state to offer a credit for two Federal-Mogul Corporation plants which do not currently qualify for a MEGA credit. The company has intimated that without cost saving measures it may close the plants. These measures often come in the form of targeted tax cuts and union concessions. The bill would also require a firm which receives a targeted MEGA tax credit in return for promising to create or retain a certain number of jobs, to pay back the tax savings if they fail to keep the jobs promise. It would expand a provision in MEGA that considers employees who are technically employed by another firm but are actually part of the workforce of a firm receiving MEGA tax credits (“leased employees”), to be counted in determining whether the firm qualifies for the credit under the employee expansion/retention requirements. The bill would allow firms with multiple sites to include employees at the different sites in meeting the expansion/retention requirements, and would liberalize the definition of high-technology businesses to make it easier for certain firms to qualify for tax credits. Note: The substance of the original bill is no longer included, because the changes it proposed have since become law as Public Act 248 of 2003, which was House Bill 5255. Instead, the bill is being used a legislative “vehicle” to make the changes to MEGA described above. [History, Amendments & Comments]
The vote was 106 in favor, 0 opposed, and 3 not voting
(House Roll Call 70 at House Journal 16)
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The following legislators supported 2003 Senate Bill 824:
The following legislators opposed 2003 Senate Bill 824:
The following legislators did not vote on 2003 Senate Bill 824:
| Brown (D) | Cheeks (D) | Clack (D) |
Most Recent Comments
1) Yeah, right! [by Anonymous Citizen on March 4, 2004]A lot of good programs such as this one did for the soon-to-be former AB Electrolux employees.
Government should NOT be in the business of picking the winners and losers in the private sector.
This program should be abolished and the monies already budgeted towards it rolled back into the general fund where they can do more good.
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Win! Win! Win! Sign up for your MEGA credit here. Get rich!
If you are a corporation wanting to expand in Michigan, you may already be a winner!
Just fill out forms showing that you might have gone to another state, and MEDC will make sure you get MEGA tax credits and property tax abatements. Just pretend that the MEDC is responsible for bringing or keeping you here, and the endless wallets of Michigan taxpayers can be yours!!!
You can promise new jobs and not deliver! KMart and Aspen Bay did. We don't care -- it's not like it's our $37,000,000! We only take little amounts from all Michigan taxpayers, and they never notice!
But hurry and sign up today. We were going to expire, but now we are only wasting, er, investing in companies through 2009. Get yours now before it's all gone.
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Despite the very articulate response by Senator Schauer, he (and judging by the rest of the recent vote, the rest of the Michigan Senate) still fails to grasp the inherent problem with programs such as these: It is not a function of government to, in effect, assume a role of central planners in Michigan’s economy.
This bill is putting Michigan on a slippery slope, which according to history will only ruin the state’s economy in the long term.
This bill should be voted down when it comes back from the House for final ratification, the agencies covered under this bill should be closed and their budgets returned to the General Fund so that they cannot be used to implement another similar program.
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