I'm a Senior Producer at Michigan Radio where I'm working to develop the station's online news content.
From 1998 to 2006 I worked in various roles (production assistant, technical director, and senior producer) with the regional environmental news service known as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium (GLRC). From 2006 to 2010, as the unit's senior producer, I helped transition the GLRC into an award-winning national news service known as The Environment Report.
I'm a graduate of the University of Michigan ('00 MS in Environmental Policy and Planning & '91 BA in Political Science) and have been a board certified public radio junkie since 1992. I discovered public radio on my long commutes to work (shout out to Joan Silvi, former morning edition host at WEMU-FM who accompanied me on my drives!).
Poet and activist John Sinclair was arrested and jailed for giving marijuana to an undercover police officer. The controversy over his arrest led to decriminalizing marijuana in Ann Arbor in 1972.
As of May 1st, 2013, if you celebrate 4:20, you’re less likely to get jail time.
Instead, you’re subject to a $25 fine for your first offense ($50 for your second, and $100 for three or more).
WKZO reports Grand Rapids police have issued tickets already:
The first tickets were issued Wednesday when the voter-approved ordinance took effect. The first one went to a 28-year-old man from the northwest side of Grand Rapids, who was cited around 3 a.m. Wednesday.
The marijuana law in Grand Rapids mirrors the one in Ann Arbor.
The only difference is “selling marijuana” is not listed as a potential civil infraction in Grand Rapids as it is in Ann Arbor (organizers felt Grand Rapids voters wouldn’t be THAT lax).
The state House has approved a bill that would allow a wolf hunt in the Upper Peninsula to go forward regardless of the result of a possible state-wide referendum on a wolf hunt.
The bill was approved last week by the state Senate, and Governor Rick Snyder is expected to sign it.
The owner of three Cass Corridor apartment buildings who planned to kick out the low-income residents in 30 days has softened his approach. The residents now have until the end of June to leave. They've also been offered two months free rent as they search for new places to live.
Wednesday, April 24th, 10:41 a.m.
Louis Aguilar of the Detroit News reports the residents were "abruptly notified" last Friday that they had to move out of their apartments by May 20. The tenants live in three apartment buildings in Detroit's Cass Corridor.
The buildings are being sold, and not much is known about the buyer, but there's suspicion the sale has to do with a proposed $650 million complex in downtown Detroit.
Residents in each affected apartment building, a total of 96 units, said they received a three-sentence letter in their mailboxes Friday informing them that Mercier has signed an agreement to sell. It doesn't name the new owner. "And the new owner has requested that all of the apartments be vacated," states the letter.
Along with the letters, the residents were given a state document to vacate, the step prior to eviction.
Aguilar reports another letter was sent that apologized for the short notice. The News could not reach the owner for comment.
U.S. Rep. Gary Peters, D-MI 14, is expected to announce his intention to run for the U.S. Senate in 2014.
After serving six terms, Michigan Senator Carl Levin announced his retirement earlier this year leaving the seat open.
Todd Spangler of the Detroit Free Press reports that Peters is expected to announce his run tomorrow in Rochester Hills.
A Democratic source told the Free Press on Monday that Peters, who had been widely expected to run, would announce his intentions and visit several other cities around the state — including Flint, Lansing and Grand Rapids — this week.
Peters, a 54-year-old Democrat and former state senator and Michigan Lottery commissioner, is in his third term in Congress, winning in the new Detroit-based 14th Congressional District in 2012, even though he lives outside it in Bloomfield Township. In his two previous terms, he represented the 9th District based in Oakland County.
Republicans say they have a "great opportunity" to take the Senate seat.
These Republicans names have been mentioned in a potential run for the seat:
Justin Amash
Dave Camp
John Engler
Terri Lynn Land
Pete Lund
Randy Richardville
Mike Rogers
Fred Upton
And these Democrats:
Gary Peters
Jocelyn Benson
Hansen Clarke
Geoffrey Fieger
Mark Hackel
Mark Schauer
The last time a Republican won a Senate seat in Michigan was in 1994 with Spencer Abraham.
Will Michigan's next emergency manager operate the Pontiac School District?
More from the Associated Press:
Officials plan to wrap up a review by next month of the Pontiac School District's finances that could lead to the appointment of an emergency manager or other measures.
District officials recently were notified by state Superintendent Mike Flanagan of the preliminary financial review, which is to begin Monday and end by May 24.
In a letter, Flanagan describes the public school district's situation as "critical and alarming."
The site of the annual Arab International Festival in Dearborn is moving and admission could be charged.
Niraj Warikoo reports for the Detroit Free Press that tensions in recent years involving Christian missionaries has led to the change of venue.
Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly said Friday that the city plans to shift the festival — the biggest annual outdoor gathering of Arab Americans in the U.S. — from Warren Avenue to Ford Woods Park, near the corner of Ford and Greenfield roads. One of the reasons for the move is liability concerns; the city has been hit with lawsuits from some Christian missionaries alleging their free speech rights were curtailed at the festival.
The 18-year-old festival is held each June by the American Arab Chamber of Commerce.
Last year, some Christian missionaries from California picketed at the festival with anti-Islam signs.
The International Joint Commission (IJC) recommends that the U.S. and Canadian governments investigate the option of placing man-made structures in the St. Clair River to raise water levels in Lakes Michigan and Huron.
The IJC is a binational organization that develops recommendations and resolves disputes over waters between the U.S. and Canada.
(See National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Water Level Dashboard for a look at Great Lakes levels in historical context.)
Ships are carrying less cargo, and boaters have had trouble getting in and out of harbors. To help with the low lake levels, the state started emergency dredging projects for some harbors. And experts say the recent storms are also helping a little.
Keith Kompoltowicz is the Chief of Watershed Hydrology for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Detroit.
It’s normal for the lakes to go up a little in the spring, but Kompoltowicz says we’ve had so much rain lately that the typical spring increases in Lakes Michigan and Huron are up by about two inches more than normal.
"There’s a huge contribution from those storms," said Kompoltowicz. "It’s looking like we came up from the first of the month through 22nd of the month. We’re up well over 5 or 6 inches, so far, from start of the month."
Two inches more on Lakes Michigan and Huron means the storms dropped 1.6 trillion gallons of water into the system.
But they’re called the GREAT Lakes, so even with all that water, Kompoltowicz says the lakes are likely to remain low.
Chad Livengood of the Detroit News revealed the group that met in secret, which dubbed itself a "skunk works" last week:
A secret work group that includes top aides to Gov. Rick Snyder has been meeting since December to develop a lower-cost model for K-12 public education with a funding mechanism that resembles school vouchers.
U.S. traffic safety regulators have proposed voluntary measures to keep drivers from being distracted by in-car touchscreens.
In a study, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that the tasks associated with hand-held phones and other portable devices increased the risk of getting into a crash by three times.
Regulators fear in-car devices could lead to distracted driving as well.
The government's voluntary guidelines establish recommended criteria for electronic devices installed in vehicles at the time they are built.
The guidelines seek to limit the time a driver must take her eyes off the road to manipulate a device to two seconds at a time - and twelve seconds total to complete the task.
The voluntary guidelines also recommend turning off several operations while the vehicle is in motion:
Manual text entry for the purposes of text messaging and internet browsing;
Video-based entertainment and communications like video phoning or video conferencing;
Display of certain types of text, including text messages, web pages, social media content.
In a press release, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said:
"Distracted driving is a deadly epidemic that has devastating consequences on our nation's roadways," said Secretary LaHood. "These guidelines recognize that today's drivers appreciate technology, while providing automakers with a way to balance the innovation consumers want with the safety we all need. Combined with good laws, good enforcement and good education, these guidelines can save lives."
A spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers told the Associated Press they're concerned regulations on in-car devices would encourage more use of mobile devices while driving.
Human brains do not perform two tasks at the same time. Instead, the brain handles tasks sequentially, switching between one task and another. Brains can juggle tasks very rapidly, which leads us to erroneously believe we are doing two tasks at the same time. In reality, the brain is switching attention between tasks – performing only one task at a time.
Kalamazoo officials say they're not happy about a federal plan for dealing with contaminated soil in the city's Edison neighborhood.
The site is part of an 80-mile-long area included in the Superfund cleanup program. Paper mills that occupied the site for a century left behind 1.5 million yards of soil tainted with toxic PCBs, some of which are already in a local landfill.
The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed spending $36 million to dig up more soil, add it to the landfill and cover it.
MLive.com's Emily Monacelli covered a public meeting held on the cleanup plan last night. Kalamazoo's Mayor, Bobby Hopewell, says the EPA's plan isn't enough:
Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell told the crowd the Kalamazoo City Commission would stand behind them and protect them. The waste doesn't belong in a neighborhood, he said.
"The bottom line is we stopped them once and we're going to stop them again," Hopewell said of the EPA, referencing a past plan to dump PCB-laden soil from Plainwell on the Allied site.
"This is unacceptable," Hopewell said. "It's poison in the middle of the neighborhood. It's unacceptable."
Public Services Director Bruce Merchant says more should be done to protect an aquifer beneath the site that supplies 40 percent of the city's drinking water.
The EPA says removing all contaminated soil and taking it to another landfill would cost $336 million.
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