Michigan primary election: February 27, 2024

January 21, 2024

Voter information is available on the MI Secretary of State Website. The Republican primary election is more contested this year than the Democratic primary and a bit more complicated. You can read about that here.

Register to vote: You can register to vote on-line up to 14 days before the election. After that, for this election, you can register in person up until and on Election Day at your city or township clerk’s office. Michigan does not register voters by party affiliation. When you vote in a primary election, you need to pick a ballot for one party with the names of candidates running on that party’s ticket.

To be eligible to register to vote you must be:

   •    A Michigan resident (at the time you register) and a resident of your city or township for at least 30 days (when you vote)
    •    A United States citizen
    •    At least 18 years of age (when you vote)
    •    Not currently serving a sentence in jail or prison

Proof of residency:

You must show proof of where you live. Documents must have your name and current address. You can show a digital copy of documents. Acceptable documents include:
    •    Michigan driver’s license or state ID
    •    Current utility bill
    •    Bank statement
    •    Paycheck or government check
    •    Other government document

Absentee Voting:

From the SOS Website: “All registered voters in Michigan can now vote using what’s called an absentee ballot. You don’t need an excuse or a reason. You can vote by absentee ballot through the mail, without leaving your home. You can also go to your city or township clerk’s office or drop box to return your absentee ballot, which we recommend if you are returning a ballot within two weeks of election day, in order to avoid possible postal delays.”

From the Detroit Free Press, “Michigan presidential primary 2024: Election Day date, how to vote, candidates” by Arpan Lobo, 1/17/24:

...Key dates, deadlines for Michigan presidential primary

While the primary day itself is Tuesday, Feb. 27, Michigan also has early voting and absentee voting. Here are some key dates to know for the presidential primary:
    •    Sunday, Jan. 28: Communities may begin allowing early voting. Michigan election law requires communities to hold at least nine days of early in-person voting, but communities can choose to hold up to 29 days of early voting. To find out your community's early voting schedule, contact your local clerk's office, which can be found online at the Michigan Voter Information Center at michigan.gov/vote.
    •    Monday, Feb. 12: Deadline to register to vote online or by mail and be eligible to vote in the Tuesday, Feb. 27, presidential primary.
    •    Tuesday, Feb. 13: On this day and afterward, people registering to vote in the presidential primary must do so in person at a local clerk's office with proof of residency.
    •    Saturday, Feb. 17: Communities must begin allowing early voting.
    •    Friday, Feb. 23, at 5 p.m.: Deadline to request an absentee ballot online or through the mail.
    •    Sunday, Feb. 25: Last day of early voting.
    •    Monday, Feb. 26, at 4 p.m.: Deadline to request an absentee ballot in person at a local clerk's office.
    •    Tuesday, Feb. 27, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.: Election Day! Polls are open. Voters can also obtain absentee ballots at their local clerk's office until polls close, but only if they are registering to vote or updating their voter registration address.

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More information is available on the MI Secretary of State Website

Michigan: Governor Whitmer proposes $5,000 tax credit for caregivers

The Detroit Free Press reported today on a proposal by Governor Whitmer to provide tax relief to caregivers. 

According to the article, “Whitmer's Michigan caregiver tax credit proposal could provide up to $5,000 in tax relief” by Clara Hendrickson, 1/21/24, the plan would “provide up to $5,000 in tax relief for thousands of Michigan families, covering expenses such as counseling, transportation and nursing or respite services. Whitmer's office said the proposal will allow more seniors in Michigan to age where they live and help parents caring for children with long-term needs.”

According to a 2021 AARP study “…unpaid family caregivers spend an average of $7,242 annually. The advocacy group places the economic value of their contributions supporting the adults in their lives at an estimated $600 billion.”

The “Caring for MI Family Tax Credit" would cover expenses such as counseling, transportation and nursing or respite services to alleviate financial stress on families caring for seniors and parents caring for children with long-term needs.

What's old is new again: Regulating community services for people with disabilities: a promise fulfilled or a barrier to appropriate services?

This is a post from The DD News Blog for August 12, 2018. Not much has changed since then, with the exception of a worldwide pandemic that killed over a million people in the US and revealed serious inadequacies in the country's healthcare system. It also shined a light on the heroics of healthcare workers on the front lines of the pandemic, who, at first had the admiration and respect of the public. Later, they suffered abuse from the misdirected anger of a portion of the public stirred up by conspiracy theories about the virus and vaccines. The system of care for people with I/DD and their families also suffered with programs closing, some temporarily, but others permanently. Severe work shortages, especially among direct service professionals, hampered an already distressed system, seemingly on the verge of collapse. We seem to be back, but not quite, to where we were when the whole thing began. 

This is a good place to start, heading into a new year with the same old controversies that must be resolved if we are going to rebuild a fair system that includes recognition of the full range of people served and the diversity of needs.

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Sunday, August 12, 2018

In 2014, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued “the Settings Rule” as an attempt to regulate how and where Medicaid-funded Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) are provided in community settings to people with disabilities. Although the settings rule is promoted as a policy of liberation to bring about “true” integration and inclusion of people with disabilities in community settings, the corollary to that is the assertion that the rule will free up funding to be redistributed, first by closing programs that some advocates argue no one wants or needs, and then to pay for services that the same advocates claim are "truly" inclusive.

Many I/DD advocacy groups, most notably those receiving federal funding under the federal Developmental Disabilities Act, oppose all “congregate” programs that serve more than 3 or 4 people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) together. Rather than emphasizing the individual right to appropriate services and the requirement that “a public entity shall administer services, programs, and activities in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities…” [emphasis added], many advocates promoting the Settings Rule have focused mostly on closing programs, thereby eliminating them as a choice for those who still want and need them.

To what extent is implementation of the Settings Rule improving the lives of people with I/DD? Or is it just an excuse to reduce or eliminate programs for people with the highest support needs in hopes that others can benefit from the redistribution of precious Medicaid dollars?  Is it realistic to expect that the supposed cost-savings will pay for more and better services in the community? From the perspective of people with I/DD and their families who are losing programs they have relied on for years, the Settings Rule is seen as an excuse to de-fund needed services.

Judging from the promises made over many decades from advocates and government agencies, that closing institutions would pay for more and better services in the community, it is highly doubtful that removing people from institutions (or from settings that are too "institutional in nature” under the Settings Rule) will generate significant savings to pay for adequate services for everyone else.

As advocates and government agencies pursue their dream of closing all institutions, as well as eliminating specialized group settings for people with disabilities, they avoid the obvious question of how much more money must be put into the system to meet the needs of people with I/DD and where will it come from? It means confronting politically unpopular ideas, at least unpopular with most current elected officials, such as boosting Medicaid funding to pay for more and better services. Efforts to stabilize the workforce of direct service providers by providing them with a living wage and better working conditions and linking the funding of services with needs established by well-written individual service plans could improve both the quality of services and accountability to people with disabilities and to taxpayers.

This dilemma - justifying program closures with promises of future savings to pay for community services - was recognized by a fervent proponent of deinstitutionalization Sam Bagenstos, a former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Obama Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and a key litigator in deinstitutionalization cases.  [He currently serves as general counsel of the US Department of Health and Human Services and is on leave from the University of Michigan Law School] In a 2010 Cardozo Law Review article, “The Past and Future of Deinstitutionalization Litigation”, Bagenstos admits that closing institutions has not resulted in sufficient services in the community to allow people with psychiatric and intellectual and developmental disabilities to flourish.

This is an excerpt from a 2013 article from VOR , “Will it be different this time? Deinstitutionalization’s Past: A Reason to Pause and Reconsider”:

First, Bagenstos argues that one measure of the success of deinstitutionalization is the sheer numbers of people with I/DD who have been deinstitutionalized and the numbers of institutions that have been closed since 1967:

"[D]einstitutionalization advocates have essentially won the old battles for the closing and downsizing of large state institutions for people with psychiatric and developmental disabilities . . . the population of state institutions now stands at approximately 16% of its peak, the population of state and local psychiatric hospitals stands at approximately 9% of its peak, and these numbers continue to decrease."

Bagenstos goes on to admit, however, that the political alliance between deinstitutionalization advocates and fiscal conservatives meant certain failure for the advocates’ second goal, “to develop an array of services and supports in the community to enable people with psychiatric disabilities or intellectual/developmental disabilities to flourish.”

It should not be surprising that the coalition of deinstitutionalization advocates and fiscal conservatives largely achieved their goal of closing and downsizing institutions and that deinstitutionalization advocates were less successful in achieving their goal of developing community services.

Even if some deinstitutionalization advocates were initially unaware that they had entered into a “devil’s bargain” with fiscal conservatives, unconscionably, closure efforts continued even after it became apparent that widespread tragedies were befalling fragile individuals with I/DD developmental disabilities in inadequate community settings.

Supporters of the HCBS Settings Rule seem to be making their promises of improved services and better lives for people with disabilities contingent on the idea that savings from the closure and elimination of specialized congregate (group) settings in the community will result in the redistribution of funds. It is politically easier for advocates to call for the closure of programs that do not meet their criteria of “true” integration and inclusion than to confront the reality that the community system of care for people with I/DD is underfunded and to a large extent broken. Many of the organizations promoting their interpretation of the Settings Rule also get a significant amount of funding from government agencies that fund programs under the DD Act. They know better than to bite the hand that feeds them by advocating for politically difficult but necessary solutions to the crisis in community care.

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See also,

“Will it be different this time? Deinstitutionalization’s Past: A Reason to Pause and Reconsider” from VOR, 2013, including footnotes and references.

"What does the ADA Integration Mandate really mean?", The DD Newsblog, 4/10/16

Samuel R. Bagenstos, The Past and Future of Deinstitutionalization Litigation, 34 Cardoza L. Rev. 1 (2012)

Ian Barker Is thirty-nine!

Happy Birthday, Ian!

When Ian was born, he was smaller than a five-pound bag of sugar, but better looking. He spent six weeks in the Stanford Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (the NICU), with a nasty alpha strep infection acquired in utero, an extremely rare event. Some poor intern or medical student was assigned the job of finding out exactly how rare this is - most cases of alpha strep infection in newborns are acquired during a vaginal birth, but he was born by C-section. The student, without the benefit of our modern search engines, came up with about 30 similar cases.

During his first few days of life, Ian endured something like toxic shock syndrome that develops very quickly into low blood pressure and multiple organ failure. We were given dire predictions of how poorly he would do. We brought our one-in-more-than-a-million infant with dire predictions home to meet his brother Danny who was eight years old. Danny had already manifested many of the dire predictions from his precarious birth that resulted in brain damage from seizures.

Oh well.

I don’t want to disappoint those looking for a feel-good story of beating the odds with a child who defiantly exceeded all expectations, but unfortunately that is not what happened. Ian has very severe cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities. Fortunately, he learned to smile and laugh early. He is sweet and good-natured about all this and still good looking. He has honed his survival skills, endearing himself to the people around him to get the attention he needs. He loves the ladies (and men, but especially the ladies) who take care of him. We see him often. Since he does not talk, we have not figured out if he is laughing with us or at us, after all these years.