As we’ve previously reported, in 2018, the Michigan legislature adopted two significant voter initiatives: the Improved Workforce Opportunity Wage Act (IWOWA), which increased the State’s minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2022 (and provided for annual inflation increases thereafter), and the Earned Sick Time Act (ESTA), which mandated employers to provide up to 72 hours of paid sick time per year for various types of absences. Before they took effect, however, the legislature amended the voter initiatives in several significant ways. First, the legislature renamed the ESTA the Paid Medical Leave Act (PMLA) and modified the law to: (1) apply only to employers with 50 or more employees; (2) reduce paid annual leave benefits from 72 hours to 40 hours; (3) permit employers to frontload annual paid leave benefits; (4) remove anti-retaliation provisions; and (5) remove an individual’s private cause of action. Second, the legislature amended the IWOWA to increase the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2030, instead of 2022, remove the additional annual inflation increases, and eliminate the tip credit set to take effect by 2024.
Advocates for the originally drafted voter initiatives swiftly brought legal action against the State, and on July 19, 2022, the Michigan Court of Claims ruled in their favor, finding that the Michigan legislature’s adoption-and-amendment of the two initiatives violated the State constitution’s provision on voter initiatives. As a result, the Court of Claims...
The monetary value of false claims on public funds hit a record last year, with 129.6 billion won ($91.4 million) recovered from people and organizations that should never have received the money....