2005 House Bill 5047 ↩

House Roll Call 467: Passed

To establish a government $1 billion “Jobs for Michigan Investment Fund” to give subsidies to public entities and private businesses engaged in various “competitive edge” technologies. The bill authorizes government ownership of private businesses and gets around a state Constitutional prohibition on this by placing these in a "permanent fund," which <a href="http://www.legislature.mi.gov/mileg.asp?page=getObject&objName=2001-SJR-T">Senate Joint Resolution T of 2002</a> exempted from the prohibition, and which was described when presented to the people for a vote as applying to natural resources, veterans and state parks trust funds. Government officials and representatives of the types of organizations likely to get the money would make up a "Strategic Economic Investment Board” to allocate 70 percent of the subsidies (see <a href="http://www.michiganvotes.org/2005-SB-533">Senate Bill 533 </a>). The balance would be given out by the existing “Michigan Strategic Fund,” renamed the "21st Century Jobs Fund." The $1 billion would come from “securitizing” (selling) one-third of the approximately $280 million annual revenue stream from the 1998 tobacco company lawsuit settlement. This is the legislature's response to Gov. Granholm’s $2 billion <a href="http://www.michiganvotes.org/2005-SB-488">"Jobs for Michigan"</a> debt proposal. The bill also authorizes spending $60 million on “WiMAX” ventures, an untested wireless internet technology covering large areas.