Schuette: Won’t somebody please think of the poor private schools?

You’ve got to hand it to Michigan’s Attorney General Bill Schuette: He’s consistent, if only in his inconsistency. . . . The cost of fighting to keep Michigan from recognizing gay marriage was monetarily steep: $1.9 million in plaintiffs’ legal fees, and almost a quarter of a million dollars to legal experts, conservative economists, and bogus “social scientists.” . . . Schuette is a longtime fervent defender of anti-gay legislation. . . . As if to prove that accusation true, Schuette hasn’t accepted the “will of the voters” on the issue, remaining a staunch advocate of marijuana prohibition. . . . So, you see, it doesn’t matter what the courts have rules, or the voters have decided, or even what the voters might decide right now — what matters most are the convictions inside the chief law enforcement official’s head. . . . Is it any better to be an attorney general who picks and chooses which laws to uphold and which to resist — as long as it’s done in the name of conservative ideology? (Detroit Metro Times)

Brian Calley: Schuette’s land deals reveal his hypocrisy on transparency

When confronted about his ownership interest in businesses that control a $40 million real estate development in the Virgin Islands, his first instinct was to lie. . . . So why didn’t he complete a personal financial disclosure for the assets not in trust? Maybe it’s because he has been using state employees, on state time, in state offices, to complete the real estate documents. . . . Now that we know that all his assets are not in a trust, why does he still refuse to complete the personal financial disclosure form? Why not do what he has demanded of everyone else? Is Bill Schuette hiding anything else? (Bridge Michigan)

Schuette initially told The Detroit News he had “no idea” what Calley was talking about, but his campaign later said the property was inherited by Schuette and his sisters, was not part of the blind trust and does not represent a conflict.

Documents obtained Friday by The Detroit News show longtime Schuette aide Rusty Hills and executive assistant Lori Gay served as witnesses on separate $1.8 million deed transfers Schuette signed on Feb 20, 2013. Both transfers were notarized by Nancy O’Shea, who at one time worked as head secretary in the attorney general’s alcohol and gambling enforcement division before retiring in August 2015.

Schuette’s Midland-based Vircom LLC sold 2.41-acre and 2.06-acre parcels to Pelican Reef LLC and Kestral Perch LLC, both set up in the Virgin Islands with mailing addresses in New York, according to the records.

Attorney general staffers Barb Teszlewicz and Dulce Cardenas signed as witnesses for Schuette on a quit deed claim in 2017, while Cardenas and Schuette spokeswoman Andrea Bitely signed a grant easement document in 2016. Both were notarized by Gay, the executive assistant.

Bitely said she signed as a witness after waiting to talk to Schuette while Gay notarized the document.

“If my memory serves, it was less than two minutes of our day,” she said.

Bitely confirmed Schuette was in his Lansing state offices on the day he and staffers signed the private real estate document.

Asked about the other documents signed by staffers, Bitely said the attorney general’s office has people on staff who are notaries and have provided notarization services for their co-workers and colleagues on documents.

“As anyone who has a busy schedule knows, it can be a challenge to find a notary that is available when you are available and you have witnesses available,” she said. “Nancy (O’Shea) provided a 30-second or less service on a document that required a notary to sign.”

‘Abusing taxpayer resources’

Schuette’s gubernatorial campaign did not immediately respond to a voicemail seeking comment.

Calley campaign spokesman Mike Schrimpf said Schuette has a “disturbing pattern of abusing taxpayer-funded resources for his personal and political gain.”

“Despite millions of dollars of offshore transactions benefiting himself, Bill Schuette is treating taxpayers like his own personal piggy bank.” [Detroit News]

In assessing his Republican opponents, Colbeck said electing either Schuette or Lt. Gov. Brian Calley would mean “politics as usual.” He points to hundreds of thousands of dollars Schuette has received over the years from political action committees representing corporations such as DTE Energy and Consumers Energy and said, based on that, consumers would have no hope for greater choice in electricity providers — a free market program he supports. (Detroit Free Press)

Attorney General Bill Schuette has quietly made multimillion-dollar real estate transactions involving inherited oceanfront property in the U.S. Virgin Islands while in office and used state employees to complete one transaction in November 2016, documents show. . . . Schuette’s executive assistant, Lori Gay, notarized the transaction and the attorney general’s communications director, Andrea Bitely, and an office analyst, Dulce Cardenas, signed as witnesses to the private transaction, U.S. Virgin Islands property records show. “Bill signed and Lori notarized the document while I was waiting to talk to him and, as a result, I signed as a witness,” Bitely said Thursday in an email to Crain’s. “If my memory serves, it was less than two minutes of our day.” [Crain’s Detroit Business]

“If I had as few accomplishments as the Attorney General I’d probably fall back on endorsements too. Bill Schuette will say or do anything to get elected, literally anything.  Politicizes tragedy, he uses the criminal justice system like it’s a launching pad for a gubernatorial campaign,” Calley said. (TV 9 & 10)

As the debate aired, a group of six undecided Republican voters from Kent County was watching from the WOOD TV8 Media Arts Center at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. . . . They said they wanted to see substance, and most said they found it from the lesser-known candidates, Colbeck and Hines. . . . They said the polished delivery of Schuette and Calley lacked authenticity and they felt Colbeck and Hines seemed more sincere. “I was just turned off by the fact that Calley’s answers just seemed so memorized,” Courtney Egeler of Wyoming said. They also didn’t like the jabs Calley and Schuette threw at one another. (WOOD TV)

More than one hundred fast-food cooks, Head Start workers, healthcare workers and other voters across Michigan will flood the GOP gubernatorial debate Wednesday blasting candidate Bill Schuette’s refusal to protect vital healthcare for nearly 700,000 people who rely on the state’s expanded Medicaid program enacted under Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. The protest follows a recent vote in the state Senate to impose work requirements on all Medicaid recipients – a measure that Schuette has endorsed and vowed to implement if elected governor. Holding signs reading, “Schuette: Hands Off My Healthcare” and “Bill Schuette: Healthcare Killer,” working people from across Michigan will demand the next governor make the state’s expanded Medicaid program permanent and increase access to affordable healthcare for everyone. The protest comes weeks after Schuette – who has received President Trump’s endorsement – released his first campaign TV ad reiterating his opposition to the state’s Medicaid expansion. WHERE: GOP gubernatorial debate, 120 College Ave SE, Grand Rapids, Mich. WHEN: 5:30p ET (Michigan Chronicle)

Lt. Gov. Calley last week repeated his contention the charges against Lyon and Wells are politically motivated and a “gross abuse of power.” . . . Dr. Jim Hines of Saginaw, another gubernatorial candidate, said the legal process is taking too long, costing taxpayers too much and raising questions among people about whether Flint “is being politicized by our leaders.” . . . “Why would they risk the entire case to make these extrajudicial statements unless it was for political gain?” Calley told The Detroit News. Flood and Forsythe have different styles, Schuette said. . . . “Either they’re timing it out for political purposes or they filed charges and weren’t prepared to prove those charges,”he said. “Neither one is a good answer.” (Detroit News top print headline)

Schuette highlighted this on his facebook page: Without a doubt, Schuette has outpaced his Republican rivals in making government transparency and accountability a central tenet of his run for governor. He’s consistently spoken and written about the topic since he announced his candidacy and he devotes a chunk of his campaign site to explaining his proposals, in contrast to the fleeting attention given the topic on his rivals’ sites. (Bill Schuette)

Schuette left out the next 3 sentences of the Michigan Truth Squad analysis: But is Schuette the “only candidate for the Republican nomination with a plan” to increase government accountability? Not exactly. We rate his claim half accurate. (Michigan Truth Squad)

Trump proposes $15 billion spending cuts, targets children’s health program: “It appears that sabotaging our health care system to the detriment of middle-class families wasn’t enough for President Trump and Republicans; now they’re going after health care dollars that millions of children rely on, especially during outbreaks of the flu and other deadly illnesses,” [Sen. Schumer] said in a statement after an initial report about the CHIP proposal. (Reuters)

Witness says Snyder aides were alerted about Legionnaires’ — A member of Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration [Eric Brown] says the governor’s senior aides were told about a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in the Flint area months before it was publicly announced. . . . He says Lyon warned Snyder’s top advisers that cases were rising at the same time that Flint was using water from the Flint River. Brown says Snyder’s chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, was on the call, along with the head of the Department of Environmental Quality and others. Snyder insists he didn’t learn about the Legionnaires’ outbreak until January 2016. (WXYZ)

Schuette trails in latest polls: A new poll from EPIC-MRA shows if Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette wants to be governor, he has an uphill battle. Democrats Gretchen Whitmer and Shri Thanedar are both ahead of the Republican frontrunner in the survey, and Thanedar’s advertising blitz is paying off with his name recognition nearing that of Schuette. Whitmer leads Schuette by 43-to-38 percent, while Thanedar has a slightly better result with a 44-to-38-percent lead.  (94.1 Jackson)