Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Established	1987
Chairman	Joseph Olson
President	Joseph G. Lehman
Budget	Revenue: $5,593,469 Expenses: $4,339,266 (FYE December 2013)
Location	Midland, Michigan
Address	140 West Main Street, P.O. Box 568, Midland, Michigan 48640
Website	mackinac.org

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is an American non-profit free market think tank headquartered in Midland, Michigan. It is the largest state-based free market think tank in the United States. The Center states that it is "dedicated to improving the quality of life for all Michigan residents by promoting sound solutions to state and local policy questions."

The Mackinac Center conducts policy research on a range of public policy issues. It also conducts educational programs such as workshops for high school debate students and sponsors MichiganVotes.org, an online legislative voting record database. Mackinac Center scholars generally recommend lower taxes, reduced regulatory authority for state agencies, right-to-work laws, school choice, and enhanced protection of individual property rights.

History

Mackinac Center building in Midland, Mich.

According to the Mackinac Center, the organization was founded in 1987 by a group of citizens who met on Mackinac Island and shared an interest in making Michigan a better place to live and work. The organization is named after Mackinac Island. The Center began operations in 1987 with no office or full-time staff. It formally opened offices in Midland in 1988 with its first president, Lawrence W. Reed, an economist, writer, and speaker who had chaired the economics department at Northwood University. The Lansing-based Cornerstone Foundation provided early direction and some funding. The Center's first annual budget under Reed was $80,000. In 1997, the Mackinac Center moved from rented offices to its current headquarters after having raised $2.4 million to renovate a former Woolworth’s department store on Midland’s Main Street. Reed served as president from the Center’s founding until September 2008, when he assumed the title President Emeritus and also became the president of the Foundation for Economic Education. Former Chief Operating Officer Joseph G. Lehman was named the Mackinac Center’s president on September 1, 2008.

The Mackinac Center is classified as a 501(c)(3) organization under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. The Mackinac Center is a member of the State Policy Network, an umbrella organization of conservative and libertarian think tanks operating at the state level. In November 2006 the New York Times published a two-part series about state based free market think tanks that described how the Mackinac Center trained think tank executives from 42 countries and nearly every US state. New York Times reported that, “When the Mackinac Center was founded in 1987, there were just three other conservative state-level policy institutes. Now there are 48, in 42 states."

When asked by Detroit’s Metro Times in 1996, the Center’s President Lawrence Reed said: "Our funding sources are primarily foundations ... with the rest coming from corporations and individuals," but that "... revealing our contributors would be a tremendous diversion..."

In 2002, the Michigan Education Association (MEA) sued the Mackinac Center over the Center's use of a supportive quote by the MEA's President in fundraising material. In 2004, the Michigan Court of Appeals threw out the lawsuit.

In a 2011 interview, founder Joe Olson said that the Center was first conceived in a Lansing, Michigan bar at a meeting between Olson, fellow insurance company executive Tom Hoeg, Richard McLellan and then-Senator John Engler. Olson said the founders wanted an organization that would focus on research, writing, speaking, issuing press releases and looking at public policy from a free-market point of view.

In 2014, the organization released a mobile app, VoteSpotter. The app allows users to track votes by elected officials in the United States. It was originally an extension of the organization's MichiganVotes.org website, but has since expanded to include other states.

Principles

Although it is sometimes called “conservative," the Mackinac Center characterizes the label as inaccurate, pointing out that it does not address social issues usually identified with modern conservatism including abortion, censorship, and gambling, and that “free market” is a more useful shorthand description of its policy expressions. The Center writes that its ideology is most accurately characterized as flowing from the "classical liberal tradition: socially tolerant, economically sophisticated, desiring little government intervention in either their personal or economic affairs."

Publications

In addition to policy studies, the Center publishes a number of periodicals including Michigan Education Report, Michigan Privatization Report, Michigan Science, Michigan Capitol Confidential, Impact and Michigan Education Digest.

Personnel

Policy staff members

• Burton W. Folsom, Jr., Senior Fellow in Economic Education
• Lawrence Reed, President Emeritus

Adjunct scholars

• Peter Boettke
• Richard Ebeling
• James Gattuso

• Paul McCracken (1915–2013)
• Robert Murphy
• Mark J. Perry

• Robert Sirico
• Bradley A. Smith
• John B. Taylor

• Richard Vedder
• Gary L. Wolfram

Board of directors

Current members of the Mackinac Center's board of directors include:

• Richard D. McLellan, Secretary; McLellan Law Offices; formerly Dykema Gossett Law Firm
• Clifford Taylor, Chairman; Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court from 2005 through 2009
• Richard Haworth, chairman of Haworth, an office furniture and architectural interior company based in Holland, Michigan

Former members of the organization's board include:

• Robert Teeter, Republican pollster and political campaign strategist
• Paul V. Gadola, United States District Judge
• Lawrence Reed, President Emeritus of the Mackinac Center and president of the Foundation for Economic Education

External links

• Mackinac Center's official website
• Organizational Profile, National Center for Charitable Statistics (Urban Institute)