Brian: Justin Grove, my good friend, colleague and cohost. Uh, and Justin, we’re going to talk a little bit about, uh, some MCC increases. People are about to get a big insurance bills. And, uh, I know that you, you brought this up at the beginning of the hour and we’ve got a very special guest, a very close friend of mine, and, uh, one of the most dynamic, uh, politicians in the state of Michigan really, truly does try to think of things that will help people. This is the gentleman who, uh, brought up and, uh, got past the idea that we can now show our registration and proof of insurance on our phones. Now, how practical is that? How awesome is that? And as soon as we, uh, you know, we, uh, our, our, our current governor’s termed out, I, I’m going to vote for this guy for governor. Do you think your, uh, you, you think you’ll run there Peter?
Sen. Lucido: I don’t think so. Good morning Brian and Justin and good morning to the listeners and a welcome to the wet weather that we’re going to have. But I want to talk about insurance like you have been. I think it’s important that everybody realize,
Brian: hey Pete, before you get started on that, before you get started, I got, I’ve, I got to know because you’re always doing something that is like old school politician. Where are you right now?
Sen. Lucido: I am an Mr G’s barbershop. Conveniently located on 13-Mile Road
Brian: and he’s cutting your hair when you’re on the phone with us now, right? Isn’t he
Sen. Lucido: darn right. I’m getting a hair cut and you know why?
Brian: And you’re smoking a cigar too, aren’t you Peter?
Sen. Lucido: I’m not smoking just yet, but I’ll have a cigar later on this afternnoon
Brian: All right, well talk to us about, talk to us about MCCA. What is it and why are they, why are they stealing everybody’s money and why can’t you trust them?
Sen. Lucido: Here’s why. This is years ago when the politicians were up there, these guys made this fund private instead of public. It’s public money that goes into it. The MCCA back in the 70s when we started this. No fault. Yes, it’s a great thing. Unlimited lifetime health benefit. Don’t anybody kid themselves. We’re the only state that does it because it is the best thing to take care of our most vulnerable. Those are the individuals that are injured. We thought it was $3, $3 a car per year.
Brian: Three bucks a car,
Sen. Lucido: three bucks a car. That’s what it started back in the 70s. We are up to now come July 1st, 2019 $220 a cop.
Justin: Come on.
Sen. Lucido: So we gotta look at history and says, what caused it to go up like this? Right now, the fund, everybody has almost $23 billion, just shy of 23 billion. When I got to the legislature four years ago, they had 18 point 7 billion dollars, so they’d gone up about $5 billion, almost billion.
Brian: You’re not talking millions. You’re talking billions with it. Yeah.
Sen. Lucido: Billions. With a capital B as in big time. Okay. As a result, you start to realize, all right, who was running the fund? How much of the expenses tell me what kind of investments are in, and if they’re not invested in Michigan, then it becomes pure bull and not pure Michigan. One more thing. I gotta say, Brian, what really bothers me, the worst is, is that if don’t know the investments, because part of the reason they said that we’re going up again cause we’ve gone up $50 in the last two years. I’ll repeat $50 in the last two years. This part has gone up.
Brian: That’s per car per six months,
Sen. Lucido: per car, and there’s over 7 million, 200,000 cars that are registered. This fund brings in one point five billion dollars a year. 1.5 billion a year, two 20 times 7 million, 200,000 cars. Now wait one more time. In addition, it paid out $1 billion last year. So therefore the reality is it’s making about 400 to 500 million excess at that. Now take the interest.
Brian: Hey Peter, are they, are they looking for, they’re looking for help because I wouldn’t mind applying for a job with that company.
Sen. Lucido: No. You know what? You’re right. We should all be applied. Everybody in Michigan, we’d have enough where we never have an unemployment again.
Brian: Yeah. You know what I like? I liked the proposals that I’ve heard in the last five years where they’re going to get rid of the fund and they’re going to, uh, decrease insurance rates and they’re going to take the money in the fund and give it back to the insurance companies.
Sen. Lucido: And I think that if you look out the window, you’ll be seeing rainbows and UNICORNS. Anyway.
Brian: There goes one right now.
Sen. Lucido: Yeah. Well, here’s what up with concerns me. They also made 1,000,000, 400 thousand, a billion & 400 million in interest interest. I wanted to use the interest alone to fix the roads. That’s what I said in the beginning. I want to open up this MCC, the Michigan catastrophic claims fund. And I want to go ahead and find out everything in there. There should be nothing hidden because it’s tax payers dollars. And the last thing is this. If you got over a billion forward interests, why are you even charging us? If you’re only collecting or you’re paying out $1 billion, why are we even paying into this anymore when there’s such a huge surplus, this thing is not going down
Brian: so, so Peter, who’s stopping, who is stopping the reform of this? I know that the governor wants to get into it and find out and I know that my good friend Brooks Patterson, if you’re listening Brooks, I want you to call in. You used to call into the show and he would wax eloquent. He, he would get really upset on the air about what they’re doing up there because there’s no accountability. You can’t just walk in there and say, open the books. I’m going to look at it.
Sen. Lucido: No, you can’t do that because whatever happened, happened years ago. But I do have legislation in Brian that deals with this making the fun public again. You can still make the fun public and here’s why. There’s nothing that should be hidden. And Brooks Patterson, I said a fair few last night. I hope you and your family are doing well. If you’re listening out there, like Brian said, a Godspeed to your health and getting better, but at the end of the day, I want you to realize that’s our money. We have a right to know what’s going on and our governor, our governor is right. She’s saying the right thing by saying, make it transparent, make it open, and let’s do an audit and here’s the reason why I can’t get back money. If it’s not there, it’s gone. Right? And in addition, if somebody brother-in-law’s getting a large fee for making the investments, and I heard that they lost money last year, I got to tell you, the stock market’s never been better. If you’re losing money and then come into my pocket to pick it, to make it right for yourselves, you guys are out of control and I’m not going to allow that to happen. As a law maker, I want to say any losses or on your watch, you could have put this into treasury bills and made 3%
Brian: state Senator Peter Luisito. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talk to him, talking to us. Will you come on again?
Sen. Lucido: Absolutely. Once I’ve finished my haircut, I’ll come out on as much as you want, but right now I’ve got a scissors in my ear right now
Brian: All right. Now where? Where’s this? Where’s this barbershop?
Sen. Lucido: Mr G’s barbershop. Conveniently located in Roseville, Michigan. He’s been cutting my hair for over 40 years and I’ll tell you right now, I’m loyal to the day I die.
Brian: All right. I’m going to get my next hair cut at that location.
Sen. Lucido: Mr Gallows. This is Fred Gallo Everybody.
Brian: All right. Thank you.