August 4, 2006

Initiatives include tougher laws, more funding

LANSING – In her weekly radio address, Governor Jennifer M. Granholm today stressed the importance of keeping Michigan children safe and highlighted her administration’s actions to do just that. 
 
“It doesn’t matter if you’re walking your children to the school bus or driving them to college, keeping our kids safe is a goal we all share as parents,” Granholm said.  “That’s why we’ve worked hard over the last three years to enact tough, common sense policies that will keep our kids safe.”
 
This week, Granholm announced additional funding for the Metro Fugitive Task Force in Southeast Michigan.  The task force is a joint operation of the Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb County Sheriffs’ offices that tracks down parole and probation violators and puts them back behind bars.  Since March, the task force has taken more than 160 offenders off the street.
 
Other Granholm initiatives include:

• requiring background checks for all employees in schools and day care centers and prohibiting sex offenders from living or loitering near schools;

• providing parents with new tools to keep inappropriate e-mail out of their kids’ inboxes;

• signing Jessica’s Law to create tougher penalties for criminals who commit sex crimes against children;

• putting Family Resource Centers in our schools to give families access to the support they need to be healthy and safe; and.

• supporting Project SAFE Neighborhoods, which rounds up fugitive felons and sex offenders to keep our neighborhoods safer.

Granholm will also announce additional initiatives next week to make our children and communities safer.

“These initiatives build on the steps we’ve already taken so that all of our children are safe where they live, learn, and play,” Granholm said.

The Governor’s weekly radio address is released each Friday at 10:00 a.m. and may be heard on broadcast stations across the state through an affiliation with the Michigan Association of Broadcasters.  The address will also be available on the Governor’s website on Mondays as a podcast for general distribution to personal MP3 players and home computers.

Broadcasters Note: Governor Granholm’s radio address can be accessed through Sunday evening exclusively through the Members Only page of the Michigan Association of Broadcasters website.

Publishers Note: The text of today’s address is attached.

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