Let's see. It took over thirty years to reform school financing and the bikers have spent four decades trying to get rid of their brain buckets, so how long do you think it will take to legalize "real" firecrackers in this state?

     That's the question pondered by Rep. Harold Haugh (D-Roseville) who is on a one-person crusade to raise some badly needed cash for state coffers while ending the constant exodus of Michigan license plates into Ohio and Indiana to buy fireworks that actually make some noise.

     The affable Mr. Haugh has come close but no exploding cigar.

     "We tried hard but the Big Box stores" got in the way he reports.

      Those outlets want the law written so that they can automatically sell the explosives and if local communities don't want that, they would have to vote to stop it.

      The locals and Rep. Haugh wanted it the other way around i.e. local communities would have to give the green light first.

      "Local control has to be dominant," argues the former Roseville mayor.

      He stood his ground.  The Big Boxers stood their's and for the second 4^th of July  in a row, Michigan does not have a law to legalize this stuff.

       He's not giving up, but it is frustrating because each time he gets close, someone else comes along with another last minute road block..

       The Department of Environmental Quality was the latest example.

       It wanted a piece of the financial action to store and destroy contraband fireworks that the state cops pick up.

       Mr. Haugh just told them, "No."

       So enjoy your sparklers this Holiday and remember if you have fireworks that go into the air, you are breaking the law. Mr. H. hopes next year to make all you"firecracker crooks" legal.