The Solvency Board Cometh

Mayor Dave Bing and the Detroit City Council are appalled at the plan Governor Rick Snyder has for their town: a nine member panel which would control Detroit's finances. It would allow the Mayor and the Council to keep their job jobs as chief executive and chief legislature, and that's about it.

To those who claim that it strips Detroit of its political representation, well, it hardly does that. Detroit elected officials stay in place, and they have a say in who gets appointed to the board. Mayor Bing and the Council in various combinations will select 6 of the 9 who will serve on the Board. Further, as cities are the subsets of the state and not independent entities of their own volition, then seeing as Detroiters still vote for their State Reps and the Governor they are most certainly not losing their right to select their elected officials.

Detroit has messed around for far too long and gets far too much from the State as it is for the city to have any real moral ground to cry foul. When even the Detroit Free Press editorializes that the Mayor and all should accept the plan, it speaks volumes about how bad off the City has become. It may be, as Stephen Henderson states in the Freep, an emergency manager under another name. But it has become necessary as Detroit leadership simply has not stepped up and done something about the crisis.

This situation cannot reasonably be painted as us against them, Detroit against the rest of Michigan. Detroit already gets more money per capita from Lansing than any other municipality in the State. The City has simply refused to make the tough calls necessary for solvency, and now it will pay the price. That's not tyranny. It's governing those who have displayed they can't govern themselves.

And it probably should have been done a long time ago.

The Detroit Budget Debacle

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and the Detroit Common Council have certainly agreed on one thing: to disagree, and to do so stridently. Mayor Bing ended talks on the City's budget when the Council did not agree to his plan, asserting that the body was not earnest in seeking compromise. Council President Charles Pugh responded that the Mayor was being childish. The action by Detroit's leader would allow him to make cuts of his own beginning Friday.

It would seem that Mr. Bing is trying to establish himself as a leader by acting so seemingly decisively. He is certainly painting an apocalyptic picture: a loss of police and fire protection, parks grass uncut, a loss of Sunday bus service and Hart Plaza festivals. Hopefully it is little more than posturing.

The underlying problem here is that we are witnessing yet another black eye to Detroit when that is exactly what we can least afford right now. The city government can't see eye to eye, and residents continue to leave in response. Why shouldn't they? What is the incentive to stay? Certainly not the amount of intrigue and infighting witnessed over the last decade.

There is still time, and cooler heads may prevail. It is not likely (is it?) that things will be as catastrophic as Mayor Bing asserts. Political posturing has been around since the founding of the Republic, and there should be no shock that it exists even in the relative backwaters which are Detroit today.

That is perhaps the best way to sum the situation up: Detroit is becoming irrelevant, to the state, and perhaps even to itself. It is said the phoenix shall rise from the ashes. Yet how much ash must be made before the process burns itself out?

And the Winner Is...

We are in the first day of the Dave Bing administration in Detroit. The former basketball player was installed as our 62nd mayor yesterday at 3 o'clock in the afternoon amid little fanfare. That, I think, is fitting and proper.

He certainly faces significant hurdles. General Motors hinted at then denied that it might be looking elsehwere for its world headquarters. Vast areas of the city, particularly in the blighted east side, are no more than vacant lots, which along with the long history of flight from the city and the current economic problems means that tax revenues are not likely to rise anytime soon.

The suburbs still don't trust Detroit, and not, quite frankly, without justification. When you have morons along the line of Monica Conyers running the Common Council and a town willing to not only elect but re-elect arrogant B-list politicians such as the disgraced Kwame Kilpatrick, can you honestly blame the rest of the metropolitan area for casting a wary eye towards Woodward and Jefferson?

Ironically, the best thing which may have happened along that line may just be Ken Cockrel's return to the Council. The City Charter is pretty clear that he will now return as Council President, sending Conyers back to plain old council member status. She's said she'll fight that, not surprisingly, but it looks like she can't win that battle.

I supported Cockrell for Mayor but I was more than happy last night to sign a petition to put him on the ballot for Council in the August primary. The petitioner told me that Cockrell will not run again for mayor this election cycle, and I have to wonder whether perhaps a Bing Mayorship and Cockrel Council Presidency may actually be our best bet for any kind of true renaissance to appear in Detroit.

So good luck Mr. Bing and Mr. Cockrell. I am afraid that you will need it; still, I have less trepidation about our city's future now than I had a few days back.