Detroit City Council approves consent agreement in 5-4 vote, avoids Emergency Manager, but…

By on April 5, 2012 in Detroit, Emergency Manager Law, Emergency Managers

Public Act 4 no longer in play in Detroit

Detroit’s financial review team was given the okay to meet yesterday morning by the Michigan Court of Appeals, clearing the way for them to vote to approve the consent agreement between the city and the state in the afternoon. And, last night, the Detroit City Council followed suit in a 5-4 split decision, agreeing to the consent agreement, actually called the “Financial Stability Agreement”, which gives city leaders some measure of control, including choosing some of the members of the financial advisory board.

Under the deal, a financial advisory board whose members would be appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder, Mayor Dave Bing and the City Council would advise and review all budget matters and grant approval of union contracts. [...]

Snyder would appoint three members to the advisory board. Bing and the council would appoint two each and would jointly appoint another with Snyder. The state treasurer would appoint one member.

The 5-4 council vote came just 24 hours before Snyder’s deadline for appointing an emergency manager, who, among other broad powers, could gut union contracts, cancel contracts with city vendors and eliminate departments to rein in the city’s runaway budget troubles.

The council vote came after the influential Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity announced they had thrown their support behind the consent deal over more draconian options and some angry residents accused city leaders of turning their backs on the city’s legacy of unionism and its place as a majority black-run city.

You can read the 59-page Financial Stability Agreement HERE.

The entire process appears to be taking its toll on Detroit Mayor Bing who was readmitted to the hospital yesterday.

Although the agreement was signed and it is expected to be ratified by Mayor Bing and Governor Rick Snyder, as well, there are still lawsuits pending regarding violations of the open meetings act and by unions to prevent the agreement from impacting their negotiated collective bargaining agreements.

[E]ven with an agreement in place, lawsuits aren’t likely to stop anytime soon.

State and federal judges still have to determine whether state and city officials violated the Open Meetings Act while negotiating the deal and whether certain components of the plan are legal.

Union activist Robert Davis, whose lawsuits often stymied efforts to negotiate a plan dealing with the city’s financial crisis, has vowed “to take this to the appropriate courts until the law is followed.” [...]

Labor unions are suing Gov. Rick Snyder and state Treasurer Andy Dillon to stop the state and city from using a consent agreement to impose tough new contracts on city employees after labor unions negotiated new contracts and $68 million in concessions with Mayor Dave Bing’s administration.

“These are not small issues,” said Richard Mack, an attorney for AFSCME representing a coalition of 33 labor unions suing the state.

This agreement locks Detroit’s fate in place even if the effort to repeal Public Act 4 is successful. We will know in the next 2-3 weeks if enough valid petition signatures were gathered. If they were, Public Act 4 is put on hold and there will undoubtedly be a court challenge regarding what happens next. Some feel that the predecessor to Public Act 4, Public Act 72, will go back into place. Others feel that, because PA 4 replaced PA 72, that Michigan simply will no longer have an Emergency Manager or Emergency Financial Manager law until the November vote decides the fate of PA 4.

Nevertheless, by signing the financical stability agreement with the state, the outcome of the repeal effort will not impact their situation in any tangible way.

This agreement keeps Detroit from facing a complete takeover and seemed to be the best compromise between doing nothing and the draconian step of imposing an Emergency Manager. Clearly something must be done. What I will continue to say, however, is that getting the books balanced is only part of the long-term solution. Until our state begins to reinvest in our aging manufacturing cities, investments that will help them become attractive to businesses looking to set up shop in our state or to expand their operations, all of this is simply hand waving before the cities eventually implode. Without a reinvestment strategy to rebuild these cities, the so-called “rising tide” that massive cuts to corporate taxes is supposed to stimulate will simply pass by cities like Benton Harbor, Pontiac, Flint, Highland Park, Ecorse, Inkster and, yes, Detroit. It’s my fervent hope that our CEO governor and his Republican colleagues in the state legislature figure that out.

[Image credit: Anne C. Savage, used with permission.]


  • cryingliberty

    I honestly wonder whether PA 4 was designed as a means for the governor and his corporate cronies to deliberately disenfranchise as many “undesirable” voters as possible with the hope that it would simply drive them out, possibly to other states. 

    Think about it – disenfranchise enough of the voters and push them out, force them to leave and then moneyed interests can come in and buy up abandoned properties at dirt cheap rates without having to worry about pesky things like, oh, other people, and suddenly voila, you too can have your own major city. Kind of like what’s being done to Benton Harbor right now, only on a much larger scale.There are two issues at play in all of this: one of race, the other of socioeconomic class.With the race issue, everyone remembers the 12th St. Riot in the 60s, and likes to point to that as the moment Detroit started to fall. Nobody bothers to look back any further than that – either because they think that before that point, Detroit was all rainbows and unicorns, or because they think the 12th St. Riot was some watershed moment in Detroit’s history. There’s no doubt that it was a major event and signaled to the country as to just how serious the problem was, but it wasn’t Democrats, it wasn’t Republicans, and it certainly wasn’t unions that caused it – it was a problem nobody likes to talk about because it reveals just how ugly we can be. The problem was unbridled, unabashed hatred for anyone who doesn’t look like yourself or isn’t of the same socioeconomic tier as you are – and it’s STILL very prevalent in Michigan, and it’s been here ever since Ford and GM opened the floodgates for workers in the 1930s and 1940s as the US built up its war efforts. I’ve said before that a substantial amount of Michigan’s economic and social woes are related to ingrained racial and social biases – on BOTH sides, black AND white –  that are holdovers from the Arsenal of Democracy days. When you bring poor Southern white families and poor Southern black families together into one city, all huddled together like Ford and GM did in the 30s and 40s, it creates enormous racial tension – so much so that it created a riot of its own in the 40s on Belle Isle that NOBODY EVER TALKS ABOUT because it wasn’t the big explosion that would happen 20-ish years later. All you have to do to see just how bad the problem has become is to look at how stratified the major cities of Michigan have become with respect not just to race, but social class as well. Detroit used to be our most obvious example until PA 4 revealed the glaring problem of Benton Harbor and St. Joseph – a pair of cities separated by a river that couldn’t be more polarized. Add to this the hyperbolic rhetoric going on now with respect to poor vs. rich, and you have a highly toxic environment where the worst possible qualities of people are going to come out in absolutely disgusting fashions. Pete Hoekstra’s horribly bigoted “Debbie Spenditnow” ad is a perfect example of the kind of attitude that the present political and social climate has borne, even if Hoekstra’s outrageous ad was directed more towards Chinese as opposed to blacks or Hispanics.Even Ann Arbor is similarly stratified, with Ypsilanti next to it, albeit in this case, it’s more economic than it is racial. A colleague of mine derisively calls US-23 “the Berlin Wall” because so many people in the Ann Arbor area act as though they’re slumming by going into Ypsi. Again, nobody wants to talk about it because it’s easier to just ignore the problem and act like it isn’t there rather than step up and deal with the unconscious bigotry that we’ve come to accept as the norm in Michigan. 

    I love living in Michigan because of the artistic and musical opportunities it has afforded me since moving here – but I also hate living in Michigan because of things like this that I see every day when I walk out of my apartment in Ypsi and the way people treat me because I live there – that somehow, just because I’m living in “Ypsitucky” or “over there”, I’m somehow subhuman and not worthy of consideration. I am frequently reminded, not just by friends and colleagues, but by interactions with ordinary people – that people in Ann Arbor generally seem to feel that if you’re “from” Ypsi, they look at you either with pity or with disgust. 

    Before I close things out, I’ll leave you with one personal anecdote of just how serious the problem still is here: I had a Christmas church service that I was hired to play in Orchard Lake this past season. The gig itself was wonderful, as were the people I met there – but one event put an ugly spin on things that makes me less willing to return there for a gig. As I was heading down Commerce Rd towards home after the gig that evening, I noticed a town cop behind me with his lights on. Now, I drive an older vehicle that, while it’s in good working order, is obviously older and worn with age and looks very out of place amongst the vehicles you typically see up there. Anyway, I pull over, and out comes an Orchard Lake cop, who walks up to my window. I roll down my window and offer my registration and insurance, and the cop gets a good look at me, a white male dressed in a clean, pressed tuxedo. No sooner does this happen, and the cop says, “I’m sorry to have stopped you, I thought you were someone else. But a word of advice – you’re not doing yourself any favors driving around here in a car like that. Someone’s going to think you’re doing something you ought not be,” and turns back to his car and pulls away.

    You do the math.

    • http://eclectablog.com Eclectablog

      Fantastic comment. By the way, have we met? I don’t recognize your handle or email address.

      • cryingliberty

        No, we’ve never met. I’ve commented here before, but I sometimes go for weeks without saying anything.

        I did email you directly at one point a long time ago asking about how to get more involved in the community, but I believe my night-owl work schedule more or less shut me out of the loop.

  • Dianne

    Yes, heaven forfend you drive an older car in their swanky neighborhoods! I live in a mobile home in a rather wealthy area, and we’re definitely considered to be “the wrong side of the tracks.”
    That’s okay, really. My home and car are paid for.

    • cryingliberty

      I definitely got the feeling that I shouldn’t be showing my face (or rather, my car) in that neighborhood again, even if my presence there is legitimate.

      I was rather disgusted, and very glad that when the gig repeated itself the next day, I didn’t run into the same problem. But that single event will give me great pause as to whether I accept another gig in the Orchard Lake area ever again.

      Getting paid $500 to play two church services isn’t worth having your car impounded and thrown in lockup because some town cop thinks you’re a drug dealer just because of your car.

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