The small town of Ecorse, Michigan, under control of an Emergency Financial Manager or Emergency Manager since 2009, has been deemed to have emerged from its emergency and will now be indefinitely under the control of a Transition Advisory Board (TAB).
Joyce Parker, the Emergency Manager for both Ecorse and Allen Park will be on the TAB. Gov. Snyder provided a list of her accomplishments (after the jump.)
The southeastern city of Hamtramck (spelled correctly, pronounced “Ham-tram-ick”) is facing the prospect of its city being taken over by an Emergency Manager as the state has ordered a financial review team to assess its financial situation.
Hamtramck is a small city of just over 22,000. Its population is just over half (53.6%) white and has an unusually high population of Asians (21.5%.)
This would be Round Two for Hamtramck. In 2000, Governor John Engler installed an Emergency Financial Manager, a familiar player Louis Schimmel. Six years later, books balanced and financial crisis “solved”, Schimmel left and, in 2007, the city was once again back in charge of its government.
However, that didn’t last long. In 2010, facing continuing budget issues, Hamtramck asked the state to be allowed to declare bankruptcy. They were denied.
Click through for more.
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a summary of the latest news about Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law and the new surrounding our illustrious saviors dictators Emergency Managers so I thought it would be a good time to so. On a personal note, I was interviewed by freelance journalist Chris Lewis this past week for a piece he’s doing for The Atlantic so it’s clear to me that this story continues to receive national attention.
It’s all there after the jump. And there is a LOT there after the jump.
Michigan’s experiment with Emergency Managers has begun to catch national attention, thanks largely to the efforts of Rachel Maddow and her staff. One of the things that has become quite clear from the things I have written about here and the terrific reporting by The Rachel Maddow Show is that, despite the fact that our state is relying on budget-cutting Emergency Managers to solve problems that are complex and multi-faceted, they have yet to show that they actually WORK. Simply stated, outside of one tiny village, there has yet to be a city or school district that has emerged out from under and Emergency Financial Manager or an Emergency Manager and remained financially stable.
The Detroit Public Schools has been under the control of an Emergency Manager or Emergency Financial Manager for many years. The first Emergency Financial Manager, Robert Bobb, actually left the school district in a bigger financial hole than when he arrived. He was replaced by Governor Snyder by an auto industry marketing and sales guy, Roy Roberts.
Roberts is very proud of his work and went on national television to tell the world that the Detroit Public Schools are back and, not only are they back, they are kicking some serious academic ass, surpassing the state average MEAP scores in a majority of categories.
As it turns out, it was a complete lie. Click through for details.
Today Michigan, the birthplace of the labor movement, becomes the 24th Right to Work state in the USA. It’s also the day that PA 436, the Emergency Manager law Republicans passed to thwart the wishes of Michigan voters, goes into effect. PA 436 transforms all Emergency Financial Managers to Emergency Managers (EMs), giving them powers above and beyond financial matters as they are the sole rulers of the schools and municipalities over which they have complete power.
Much more after the jump.
The U.S. Department of Education is investigating a civil rights complaint over the use of Emergency Managers in the Detroit Public Schools. The complaint alleges that black and brown students are being singled out for takeover of their school systems while kids in majority white districts facing similar financial problems aren’t similarly impacted. It also claims that black and brown students face discipline that their white counterparts do not.
More after the jump.
Congressmen Gary Peters and John Conyers have asked the Govenment Accountability Office to look into the efficacy of the Emergency Financial Manager Law in Michigan as well as whether or not it has resulted in any conflicts of interest or other improprieties as the law has been enforced.
Much more including their letter after the jump.
Standard and Poor’s Rating Services didn’t wait for Detroit’s new Emergency Financial Manager Kevyn Orr to actually accomplish anything or, in fact, to even begin his first day on the job. Yesterday they went ahead an upgraded Detroit’s outlook rating from “negative” to “stable”.
These Emergency Managers are like wizards or something! Orr doesn’t start his new job until March 25th, a week from now.
Details and more after the jump.
There’s a story emerging out of Detroit about the role too-big-to-fail banks have played in the creation of Detroit’s fiscal emergency. Last week, Dave Dayen reported at the National Memo that some banks have begun foreclosure proceedings on homeowners and then simply walked away before taking possession of the property. This leaves evicted homeowners on the hook financially for the home they are no longer permitted to live in. What’s worse is that the banks don’t even have to inform the homeowner or the city of Detroit which no longer receives any tax revenue from the property.
Not only that, banks have been reaping huge profits in debt restructuring fees and, as added salt in the wound of a city in crisis, Republicans have ensured that these same banks will be paid in full as Detroit works to get out from under its crushing debt.
Much more after the jump.
I don’t want to beat this guy up too much since he’s just getting started and I feel compelled to wish him success in his job. He is a Democrat, after all, and I think we ALL want Detroit to do well. However, one would hope that the guy tasked with saving Detroit from its financial disaster would be a bit more detail oriented than this. It turns out Kevyn Orr has two outstanding tax liens on properties he owns in Maryland. They are related to unpaid unemployment taxes.
Details after the jump.
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