Flint Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz is leading a push to increase city income taxes by 0.5% for residents and 0.25% for non-residents. That’s a 50% increase. Why? Turns out Flint is out of money and needs revenue. It’s almost as if Flint’s problems weren’t caused by waste, fraud, and mismanagement after all.
More after the jump.
Photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog
Yesterday, Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr gave a frank State of the City report that showed that the city is “clearly insolvent”. Not a big surprise to anyone except a handful of folks who seem to think it’s all a big mistake and the city is just fine financially. For as much as I despise the concept of an unelected Emergency Manager taking over the running of a city, I do believe that Detroit will never move forward if those in charge aren’t living in the real world where even profit sharing they’ve been denied by the state isn’t enough to patch the holes in their budget.…
The Michigan township of Buena Vista, in the news recently for its racist Township Clerk, is back in the news today with the announcement that the school district has closed its doors over a month before the end of the school year. Why? Turns out the school district had taken $580,000 in state funding for a program for incarcerated youths that it no longer runs. With an outstanding bill of $400,000, the state cut off its funding and it now has no money.
The district’s 27 teachers had agreed to work without pay for a week while the district sorted out its mess but, this morning, the schools were closed.
Details after the jump.
Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts announced this morning that he’s stepping down as EM when his contract expires later this month. He said, in his mind, the crisis is over and the DPS is on its way to being financially stable.
Roberts said something else, however, that shocked those who were present. He told them that his instructions when he took the job were to “blow up the district and dismantle it”.
Click through for more.
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.)
It looks like expansion of the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) in Michigan is going to be put on hold, at least until this summer. Why? Because Republican Senator and Education Committee Chair Phil Pavlov is unhappy. Why is Phil Pavlov unhappy? Because the EAA legislation passed by the House only allows for FIFTY SCHOOLS to be taken over by the state and put into their “school district for wayward schools”. Apparently Sen. Pavlov wants to be able to take over even MORE schools than that.
Could it be because the EAA has become such a cash cow? I’ll explore this question after the jump.
A collection of stories about Detroit, Flint and the jaw-dropping stuff happening in these two cities.
Click through for the Full Monty.
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.
In a recent interview prior to assuming his new position as the Emergency Manager of Detroit, Kevyn Orr said that “everything is on the table” with regard to solving Detroit’s financial problem. Not only that, he specifically said that “everything is on the table” with regard to the future of the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department. This could include, according to Orr, sale or privatization of the department.
This would be a HUGE mistake. Click through for why sale or privatization of the department should be taken OFF the table before any further discussions take place.
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