Downfall of the Motor City
Lessons for Detroit in a City’s Takeover
By STEVEN YACCINO, NYT
PONTIAC, Mich. — The mayor here has no decision-making power. The City Council still holds meetings every Thursday night, though no official business can be conducted. Afterward, the council members are locked out of City Hall until morning, escorted from the building by a janitor.
As Detroit, a major American city in financial disarray, braces for what oversight by an emergency manager appointed by the State of Michigan may soon mean, one need look no further than Pontiac, a place that has been guided by emergency managers for the past four years. Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration is expected on Thursday to announce an emergency manager for Detroit.
A variety of oversight boards and receivers have stepped in — with mixed results — when the nation’s cities have teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. In Michigan alone, 21 emergency managers have been assigned to save cities and other government entities in the last quarter century, but few places have seen change as sweeping as that in Pontiac.
Unfettered by normal checks, balances and the pressures of getting re-elected, emergency managers here have overhauled labor contracts, sold off city assets and privatized nearly every service Pontiac once provided to citizens. Its police force has been outsourced to the county. Its Fire Department belongs to a nearby township. The city’s payroll, once numbering more than 600 workers, now amounts to about 50 public employees. Even parking meters have been sold. All this, and more cuts may be coming, all on the way to balancing the books.
(More here.)
PONTIAC, Mich. — The mayor here has no decision-making power. The City Council still holds meetings every Thursday night, though no official business can be conducted. Afterward, the council members are locked out of City Hall until morning, escorted from the building by a janitor.
As Detroit, a major American city in financial disarray, braces for what oversight by an emergency manager appointed by the State of Michigan may soon mean, one need look no further than Pontiac, a place that has been guided by emergency managers for the past four years. Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration is expected on Thursday to announce an emergency manager for Detroit.
A variety of oversight boards and receivers have stepped in — with mixed results — when the nation’s cities have teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. In Michigan alone, 21 emergency managers have been assigned to save cities and other government entities in the last quarter century, but few places have seen change as sweeping as that in Pontiac.
Unfettered by normal checks, balances and the pressures of getting re-elected, emergency managers here have overhauled labor contracts, sold off city assets and privatized nearly every service Pontiac once provided to citizens. Its police force has been outsourced to the county. Its Fire Department belongs to a nearby township. The city’s payroll, once numbering more than 600 workers, now amounts to about 50 public employees. Even parking meters have been sold. All this, and more cuts may be coming, all on the way to balancing the books.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Detroit is a good example (lesson) of what happens when those on the left side of the aisle (politicians, public and private labor unions and the 'enlighted' class) are able to impliment their ideas with little or no counter balance.
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