In a Maccabees Building studio near Wayne State where Soupy Sales once hosted his iconic children’s program, Gov. Rick Snyder announced Friday he will appoint an emergency manager to oversee Detroit’s finances.
The governor did not ask children watching his televised remarks to take those "green pieces of paper" out of their parents' wallets and send them to Detroit, as Soupy famously did in 1965. Nor did anyone take a pie to the face.
That’s kind of too bad.
In a process that has seen officials borrow money to mask deficits, City Council challenge a consent agreement they had just agreed to, and state voters overturning emergency manager laws only to see their elected legislators reinstate emergency manager laws, a couple pies to the face wouldn’t have been out of place.
That's not to say there wasn’t some absurd stagecraft Friday. Snyder’s town hall announcement, which featured questions from a studio audience ostensibly made up of members of the public.
Funny thing about the “public” gathered to hear Snyder, they were remarkably well dressed for your average 2013 American. They ranged in age mostly from middle-age to "active senior." It's doubtful anyone in that room is dependent on DDOT to get to work. There were also a disproportionate number of ministers in the audience, again proving that politics in Detroit, like Tehran, leans theological, with relatively similar results.
One of these men of God, pondering a city unable to balance its books, with billions in accumulated debt, and facing the prospect of state control, felt moved by the Spirit to ask Snyder if the eventual EM would hire local contractors. Because the biggest issue isn’t who will control Detroit’s destiny or if the police will come when Detroiters call, but whether or not the operators who are in business to do business with local government will lose their place at the trough.
That question, more than any bit of financial data, best explains why some kind of state takeover was inevitable for Detroit. Far too many view city government, not as the deliverer of necessary public services, but as a mechanism to provide lucrative contracts and deals.
The emergency manager may be an imperfect vehicle for reforming governance in Detroit, and the politics behind the new law are certainly unseemly, but let’s not pretend this town doesn’t need—to quote Jack Nicholson’s Joker—an enema.
The city’s financial woes are bad, no question, but the actions and attitudes that led Detroit to the brink of bankruptcy are even worse.
The best thing that could happen for Detroit, no matter how unseemly you may view the EM process, is for the city to emerge from emergency manager control in 18 months—like a post-bankruptcy GM—not only leaner, but with fresh leadership and a refocused sense of purpose.
