Rescuing Detroit always sounds good in the abstract.
We talk big about the need for improved services, more competent and committed leadership, a climate that is friendly to businesses, families and career-oriented young professionals alike. Likewise, we get off on tossing around words like "regional cooperation," on prodding an uncreative political class to think outside the box, on hurriedly crafting ill-thought-out responses to long-standing structural issues.
But when it comes to the simpler acts of investing in Detroit -- to aligning our wallets with our words -- far too many individuals and institutions in and around this town try to deny the city every tax cent they can.
That point is underscored in a Detroit News report showing unpaid property taxes on nearly half the city's more than 300,000 land parcels. And while a good portion of lax tax collection can be attributed to the overwhelming number of poor folks in the city, it's clear that a number of taxpayers in Detroit simply don't think they should have to pony up.
"Why pay taxes?" asked Fred Phillips, who owes more than $2,600 on his home on an east-side block where five owners paid 2011 taxes. "Why should I send them taxes when they aren't supplying services? It is sickening. . . . Every time I see the tax bill come, I think about the times we called and nobody came."
Believe me when I say I understand the sentiment. I know intimately what it means to live in neighborhoods where police response is lax, if even they come at all; where grim-looking blocks are made all the more menacing by streetlights that don't shine; where libraries sit closed while liquor stores and dope houses flourish; where children receive educations that would barely make them competitive in the 19th Century.
I know how hard it is to convince yourself that these places deserve even one more buck of the taxes deducted from hard-earned paychecks, especially when there are so many around you who don't get paychecks or pay their share of tax dollars.
As a nation, we celebrate patriotism and freedom on July 4. And we exercise that freedom each November on Election Day. But it's on April 15, Tax Day, that Americans get their best chance to really show just how much of a damn they give about keeping the nation's engine purring.
That same attitude applies to states and local municipalities, too. It's not enough to bitch and moan about Detroit's problems -- or even to hope and wish for a better day. Sacrifices have to be made. And that means taxes have to be paid.
Increasingly, though, we don't want to. And that's also part of what helped push us here, beyond the brink of fiscal trouble and into the heart of a full-blown municipal disaster. Where other cities receive as much as 77 percent of their general fund revenues from property taxes, property levies account for less than 15 percent of Detroit's general fund.
And it's not just the little guy who's struggling, or unwilling, to pay.
How much healthier would this city be if the banks that owned so many of the abandoned properties around Detroit paid what they owe? What more could we do if institutions like 36th District Court -- which is owed more than $250 million -- were able to collect more than a piddling 7.7 percent of what it is due for infractions?
What would it do for the city's financial outlook if so-called "city fathers" like Mike Illitch -- who reportedly owed more than $971,000 in back taxes on Joe Louis Arena and Cobo Hall -- decided to stop hiding behind lawyers and accountants and actually made timely payments on their obligations? What if Illitch -- instead of asking a cash-strapped city and struggling state to build sports arenas for him so he can avoid paying property taxes on any new venue of his own -- went ahead and paid the city the millions in cable revenues he's owed since 1980?
What if the state didn't renege on promises of revenue sharing? What if city employees still had to live within the city limits -- and pay property taxes -- as they did before the local residency laws were repealed?
What if we realized that the real commitment to Detroit isn't measured in great speeches about comebacks or angry fists shaken at potential emergency managers or half-ass policies that make those emergency managers a reality in the first place?
Sure, we need responsible politicos who know when to slash and save and exercise fiscal common sense. And yes, we need socially aware leaders who know that Detroit can't rebound by merely trying to balance its budget on the backs of a largely poor populace.
But just as importantly, when it comes to the tax-eligible institutions and individuals who thumb their noses at the idea of actually kicking in on levies, the city of Detroit needs to adopt the attitude of my man Paulie Cicero, the mob boss from the movie GoodFellas, who never met an excuse for nonpayment that he could digest.
Yes, it's OK to complain about poor city services. (Hell, it's not just OK, it's vital.) It's fair to wonder aloud -- and with great skepticism -- about where your tax dollars go. And yes, it makes a great deal of sense to say the city needs to overhaul its tax system to ensure that it's fair and accurate and modernized and efficient. After all, Detroiters don't just owe the city. The city owes them as well.
But at some point, people still gotta pay.
Tax revenue is any city's lifeblood. if Detroit is really going to climb out of its financial morass, it has to get much more serious about going after those who owe. Nothing gets better without that tax money. Even for all of Detroit's failures, any hope of a comeback is predicated on the idea that its citizens have to invest, in the overworked cops, in the thinned-out fire department, in the perpetually dim streetlights, in the bad schools.
So bitch about corrupt leaders, redundant departments and incompetent bureaucrats. Bitch, protest, demand reform. But if you can pay -- and most certainly if you're some aged billionaire or fish-grease-slick politician or well-connected entrepreneur you can-- don't think the city's woes and incompetence really makes it OK for you to dodge your tax debts while honest others try.
As Paulie Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas would say: "Pay up!"
But he'd hardly say it as nicely.
