If Michigan actually WAS a corporation with Rick Snyder as its CEO, it would have gone bankrupt years ago…
Rick Snyder sold voters on the idea that (a) government should be run like a business and (b) that he’s the perfect CEO to do that. We now have ample evidence that government should NOT be run like a business. And, this morning, we got further evidence that he’s not only the wrong CEO to do that, he’s the worst CEO period:
The state transportation department says it’s struck a deal with a railway company that allows it to stop making costly lease payments for passenger railcars it is not using, while still assuring the cars will be available if planned commuter services in southeastern Michigan ever gets going.
But critics say the Michigan Department of Transportation’s move has made a bad deal worse by giving up equity in the double-decker railcars they have spent millions of dollars improving.
The state already has invested more than $10 million in the 1950s and ’60s-era railcars that Great Lakes Central Railroad purchased for about $114,000 each in 2004. But under its latest agreement with the railroad, MDOT won’t be entitled to any compensation in the event one or more of the cars is sold, unless each sells for a purchase price above $900,000 — a price some railway experts say is unlikely.
Not only has our state invested over $10 million in these railcars that they have never used, they are now giving them away along with all of that equity as part of a terrible business deal in order to end expensive payments for railcars that are sitting idle.
CEOs are supposed to be good at making business deals. They are supposed to invest their shareholders’ money wisely, earning a decent return on their investment. Instead, Gov. Snyder’s administration has done neither. Even if you believed that it is a good idea to run government like a business (it’s not), this sort of poor leadership ought to disqualify him from running any business, much less an entire state.
But then those of us who voted for Virg Bernero in 2010 and for Mark Schauer in 2014 already knew that.
[Caricature by DonkeyHotey from photos by Anne C. Savage for Eclectablog]
