Impatience is not a virtue
[Caricature by DonkeyHotey from photos by Anne C. Savage for Eclectablog, not for reuse.]
Anyone paying attention to Detroit’s plight knows that their current financial crisis goes back for decades. Housing policies that favored white flight to the suburbs, the decline of the oh-so-important-to-Detroit auto manufacturing industry and the Great Recession have all taken their toll on this aging manufacturing city. Years of neglect and a blind eye toward investment in our state’s largest city have created a perfect storm that has resulted in it a huge chunk of its population. Many of those that remain do so only because they are too desperately poor to escape.
Despite this, Governor Rick Snyder and his administration are giving up on a consent agreement signed with the city last year after only 10 months. The agreement, signed in April of 2012, simply didn’t solve problems that have been in the making since the middle of the last century quickly enough for these Republicans so tomorrow Governor Snyder is expected to appoint Washington, D.C. lawyer Kevyn Orr to be the new overseer of the city.
Gov. Rick Snyder will hold a news conference in Detroit Thursday afternoon to announce his decision on an emergency financial manager for Michigan’s largest city, his office said Wednesday.The 2 p.m. announcement at Cadillac Place will detail Snyder’s decision and what the next steps are for the city, Sara Wurfel told the Free Press. She did not say whether Snyder planned to appoint an emergency financial manager.
Snyder is widely expected to name Kevyn Orr, 54, a Washington, D.C., lawyer and University of Michigan graduate, as emergency financial manager, as Freep.com first reported Monday night. {…}
The Emergency Financial Assistance Loan Board, which makes the formal appointment of an emergency financial manager under Public Act 72 of 1990, has scheduled a meeting in Lansing at 3 p.m. Thursday, the state Treasurer’s office announced late Wednesday.
Given the track record of Emergency Managers in Michigan, there are very few people who believe this is going to solve the problems our beloved city faces. Perhaps Orr is a magician that can somehow find a way to build armed only with tools of cutting and slashing. Somehow I doubt it.
My prediction: after the corporatists and their business pals have extracted as much wealth as they possibly can from Detroit, the city will end up in a managed bankruptcy anyway. But, by then, it will be much, much too late.
