On Monday, Michigan Democrat David Knezek introduced Senate Bill 734. The bill contains a single sentence: The local financial stability and choice act, 2012 PA 436, MCL 141.1541 to 141.1575, is repealed. Wouldn’t it be beautiful if the entire anti-democratic failed experiment known as Michigan’s Emergency Manager law, a law and policy that has done so much harm to our […]

Darnell Earley, the former Flint Emergency Manager and current Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager will resign on February 29th according to a statement released by Gov. Snyder this morning on the state website. Earley, who has denied he was responsible for any of the problems in Flint or Detroit Schools, is quoted in the statement as basically saying, “Mission Accomplished”: […]

The outrageous working/learning environment in some of Detroit school buildings has gotten national and even international attention over the past few months. Over the past month, teachers have staged multiple “sick-outs” to protest the deplorable conditions they are forced to try to teach in, resulting in multiple school closings. Detroit Public Schools (DPS) Emergency Manager Darnell Earley has tried twice […]

One of the reasons I have written about Emergency Management in Michigan ad nauseum is because I contend that we are the testing ground for this anti-democratic move in state governments, the “beta testers”, if you will. With the evidence now in and showing it to be a colossal failure, other states are still moving forward with it. Indiana was […]

NOTE: It’s fundraising week at Eclectablog. If you find value in what we do here, please consider making a donation to ensure that all our regular contributors can be paid for their creative work. Click HERE for details. Thanks so much. – Chris On April 16, 2013, Flint Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz signed an agreement on behalf of the city […]

Journalism is defined as “the activity or job of collecting, writing, and editing news stories for newspapers, magazines, television, or radio.” In this new media age, you can add blogs and podcasts and other online news sources to that, as well. It is my firm belief that journalism – TRUE journalism – goes farther than that: it is a necessary […]

No Snyder administration officials will be held accountable. And that’s exactly the problem. At long last, after activists and elected officials and even bloggers like LOLGOP and I have been sounding the alarm about the poisoning of Flint residents with lead in their drinking water, the story has finally hit the national stage. In the past week, in addition to […]

As the water crisis has unfolded in Flint over the past few months, there has been an enormous amount of finger pointing and blame shifting going around. Just this week, Darnell Earley wrote an op-ed piece for The Detroit News absolving himself of any of that blame, despite the fact that he or one of his predecessors was in charge […]

In April of 2014, under the direction of Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, the City changed the source of its drinking water from the Detroit water system (drawing from Lake Huron) to the Flint River. The move was touted as a cost-saving measure which would save $7 million annually. However, there were problems from the start. High levels of bacteria […]

The primary justification for Emergency Financial Managers or Emergency Managers in Michigan from the very earliest iterations (and continuing through to today) is that some cities and school districts were just too full of corruption and ineptitude and that the state needed to swoop in and save the day. However, this easy answer has turned out not have been the […]

In 1999, the Detroit Public School system had a positive fund balance of $246,300,000 according to a ten-year summary in their 2008 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (pages 91-92). That was the same year that the DPS was taken over by the State of Michigan under Republican John Engler. The school district was placed under the control of an Emergency Financial […]