PEOPLE & POLITICS
Chaos rules on hard city choices
BY STEPHEN HENDERSON • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • July 20, 2008
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is right:
The plan to lease out Detroit's interest in the Windsor tunnel is a smart and crafty way to get quick cash to keep the city's books in balance.
It's also a necessity with no palatable alternatives now, given that it was planned for the 2007-08 budget, which closed June 30. If the tunnel deal doesn't go through, the city faces either massive layoffs (with corresponding devastation to already strained city services) or a risky effort to float deficit reduction bonds that will come with high interest and may hurt the city's credit rating.
So, yes, City Council has got to focus on the specifics of the deal, make sure the city's getting what it deserves, that all the legal hurdles are cleared, and that there is no funny business clouding the agreement's structure.
But who's to blame for the distractions and suspicions that seem to keep crippling their efforts?
Mostly, it's the mayor, whose chronic lying and deception have the legislative branch understandably reluctant to trust him on any issue.
This is where we stand right now in Detroit, with an unimaginable, self-perpetuating standoff between the mayor and the council blocking the road to progress on at least a dozen fronts.
In the long-term, I suspect the solution involves brooming a good number of the personalities involved, and making substantive changes to the way government operates in the city.
But for now, the council and the mayor need to reach some sort of workable détente to get the tunnel deal closed and at least keep the city's most vital functions moving.
The tunnel deal should actually be one of the easier vehicles for achieving productive peace between Kilpatrick and the council.
In truth, the city's best interests leave no real choice. Failing to adopt the deal at this point means blowing a $65-million hole in the budget, one that would require some of the most drastic cuts we've ever seen, or ridiculously shortsighted borrowing.
That doesn't mean the council has to be happy about how the deal has been handled. Kilpatrick first spoke of the tunnel deal more than a year ago and proposed it as one of his many innovative budget moves. It was one of the big ideas the mayor has been so good at coming up with over his time in office.
But like so many other Kilpatrick big ideas, this one was missing the buttress-work of detail that might make it a reality.
Council didn't get a completed proposal until early spring of this year, and the administration has been slow to fully answer questions raised by council members about the deal. The low point had to be in early June, when the city's law department was asked to weigh in on whether the deal might require a ballot proposal to get citizen approval. That question should have been answered very early in the process, not with just a few weeks to go in the fiscal year whose solvency hinged on money to be produced from the deal.
Despite all the hiccups, council finally swallowed the framework for the deal a few weeks ago and voted to create the authority that would manage the lease agreement.
That vote was rescinded last week, though, after a heated public confrontation between the council and Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams, who has been riding herd on the deal.
The breakdown was not about the substance of the deal, though; it was about nastiness being exchanged between the administration and the council. Council says the mayor and his folks are crooks; the mayor's people are wondering where council has room to talk, given the prevalence of wiretaps and surveillance videos apparently monitoring the legislative branch's dealings.
In the end, who cares? The authorities will figure out who's corrupt and who's correct in city government. The tunnel deal has got to get done to keep the city financially whole.
Ultimately, nothing else matters.
Detroiters, who are already enduring enough embarrassment thanks to the stench of scandal in City Hall, don't need financial chaos to make it worse.
STEPHEN HENDERSON is deputy editorial page editor of the Free Press
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Although I have always agreed with Stephen Henderson he is WAY OFF BASE ON THIS ONE. What he doesn't realize is ......that this administration has mismanaged and stolen 100's of millions (if not billions) of Taxpayer's $$$$. To support the deal on the tunnel for any reason .....is as irresponsible as the administrations handling of the budget to begin with. What cuts have the adminstration made to reconcile the mass exodus of residents leaving the city? ALL businesses are downsizing to re-balance the workforce with sales and the economic downturn to survive.
Why hasn't the City of Detroit mad the same adjustments? How can the services get any worse than they are currently... with this over-prescribed workforce. Less residents with the same number of city workers should have improved services to those left. Insted basic services / performance is at an all time low with residency at an all time low. Stop supporting saving all these jobs because this "one time fix" is as crooked a deal ...as ALL the rest of the deals this administration has brokered.
Why doesn't everyone realize that the "lack of details and answers of the tunnel deal" are for a reason. This Authority has no intention of re-paying this loan. They want the title for the tunnel turned over to the authority so they can sell the tunnel and pocket the proceeds on their way out the door. Why should the mayor appoint anyone on the authority? This administration is pushing for another embezzelment opportunity.
Memo to CITY COUNCIL ......"DON'T DO IT" ....LEAVE THE FEW ASSETS REMAINING ALONE .....FOREVER.