This first “adult” mayor that Detroit has had in over 30 years or more; and the city still cannot agree on a budget.
The Story via The Detroit Free Press:
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing abruptly ended budget negotiations Tuesday with the City Council, promising to move forward with the elimination of summer festivals, hundreds of police and firefighter layoffs, ending Sunday bus service and closing the People Mover and rec centers.
Bing said he doesn’t believe the council is earnest about a compromise by the Thursday deadline.
“The time for talk is over,” he said. “It’s going to be painful.”
Earlier in the day, the council voted 7-2 to reject a compromise by the mayor that would have restored $30 million to the 2011-12 spending plan. Last month, the council cut $50 million to pay down the city’s deficit.
Council members expressed shock that Bing wouldn’t agree to a counter-compromise to restore $20 million in cuts to bus service and public safety.
“It’s irresponsible and immature,” Council President Charles Pugh said. “It’s like the mayor is mad and left the marbles at the playground. People in the city are going to be hurt because of these kinds of games. What is so important to the mayor that he can’t get this done?”
Unless the mayor budges or the council gives in to the Bing compromise, Bing will begin making cuts Friday that will affect thousands of Detroiters and many suburban residents.
Popular gatherings at Hart Plaza — the Downtown Hoedown, African World Festival, Ribs ‘n’ Soul and the techno bash Movement — would end. The city would lose homicide investigators and police patrolling the streets; swimming pools wouldn’t open, and park grass would stay uncut, Bing said.
The Detroit Free Press, which is a very liberally biased paper; gives a few son stories of people that will end up moving away, if the council does not get their way. To whom I say, you may as well move anyway, this town’s better days are behind it and it will not get better.
This story here, ought to be a textbook example of full on socialism does not work, at all. In times of economic prosperity, socialism and capitalism can co-exist, when the economy falters, the results are disastrous. In fairness to the City of Detroit, they went through this before; in the late 1970’s, when Coleman A. Young was Mayor of the city. Except, this time, things are much more bleak for the city and our Nation.
That being said even the Detroit Free Press Editors see that the writing is on the proverbial wall in Detroit:
For employees who have already taken pay cuts and seen the city’s workforce pared back, it must seem like the ultimate unfairness: Detroit Mayor Dave Bing says he needs deeper union concessions just to keep the state from imposing an emergency financial manager.
The reality is, both sides are right. Many employees can’t afford to pay more for their health care or contribute to their retirement. In a city (and region) already beaten down by the last decade of recession, these kinds of changes won’t help reverse economic trends.
But the city is also broke, and health care and pension costs are among the biggest drivers. Detroit has 22,000 retirees and 11,000 employees whose pension plans require no contribution. Those pension plans also carry steep requirements from taxpayers to maintain them — including unrealistic growth rates set by contract.
The city also pays more than 80% of health care costs for employees, and up to 90% in most cases.
It seems unlikely that the unions will even bargain, let alone give concessions by the Sept. 1 deadline Bing has set. What’s their incentive?
From their perspective, if Bing is telling the truth and the state will have to take over if concessions aren’t granted, it’s better to have an emergency manager impose the changes than to give them away at the bargaining table.
And if Bing isn’t being truthful, then calling his bluff counts as a union victory.
Union leadership can afford, in this case, to stand firm.
But that also underestimates the city’s dire financial situation. Cooperating with Bing, and negotiating around the margins of his proposal, could help put the city back on good economic footing.
Here is hoping that the city council and the city’s many unions leaders listen to this advice; which, by the way, I suggest you read the rest of that, as it is interesting reading.
This writer is old enough to remember the last major recession, which affected Detroit up till the late 1980’s. The last time this happened, Detroit had a “tough-as-nails” Mayor, who took no guff from people who got in his way and was able to pull Detroit out of a full scale nose dive. Here is hoping that bing has that same toughness in him. Because any way you look at this; it is going to be bad for ALL parties involved.
This Posting was crafted on my Apple iPod using WordPress Mobile Admin (Too Cool!)