MICHIGAN MOVES TO TAKE OVER DETROIT, OTHER MAJORITY-BLACK CITIES; COUNCILWOMAN WATSON SETS PLANNING MEETING DEC. 9, 6 PM

 

• INVOKES “DICTATOR ACT” PA 4 AGAINST DETROIT, LARGEST BLACK-MAJORITY CITY IN WORLD OUTSIDE AFRICA
• Councilwoman JoAnn Watson demands right to self-determination
• Chokwe Lumumba calls move part of world-wide colonialism 

By Diane Bukowski 

Dec. 2, 2011 

Detroit – Detroit’s leaders are standing united against Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s announcement that he will begin a 30-day review of this 86 percent Black city’s finances under Public Act 4 (PA4), known variously as the “Local Government and School District Financial Accountability Act” and “The Dictator Act.” 

Snyder has initiated such reviews exclusively in other majority Black cities across Michigan. They have invariably led to the appointment of an emergency manager (EM). The EM has the absolute power to disincorporate the city, sell its assets, remove its elected leaders, privatize or eliminate services, and break union contracts, among other measures. 

“Detroit is the largest majority Black city in the world, outside of Africa,” Detroit attorney George Washington noted significantly at a Dec. 1 forum on PA 4. 

Snyder’s main excuse for the review, to begin Dec. 6, is the city’s current alleged $150 million deficit. The deficit results largely from the fact that the city has paid $529 million on its debt to the banks in 2011 alone, half of that in interest, according to a recent financial report by Ernst & Young.  While Snyder and other government officials have demanded that workers sacrifice, they have made no demand for the banks to come to the table. 

“It was the law in the United States that Africans were three-fifths of a person, that we could not vote, could not own property,” said Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson during a public hearing Dec. 1. “It was against the law for us to escape from slavery, but it was the unpaid slavery of Africans on which this country was built. We have the right to self-determination and freedom, the right to control our own destiny. No way in heaven are we going to let somebody come in from Lansing and take our city.” 

Watson added that Snyder was moving quickly to take Detroit over before a referendum campaign against PA 4 freezes the act. The Michigan Forward Coalition of labor, community and religious leaders has said it will have enough signatures to do so by mid-December. Once the signatures are certified, the act is held in abeyance until the Nov. 2012 election. Michiganders are expected to vote overwhelmingly against PA 4 then. 

Coalition members said they are stepping up their efforts to gather the remaining signatures during a rally Dec. 2. Coalition founder Brandon Jessup was interviewed by WDET’s Rob St. Mary (http://wdet.org/news/story/AntiEFMInterview/). He noted particularly that the cities of Jackson and Allen Park in Michigan, which are a majority white, actually petitioned the state for an emergency manager but were turned down.

 The coalition’s website is http://michiganforward.org/.

Snyder and State Treasurer Andy Dillon, who initiated the takeover move after failing to get the Mayor and City Council to ask for an EM, ignored its racial implications. 

Their representatives did not respond to requests from this reporter for explanations regarding why only the majority Black cities of Benton Harbor, Detroit, Ecorse, Flint, Inkster and Pontiac have been hit with PA 4, as well as the majority Black school districts of Detroit and Highland Park. 

Dozens of majority-white cities and school districts in Michigan are in deficit, but they have not yet been subjected to the PA 4 plantation owner’s lash. 

“It is critical that we work and move forward together in these tough and challenging times,” Gov. Snyder said in a statement. “Unity – not division – is the way to ensure that we can collectively and collaboratively ensure a revitalized, strong and successful Detroit and Michigan. We stand ready to be a supportive, constructive resource.” 

State Treasurer Andy Dillon was the official who initiated the action, since PA 4 does not allow the governor himself to do so. 

Among other alleged violations of PA 4, including the city’s low Wall Street bond rating, Dillon cited, “An ongoing inability of the executive and legislative branches of the city government to work cooperatively in respect to the financial management of the city; the existence of recurring operating deficits that essentially have been beyond the ability of city officials to resolve; and the imminent likelihood that the city will deplete its cash during the spring of 2012.” 

His last contention was based on a cash flow report by the global accounting firm Ernst & Young, which the firm’s representatives discussed in a closed session with the Mayor and Council, in violation of the state’s Open Meetings Act, on Oct. 26. 

The states of New York and New Jersey have lawsuits pending against Ernst & Young which contend  the firm collaborated in cooking Lehman Brothers’ books before its downfall and the resulting 2008 Wall Street mortgage meltdown. 

The Snyder-Dillon move follows on the heels of a Sept. 9 order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Sean Cox  that severely diminishes the city’s control of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, the third largest such facility in the country, and Detroit’s most valuable asset, serving 436 communities in eight counties. It has never run a deficit and has AAA bond ratings. Cox is a right-wing Federalist appointed by President George W. Bush. 

Mayor Dave Bing, most Council members, and community, business, labor and religious leaders trounced the Snyder-Dillon contentions during a joint press conference on the evening of Dec. 1, particularly Dillon‘s assertion that the executive and legislative branches of the city could not cooperate. They pointed to other ways the state could support the city if it wanted a “collaborative” relationship. 

 “We’ve asked the state to see what they can do about the $220 million owed to the city of Detroit that helped put us in this position in the first place,” Bing said. “Also we’ve requested the state’s assistance in the collection of the city’s income taxes, a service Lansing could provide that would help us collect approximately $155 million in additional revenue on an annual basis. This is our city. We are Detroit. Detroit needs to be run by Detroiters. We know what needs to be done and we stand ready to do it.” 

Councilwoman Watson first raised the demand for the $220 million payment from the state, due since a 1998 agreement between former Mayor Dennis Archer and former Governor John Engler. In exchange for reducing the city’s income taxes, particularly on non-residents and businesses, Engler agreed to increase its state revenue sharing amounts but never did. 

Councilwoman Watson said the total loss to the city under that agreement has been $580 million. Snyder has so far refused to honor the debt.

 Mayor Bing’s adoption of her demand apparently triggered Snyder’s invocation of PA 4.  Previously, Snyder and Bing had cooperated in drafting the Act, according to a lawsuit filed by a top aide to Bing after he fired her earlier this year. 

Jackson, Mississippi City Council member Chokwe Lumumba called Snyder’s attack on Detroit, Jackson and Gary, Indiana a continuation of colonialism. He was the featured speaker at a forum called by Concerned Teachers United the evening of Dec. 1. 

“Colonialism is our problem right here in America, as Malcolm X said in his last speech in Detroit, before his murder,” Lumumba said.  Lumumba, a nationally-renowned attorney, co-founded the Republic of New Africa in Detroit in the 1960’s, and currently leads the Malcolm X Grass Roots Movement. Most recently he headed the successful effort to free the Scott Sisters. 

“Rich, greedy people use any kind of apparatus they can to subjugate poor people;” he added/ “They will bomb and kill people around the world as they did in Libya, which had a higher literacy rate than the United States, and where they killed Africa’s hero Muammar Gadhafi. It is a phenomenon, not a person. President [Barack] Obama is also part of this phenomenon. The answer to colonialism is self-determination, and we must instill that belief in our youth.” 

Gov. Snyder, Mayor Bing and most of the City Council originally sought to lay the blame for the city’s alleged economic crisis on the backs of its majority Black workers. Bing called for 1,000 lay-offs while the Council wanted 2,300, in addition to numerous other cutbacks in health insurance and pension benefits. 

The Council voted 6-3 Nov. 29 to cut retirees’ annual “13^th check,” a small amount paid from excess earnings on their own pension funds’ investments. 

It was largely due to the indefatigable efforts of Councilwoman Watson that the majority of the Council joined with the Mayor and labor leaders in the Dec. 1 press conference. After his statement, Bing brought Watson to the podium next. She said angrily, “It is outrageous that a state which has its own deficit in a country that has its own deficit has the nerve to be point fingers at our city.” 

Watson along with attorney Herbert Sanders of AFSCME Council 25 organized the first mass labor and community protest against PA 4 legislation at the state capitol in Lansing in February. 

She pressed for the public hearing the morning of Dec. 1, during which union leaders and city workers presented numerous ways that the city could solve its financial problems without forcing the workers into further sacrifice. 

Ed McNeil, executive assistant to Al Garrett, President of Michigan Council 25 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and attorney Richard Mack presented a joint report from many of the city’s unions to the Council. 

The report cites the costly practice of contracting out city work for the profits of corporations, many of whom are not withholding city income taxes from their workers or paying corporate taxes to the city. It says nearly $637 million is spent from the city’s general fund alone on expenses that likely go to contractors. It calls for the establishment of a general database of all contracts to allow city and union officials to examine whether they are necessary or productive. 

(Click on Labor to CC_smaller to read full report.)

McNeil said, “The media is saying the unions have not been to the table. We have been to the table and brought cost savings ideas year after year to city administrations.” 

He called for the city to dump Blue Cross Blue Shield as its health care administrator, and instead make agreements with major Detroit-based hospital chains to offer workers the option of signing directly with the chains for their medical care, instead of going through insurance companies, for a savings of $14 million. 

The unions also called for the city to participate in the AFL-CIO Employer Purchasing Coalition (AEPC) to reduce prescription drug costs. It has so far refused to do so. 

Bing’s Budget & Unions: Attorney Richard Mack, Junior’s Views: MyFoxDETROIT.com

“This would mean an annual savings of $19 million for AFSCME members’ drugs only,” Attorney Mack said. “AFSCME workers are only 22 percent of the payroll. The savings would amount to $86 million for the entire city.” 

Mack also said the state could underwrite portions of the city’s debt, lessening payments because of the city’s poor credit ratings. He added that the city could sell or give away the 60,000 parcels of vacant land it owns to families who need homes, which would bring in at least $1,000 per home in property taxes, or $60 million. 

City Council members reacted with astonishment to city income tax collector Michelle Wesley’s description of how corporations rob the city blind. 

“If we were able to do our jobs the correct way, we probably could bring city out of deficit,” Wesley said. 

“Everybody who owns businesses in the city of Detroit is not on our tax rolls; they are reporting nothing to us. Most corporations who do report say they owe zero dollars. Workers are telling us that their employers are taking cash from them for city taxes, but never turning it in. Lawyers who do work in our courts, athletes from Detroit as well as outside teams who play in town, and even the news media, Channel 2 and 4 and 7 are here on the City of Detroit’s clock and are supposed to be paying taxes but are not. Then there are the landlords who allow their properties to go into foreclosure and buy them back at auction for a fraction of the taxes.” 

Yolanda Langston, president of Local 517M of the Service Employees International Union, suggested that the city charge a fee to banks to register their thousands of foreclosed properties in Detroit, and be fined for neglect and blight on the properties. 

“We need to increase blight fines for property management companies, and millionaires like Matty Moroun who own a lot of blighted properties,” Langston said. “One day when I was insouthwest Detroit doing an inspection, I saw a truck doing illegal dumping on a vacant lot. I told the driver I was in the process of calling 911, but he said, ‘I own this property and all these others around here.’ Others are doing this. We need to hold these folks accountable.”

Councilwoman Watson set a meeting to plan the fightback against the state takeover for Friday, Dec. 9 at 6 p.m. in her office. For further information, call her office at 313-224-4535.