Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about the Detroit City Council.
If you live in Grand Rapids or Holland, in Flushing or even some leafy southeastern suburb, you may feel that the antics of Detroit politicians have nothing to do with you.
Well, it would hard to be more wrong. Detroit is how the rest of America sees Michigan. Yes, folks elsewhere may know about other parts of the state. Detroit, however, is our window to the world and right now, it has big problems. All sorts of people are trying to fix the economy and the auto industry. The governor has appointed an emergency financial manager to fix the schools.
We won't know for awhile to what extent any of this will succeed. We have another huge problem though, which is doing the city's image irreparable harm. That is the increasingly erratic behavior of Detroit's city council president, Monica Conyers.
Nearly everybody has followed some of this, but if you haven't, it is off the charts for bizarre political behavior, and the system doesn't seem to have a way to deal with it.
Without dwelling on the details too much, she has sworn at her colleagues and called them insulting names, abused her power and indulged in clearly racist actions and behavior. Most recently, she intervened to get a city job for her brother, a convicted felon.
He lied on his resume, was fired for not showing up for work and then was arrested and convicted again of more felonies.
When this was uncovered, Conyers at first lied and said he wasn't her brother. You would think all this would earn her a fast ticket out of government, but believe it or not, the city doesn't have a clear way to deal with this.
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's case was much simpler. Once it was revealed that he had engaged in conduct that was criminal in nature, you knew that while the wheels of justice might grind slowly, it would be just a matter of time. Once you had a conviction, he was gone.
Most elected bodies have a way of dealing those who are beyond redemption. A few years ago, when Macomb County State Senator David Jaye began exhibiting problems that included alcohol, pornography and guns, it was a fairly simple matter for his colleagues to expel him from office. But there is no easy way of getting rid of Monica Conyers, or of ensuring she won't be reelected.
And very few people know the reason why. No, it has nothing to do with race. The fault is in the city charter, adopted back when most of the city's voters were white. It doesn't provide any clear way for council to remove anybody. And the way Detroit's council is elected is just as bad. They are all elected at large.
That means the harried voters pick nine names they know out of a pool of hundreds. Conyers has a famous name, so they keep reelecting her. Hopefully, Detroiters will do better this year, and hopefully their new mayor, whomever he is, will push for charter reform.
We've got enough problems without the added burden of being the laughingstock of the world.
If I am not mistaken, David Jaye fell victim to the kind of term limits that Jack Lessenberry likes; Jaye was mostly humiliated in the press, and then a mostly literate, informed electorate ended Jaye's political career by electing his opponent.
What is so confounding to the residents "in Grand Rapids or Holland, in Flushing or even some leafy southeastern suburb," (as Jack writes) is that that form of electoral correction seems to be completely lacking in the City of Detroit.
Someone please explain.
Posted by: Anonymous | April 13, 2009 at 01:02 PM
David Jaye was expelled by the Senate with only one dissenting vote.
Posted by: Jack Lessenberry | April 13, 2009 at 09:13 PM
Whenever a white person or white pundit claims "this is not about race"...I know now it is ....
Posted by: Thrasher | April 14, 2009 at 11:24 AM