State Senator Phil Pavlov said this is needed to maintain “vital services, such as public safety and education,” when a city or a school district is in desperate financial straits.
This reform, he said, is necessary to allow steps to be taken “to protect public interests and the public’s money and strengthen local control and accountability.” His fellow Republicans all agreed.
But if you talked to any of the Democrats, they sounded like this was the equivalent of Mussolini seizing power. “An unfair and unjustified power grab,“ Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer called it. One of her colleagues said it went way too far, “and was going to damage our communities and our schools.”
Well, you could say that it is nice to see that our time-honored tradition of bitter partisan divisions is alive and well, but I think the opposite. We’ve had four sterile years of that in Lansing. I think we’d all be better off if this could have been a bipartisan bill.
It’s also frustratingly clear that in the past, some emergency managers in places like Pontiac and Hamtramck could have used more authority. Robert Bobb needed to be able to tackle academic reform in the Detroit district; the courts said he couldn’t.
Now, his successor will have that power. Democrats are mainly afraid of provisions in the bill that would allow emergency managers to void contracts and ignore collective bargaining agreements if necessary. EFMs can even dissolve a municipal government.
Democrats rightly fear this could be the death knell for public employee unions in such cases. To be sure, the majority Republicans seemed uninterested in even attempting to compromise or win over Democrats. However, here’s something we might ask the indignant minority party: Where have you been for the last several years?
What’s clear is that a lot more school districts and municipalities are likely to have to endure emergency financial managers, or EFMs for short.
This has been clear to everyone for some time, and it has also been clear that the old law was inadequate. Did the Democrats propose changes last year, when they controlled the governorship and the state house? Did they suggest conducting a review of Detroit’s troubled finances?
They did not, clearly for political reasons. They did nothing, any more than they attempted to address the state’s deep-seated financial problems. Now, the balance of power has shifted.
What’s needed now is a little more common sense and a little less hysteria. As I read this law, EFMs will now be appointed by the state treasurer, not the governor. And the man now in that job, Andy Dillon, happens to be a Democrat. He also has the ability to grant local officials most of the powers emergency managers have.
If emergency managers are appointed who gleefully begin dissolving contracts for sheer ideological reasons, there’s bound to be plenty of public criticism, and a backlash, as witness Wisconsin.
What’s needed now is the means and goodwill to keep financially strapped governments functioning, and, especially, to educate kids, no matter what.
If everyone keeps that in mind, we’ll all be better off.
Clarification -- and thanks to Daric Thorne for bringing this to my attention
I may have spoken in error here about who would appoint EFMs, though the Snyder administration was talking as if the treasurer would appoint EFMs. This language does still remain in the bill passed by the Senate:
***
The governor may delegate his or her duties under this
section to the state treasurer
***
And it would indeed not surprise me if the governor did not have the treasurer make such appointments, to take the political heat off himself. Of course, the treasurer serves at the pleasure of the governor, and would be unlikely to make an appointment of which the governor disapproved.
We'll now have to see what actually happens!
JL
Posted by: Bucca | March 11, 2011 at 08:10 PM
The governor of Michigan already has sweeping emergency powers, under Act 191 of 1982.
http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?mcl-Act-191-of-1982
including these powers from MCL 10.84
http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?mcl-10-84
During an energy emergency, the governor may do all of the following:
(a) Order specific restrictions on the use and sale of energy resources. Restrictions imposed by the governor under this subdivision may include:
(i) Restrictions on the interior temperature of public, commercial, industrial, and school buildings.
(ii) Restrictions on the hours and days during which public, commercial, industrial, and school buildings may be open.
(iii) Restrictions on the conditions under which energy resources may be sold to consumers.
(iv) Restrictions on lighting levels in public, commercial, industrial, and school buildings.
(v) Restrictions on the use of display and decorative lighting.
(vi) Restrictions on the use of privately owned vehicles or a reduction in speed limits.
(vii) Restrictions on the use of public transportation including directions to close a public transportation facility.
(viii) Restrictions on the use of pupil transportation programs operated by public schools.
Posted by: Ed Vielmetti | March 13, 2011 at 09:42 PM