Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Now It's a Race

Republicans in freak-out mode over the thought of not being able to put Detroit under an emergency manager. Strange thing is, they knew this was coming, both the money crunch and the petition to repeal PA 4... why did it take them so long to move?

A significant roadblock looms as Gov. Rick Snyder prods Detroit officials to start the wheels turning toward possible appointment of an emergency manager to take control of the city’s dire finances.

A group opposed to the law says it has already collected more than enough signatures to place the repeal of the emergency manager law on the ballot and plans to file its petitions before the end of this year. If the group submits the 161,305 required valid signatures, the law, Public Act 4, would be suspended from early next year until the November 2012 election.

If that happens, there’s disagreement over whether the former, weaker emergency manager law would go back into effect or Michigan would have no emergency manager law. What’s clear is that the toughened law Snyder and the GOP-controlled Legislature passed this spring that allows emergency managers to scrap collective bargaining agreements to slash costs would be on hold.

“This is something that could quickly burn out of control,” said Ari Adler, a spokesman for House Speaker Jase Bolger.

“It’s kind of a big unknown in terms of how bad things could get if the law is suspended or eventually repealed,” Adler said. “The suspension would be the worst of it at the beginning, because of the limbo it would cause.”

But you knew that Detroit was running a huge deficit. And you knew that by slashing revenue sharing, you were going to make it worse. And you knew that people were gathering signatures for this petition, and that the threshold was so low that they probably would succeed.

You knew all this in the spring. It's now late November. Thoughts?

And you might want to think twice about using the metaphor "burn out of control". Have a little sense of history, unless you're trying to frighten people...

Seriously dude, it's tacky.

And more: Bing unloaded on the City Council tonight, declaring, "It's time to go to war". The Council wants to lay off 2,300 employees, and a lot of those would come from police and fire. Bing wants concessions from the unions, and threatens that if they don't happen, the city will go to Chapter 9 or let Snyder send in an emergency manager.

It's all the prelude you need.