Detroit City Charter Commission

by: DetroitSkeptic

Tue Jul 14, 2009 at 22:27:03 PM EDT

( - promoted by ScottyUrb)

Of the officesDetroiterscan vote for in August the Charter Commission is arguably the most important. But there doesn't seemto be much info about the candidates, or their policy positions anywhere.

The biggest issue is Council by Districts. That would be an improvement, which isn't saying much. There's some talk about ethics, and also some about "updating charter language." However I do not know what that means. An independant ethics board? An ethics czar? Some nice-sounding, but toothless, BS? What charter language needs to be updated? Why?

So I'd like this diary and it's comments section to be a first step in fixing that problem.

DetroitSkeptic :: Detroit City Charter Commission

Detroit will have primary elections for Charter Commission, City Council, and Mayor in a few weeks. Voters know something about the Council candidates, and the only Mayoral candidate of any stature seems to be Dave Bing, but the Charter Commission is under the RADAR. This is probably exactly backwards.

Council and the Mayor are up for reelection in four years. But the Charter Commission's decisions will be binding for the foreseeable future. The last one was decades ago, and the one before that was apparently elected in 1918.

It's very difficult to get a copy of the City Charter. I saw one once, in a lawyer's office. The lawyer told me the only way to get a copy was go to the City Clerk, and that they were so rare they were individually numbered. So ideally the new Charter will include a requirement that it be available on the web.

I'd like changes a little more drastic than most of the candidates propose. Most of them seem to think six or seven districts would be fine. Unfortunately That means each Council member represents 100,000-200,000 people. Which is simply too many. I want a political system where an ordinary person with a full-time job, no rich friends, no preexisting name recognition, and good ideas can win.

And that just doesn’t happen very often in Districts that size. The only cheap successful campaigns are run by guys like the Lamars Lemmons. Lamar III was a former State Rep, Lamar II is a current State Rep, and Lamar IV was candidate in the First District a while back. Successful campaigns by guys with no name recognition, or big-name support, tend to cost a bundle. Steve Tobocman, for example, spent more than $50,000.

I also want a political system where anybody can walk down the street and talk to someone with authority. I can do that in Woodbridge. But if the districts have 100,000-200,000 people in them very, very, few Detroiters will get to be down the street from a Council person. After all State House Districts are smaller than that (average: 90,000),and most folks don’t share a neighborhood with their State Rep. So I’d say the districts should be a lot smaller than that. Ideally 10,000, which results in 70-75 Council districts

It would also be nice if we could end the constant feuding between the Council and the Mayor. Take the Cobo feud. What happened was the Mayor’s office and the suburbs agreed on what exactly should be done. To get agreement the Mayor had to make concessions. But the Council was not part of the discussions, and they did not like the concessions. So there was a fight and we almost lost the Auto Show. It would also be nice if the Council could remove a Mayor (thus preventing the Kwame-circus), and each Mayoral appointee was responsible to the voters (which discourages corruption).

Guess what? If Detroit had a Parliamentary system we’d have that. The new Mayor would be elected by the Council, and serve at the will of the Council. His Cabinet would be Council members. If the Mayor tries to use $6 million in tax money to cover up an affair the Council can simply can fire the Mayor. If the people really hate one of his appointees they can vote the guy out of office next time. This would have the additional advantage that losing Mayoral candidates would stay in City government. If we keep a few at-large Council slots we can always say the top vote-getter gets first shot at running the city.

So my ideal charter has lots of City Councilors elected by district, and a couple elected at-large. There are no other elected officials. The at-large candidate with the most votes gets to be Mayor, and appoints a Cabinet from the Legislature. If he does something stupid the Council can replace him. There’re transparency requirements, ethics rules, and an independent commission that confirms those requirements are met.

That’s my dream. It’s not likely, but it’s possible. And if it happened I think everyone would be happy.

What’s everyone else’s view of the new Charter? Are my ideas for it good?Any Charter Commission candidates reading this?

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Detroit City Charter Commission | 1 comments

FYI (4.00 / 1)

The City Charter is available as a .pdf on the City Clerk's Web site:

http://www.ci.detroit.mi.us/le...

It's a little clunky, so it's easier to download the .pdf than to use it online.

Hope this helps!

by: nancykaffer @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 14:38:46 PM UTC

Detroit City Charter Commission | 1 comments

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