Democracy ... it's given away when you don't cast informed votes

It's one thing...

...to decry (rightfully) low voter participation in the process and then take a neutral and/or ambivalent position on a law that repeals local government (i.e. sucks to be you).  It's entirely to to actively voice an opinion that local government should be taken away and to actively endorse a proposal that takes it away.  

Support for this draconian piece of bullshit legislation should be seen as even more tenuous when you take into account that a HUGE part of the financial crises in these cities (and in many cases it is THE part) is not the result of piss-poor government but plummeting property values, crushing legacy costs, and the breaking of the covenant between the state and local government in concerns to ridiculously decreased revenue sharing.  

Supporting this simply doesn't make any since unless you don't dig into the issue more than an inch deep.  The law doesn't even begin to come close to addressing the totality of the problems.  What's crazy is that even if the motives behind the legislation are pure and good, there simply isn't any way that this can't be abused.

I mean, this should be basic college-level poli sci, here.  Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.  You don't give politicians and appointees absolutel power, plain and simple.  Repeal this Bill.  Vote no on Prop. 1.

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by: MiddleGrandGuy @ Fri Oct 26, 2012 at 22:31:05 PM UTC

Let's not go overboard

It's not a simple one-two step process from functioning community to a city under an emergency manager. In fact, one o the primary selling points of the law is that it sets triggers earlier on to catch coming financial emergencies so they can be avoided.

The stuff everyone's focusing on is the most extreme end of what the law does. And, no, I don't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for people who suddenly become outraged that their right to have a say in local matters is taken away when it was their indifference that led to the problem in the first place. In fact, it reminds me of every single zoning controversy I've ever followed ... the people most angry by it never in the first place bothered to take the time to offer their input during the master plan comment period and only got mad after someone thought to do things permitted under it.

Among the Trees

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by: Eric B. @ Sat Oct 27, 2012 at 15:24:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

This law

is far too draconian. It allows unelected political appointees to sell public assets for pennies on the dollar with no competitive bidding, to privatize municipal services, again without bids, to utterly ignore the wishes of the citizens, and generally do whatever they want with only minimal supervision from a governor who may be too busy to pay attention or may simply not care. It's a recipe for rampant fraud, abuse, and cronyism. It's not democracy, no matter how you slice it.

I'm astonished at your last sentence. The right to vote is not a "tool", it is an absolute right of a free people and not to be infringed in any way. There's no requirement to be "informed". How much information must an individual absorb to be allowed to cast a ballot? Whose information is right? Whose is wrong?

Taking away the right to vote is wrong, period.  

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by: happy camper @ Sat Oct 27, 2012 at 14:12:09 PM UTC

Ahem...

As a fellow citizen who also possesses the right to vote, I insist that if you exercise the vote that you understand what it is that you're voting on and how it will be affected by the ballot you cast.

You don't have to do that, but if you take it as your pleasure to not vote in an informed fashion, don't expect a lot of sympathy from me when bailing you out of the mess you've made requires drastic measures.

Among the Trees

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by: Eric B. @ Sat Oct 27, 2012 at 16:15:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Not everyone is privileged

Your argument is based on the false assumption that all people are equally empowered to vote.  Telling people who are poor and disenfranchised that it's their fault if more rights are taken away seems deeply misguided to me.

We could argue endlessly about the intent of the law.  I'm sure you'll never believe it's a means to enact racist and anti-worker decisions.  I'll never believe it's benevolence in its highest form.  But can we agree that it's not fair to blame the victim?

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by: staceyrb @ Sat Oct 27, 2012 at 15:57:30 PM UTC

Blaming the victim? How about a smoker who gets cancer?

Sometimes bad choices lead to bad outcomes. Sometimes you need help getting out from under those bad outcomes.  If that's the case, you don't have any business complaining about the harsh medicine you're forced to take as a result.

There's a great way to avoid the temporary loss of your input on local affairs. It's called democracy. To do it properly, you need to pay attention to what's going on around you, need to cast informed ballots, and then you need to hold accountable those people who are given the job of managing your local affairs. The media has largely given up on the job of telling you what's going on where you live, but ignorance is no excuse. There are still lots of resources available.

Among the Trees

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by: Eric B. @ Sat Oct 27, 2012 at 18:16:48 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

What's wrong with Chapter 9 Bankruptcy?

Ignoring the partisan aspect of the EM law for now, I have to ask why the Chapter 9 provision of the bankruptcy code can't do the same job Proposal 1 does - but under the oversight of the bankruptcy trustee and a federal bankruptcy court judge, with due process in the form of the right to appeal?

The provisions for Chapter 9 bankruptcy and Proposal 1 are roughly the same.

• Both laws allow for deals to be negotiated so the municipality can get lending on the most favorable terms possible.
• Both laws allow for assets to be sold off to pay secured creditors and provide the municipality with working capital so it can function in the short term.
• Both laws allow the municipality to partner with other local units of government, as EM Schimmel has done with the City of Pontiac's sewage treatment plant by transferring ownership of the asset to an Oakland County drain authority, which then used the county's A-1 credit rating to secure bond funds to compensate the city for the seizure.
• Both laws allow the municipality to terminate pension and healthcare agreements if that draconian measure is necessary to ensure financial survival.

But here's what Proposal 1 allows that Chapter 9 bankruptcy doesn't allow:

• Proposal 1 allows the EM to terminate the municipality's charter and merge it with other local units of government or disband it entirely. (I predict that Proposal 1 will end up being struck down as contrary to the state's city charter statute after much litigation.)
• Proposal 1 allows the EM to transfer city assets and funds to the EM's and the governor's political cronies in exchange for the usual political favors later that make crony capitalism so rewarding for those folks. Schimmel and L. Brooks Patterson must be best buddies considering how many of Pontiac's assets Oakland County received for bargain basement prices. Federal bankruptcy judges don't do business that way.
• Although Proposal 1 allows the EM to put the municipality into Chapter 9 and receive the benefit of federal bankruptcy protection, why would he hand over control of the goodies to a federal judge?
• Proposal 1 technically provides for due process in the form of circuit court review, but in practice it doesn't. If the EM controls all of the municipality's funding decisions, then the city can't hire an attorney. (OK, maybe a council member could go visit a bail bondsman with $500 of his own money and get enough cash to pay a retainer. Riiiight.)

It was this last item that helped me decide (and it was a tough decision for me). As an attorney, I have too much respect for the constitutional right of due process and judicial review to take it away from any person or entity in this country - even a municipality that's been naughty naughty and needs its hand slapped.

The only way I would be comfortable with an EM law is if it limited the EM to the power to force the municipality into Chapter 9 if a consent agreement couldn't be reached and the city was dragging its feet about filing bankruptcy on its own. In bankruptcy court, political favors may exist, but they aren't business as usual.

I'm not that eartha - or that one either

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by: eartha651 @ Sat Oct 27, 2012 at 18:14:59 PM UTC

Bond ratings

The reason why they're trying to avoid bankruptcies is to avoid damaging a community's bond ratings, and the bond ratings of neighboring communities.

But, again, the point of the law isn't to take away people's right to vote. The point of the law is to avoid financial emergencies, which is why there are triggers built into to prompt things like state reviews.  The stuff we're arguing are the extreme ends of it, where everything else has failed and a community or school district is going to otherwise destroy its bond rating in bankruptcy court.

Among the Trees

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by: Eric B. @ Sat Oct 27, 2012 at 18:19:53 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It's the same as BK anywhere

by the time a city reaches the point where an EM is necessary, its credit rating is shot no matter what. If anything, reorganization under Chapter 9 might make it a more attractive to a lender if it's doing well afterward.

Whether or not the law intends to take away people's right to vote is irrelevant.It still effectively deprives the municipality of its constitutionally protected due process under the law, and Chapter 9 bankruptcy doesn't. To me it's a no-brainer.

I'm not that eartha - or that one either

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by: eartha651 @ Sat Oct 27, 2012 at 18:24:31 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

If that were the case, then we wouldn't be having this conversation

But, the theory is -- based on the few past experiences there have been -- that bankruptcy is far more damaging to not only the community in question, but the neighbors.

Among the Trees

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by: Eric B. @ Sun Oct 28, 2012 at 03:28:57 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

About the vote...

The entire point of this post is that the people who live in these municipalities have already given up the vote by not exercising it, or by not staying active in the political process. If in general terms we had a citizenry that was more engaged in local politics and paid attention to what their city governments were doing, then I'd probably be pretty angry. Of course, if we had that, we probably would have far fewer financial crises in local government. But, we don't, so it's very hard for me to buy into the, "They're stealing democracy" meme.  

Among the Trees

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by: Eric B. @ Sun Oct 28, 2012 at 03:33:00 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

By the way...

Having watched local governments operate over the years, and having seen more resources squandered on parochial poo-flinging than I care to quantify, I'm not all that opposed to letting someone go in and dissolve municipalities and forcibly rearrange them.

Merging school districts, merging cities and neighboring cities and/or townships ... I don't care.  And, yes, that includes where I live, which is a city surrounded by a charter township.  Our approach to local government in this state is downright archaic, straight out of a time when people didn't travel out of their townships very often.

Among the Trees

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by: Eric B. @ Sat Oct 27, 2012 at 18:25:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I agree with you

that strict home rule as we have in Michigan is probably something we can't afford in the post-automotive age. Even a regional consortium of local governments would be a nice change.

But whether an EM's authority supercedes the state's municipal charter statute will have to be litigated - or the legislature will have to amend either PA 4 or the charter statute. I'm not idealistic (or cynical) enough to cheer for a proposal that would operate in violation of state law, no matter how much good I think it would do.

I'm not that eartha - or that one either

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by: eartha651 @ Sat Oct 27, 2012 at 18:31:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

City charters...

That's something in the law that ought to be addressed, but that's something that ought to be done legislatively rather than throwing out the entire law while it's being applied where government has failed.

Among the Trees

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by: Eric B. @ Sun Oct 28, 2012 at 14:29:08 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Excellent point

The only way I would be comfortable with an EM law is if it limited the EM to the power to force the municipality into Chapter 9 if a consent agreement couldn't be reached and the city was dragging its feet about filing bankruptcy on its own. In bankruptcy court, political favors may exist, but they aren't business as usual.

This would be an alternative that I could swallow.  In fact, I said the previous interation of this piece of legislation - the Emergency Financial Manager - was something I could deal with, and wouldn't mind a few tweaks.

But the outright, wholesale selling of our local governments down the river.  Na-ah.  Not ever.

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by: MiddleGrandGuy @ Sun Oct 28, 2012 at 00:58:42 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

There's one more difference, and this is fairly critical ... okay, two

The first is that PA 4 gets things rolling earlier in the process. At least it's supposed to. That way, an EM can be avoided by fixing things early on.

The second is that bankruptcy court forces no accountability on the people who helped create the mess in the first place. I was okay with Barack Obama firing Rick Wagoner after the feds had to help guide GM into its managed bankruptcy. I have no problem with a state appointee tasked with fixing a municipal or school district budget firing the people who screwed it up in the first place. Harsh, yes, but I think it's absolutely nuts to take drastic action to stop a town from going insolvent and then handing it right back to the same gang of people who put it on the brink.

Among the Trees

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by: Eric B. @ Sun Oct 28, 2012 at 14:38:38 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

So how do citizens get information they need?

You have often commented about the sad state of journalism in this state.  I'd like you to connect that to your insistence that voters must be informed, that when they aren't they deserve whatever the EMs do to their local government.  

Where do you expect voters to get information about what's going on? You don't get it in 15 second sound bites, nor in the flood of 4 color printed cards that are stuffing mailboxes now.  Newspapers?  Hah! there aren't enough locally savvy reporters left at many of our papers to know where the bodies are buried, much less having them uncovered.  All you have to do is look at the outright lies that are being told about the Michigan-Canada bridge and the evils of collective bargaining to see that asking voters to be informed is not as simple as you imply:  The public is being given information that will manipulate their thinking. The money that the manipulators have is almost infinite.  How is a voter expected to determine what the truth is, in these circumstances?

Also, this law has direct implications that foster what you dislike about citizens who do not vote.  Whatever good that this law could do (if any), it does do one thing very well:  it decreases the likelihood that citizens will think their voting makes any difference. If your vote can be undone, election results tossed aside, then why bother?   The law not only takes away voting rights, it creates cynicism about the worth of participating in the political process.

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by: Kidspeak @ Sun Oct 28, 2012 at 02:12:54 AM UTC

Good god, there are plenty of resources

Most local governments have a trove of information on the Web. Plus, most local governments have meetings that are broadcast on cable if people bother to look for them. An old and departed friend used to tell me about growing up in New England, where townhalls were nearly universally attended.  Obviously, we have a different approach to government here in Michigan, but city council and commission meetings are never attended unless people become angry ... which is usually the worst time.  Budget and zoning comment periods usually elicit comments from either no one or a handful of invested players.

Almost everyone who votes Nov. 6 will know that the federal government carries a lot of debt, and has for much of the last decade run deficit budgets. How many people can say they are even remotely close to aware of the financial shape of the town they live in? If they aren't, how can anyone say they're casting an intelligent vote?

Among the Trees

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by: Eric B. @ Sun Oct 28, 2012 at 14:33:32 PM UTC

[ Parent ]