Can *I* Be an Emergency Manager? Please?

I wrote recently about Public Act 4, the emergency manager law put in place by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, and ended the post with a question: If you oppose the law, what do you propose instead?

I didn’t receive much of an answer.

Oh, people responded. They pointed out that it’s a b*llsh*t assault on representative democracy and it’s too bad the Recall Rick Snyder effort failed and it sucks and rich people ought to pay more of their fair share. But I didn’t receive a whole heck of a lot of actual proposals for dealing with municipalities in crisis.

Chris Savage at Eclectablog – who’s been following and writing about this issue like no other – responded that there is no simple answer; the problems were a long time in the making and the solutions will be too. He said honoring the sanctity of democracy ought to be our first consideration, and I agree.

Christine Barry at Blogging for Michigan and somebody calling himself or herself “The Muskegon Critic” did offer substantive alternatives that included reinvesting in public education, higher education and inner-city anti-poverty programs; amending the state constitution to allow for a progressive tax structure; launching a massive business attraction initiative; and shutting down portions of municipalities like they’re doing in Flint and the D to save resources.

I forwarded everything to my friend Tom Watkins, the consultant and former high-ranking state official who thinks Public Act 4 is getting a bum rap. He replied that he was still waiting to hear how we should address the failure of leadership by mayors, city councils and governors going back decades and if elected officials actually did their jobs, there would be no need for an emergency manager in the first place.

Doesn’t seem like we’re getting anywhere, does it?

In the meantime, I ran across a story yesterday pointing out that the same municipalities that are in such financial ruin that they need an outsider to swoop in and take over are being forced to fund the six-figure salaries their saviors are being paid. (Flint’s emergency manager, Michael Brown, is being paid $170,000/year. Managers in Ecorse and Benton Harbor are each making $132,000 and Pontiac’s manager ‘s raking in $150,000.) The state sets the salaries and the locals must cough up the cash.

One university professor and “government finance expert” justified this crap by saying that people should remember the manager’s doing the work of a city administrator, mayor and city council all at once. “It’s a pretty big job, really unusual in scope,” he insisted.

I wonder if this “expert” is related to anybody in the Snyder Administration.

Source: Mlive.com.