Decades Of Hostility Toward Cities Led To The Water Crisis.
Feb 1, 2016 17:20:22 #
Article by Robert J. Klein, Former Treasurer of The State of Michigan
EAST LANSING, Mich. From 2006 to 2010, I was the treasurer of Michigan. I oversaw the emergency manager program, which has been blamed for causing the Flint water crisis under a different administration. In my view, Gov. Rick Snyder misused the program in an attempt to achieve an impossible goal for post-industrial Flint: financial self-sufficiency. Not only did the people of Flint suffer because of Snyders cost cutting, they suffered for a futile cause and at the hands of a state government that has made deep cuts to the revenue sharing their struggling city needs to function.
That said, whats happening in Flint cannot simply be blamed on a hard-hearted governor nickel-and-diming a poor city into a public health disaster that will taint its reputation for years. This crisis was decades in the making. Michigans combination of deindustrialization and lack of public support for cities created the conditions that allowed Snyders poor decisions to have such a terrible outcome.
[Flints water crisis reveals government failures at every level]
There is no question that Michigan has the some of the poorest, most decrepit cities in the United States. Flint regularly has among the highest homicide rates in the nation. Detroit, which has lost two-thirds of its population since the 1950s, is an international symbol of decay. This is not simply a matter of neglect; its a matter of policy.
Whos who in the Flint water crisis
Play Video1:44
The water emergency in Flint, Mich., is two years in the making. Here are the people who've played a key role in the crisis.
Time and again, Michiganders have said no to measures that could have put their cities in a state of financial solvency. In 1958, Flint suburbanites voted against joining the city, even though General Motors favored the plan. In the 1970s, legislators voted down Gov. William Millikens bill to distribute industrial and commercial taxes equally among cities in metro Detroit. In the 1990s, Detroit cut its income tax rate from 3.5 percent to 2.4 percent in exchange for a promise by the state not to cut revenue sharing. The state broke its end of the deal, and the combined loss of $200 million in state funding and $110 million in lost tax collections pushed the city into bankruptcy. According to a study by Michigan State University, constitutional amendments passed in 1978 and 1994 imposed the second-tightest local taxation limits in the nation.
Michigan incubates financial stress among its local governments, the study concluded. Michigans particular mix of stringent limitations on local revenue and its relatively low level of financial assistance to cities, coupled with spending pressures stemming from spiking local service burdens and increased labor costs, creates conditions that drive up the potential for local fiscal distress.
Much of Michigans hostility toward sharing revenue with cities results from the antagonism between Detroit and its suburbs, which dates back to the 1967 riot and the white flight that followed. Metro Detroit dominates the states politics, but Flint also pays the price for this rivalry (and for statewide budget cuts and a prevailing recent philosophy of limiting government). Allowing suburbanites to say not my responsibility anymore to the cities theyve left behind is a nationwide issue, but nowhere have the consequences been more severe than in Michigan. Since 2001, over $6 billion earmarked for cities has been diverted to cover state budget shortfalls. Between 2003 and 2014, Flint lost a total of $54 million.
[Flint could have saved money without using corrosive river water, some say]
Any city with a per capita tax base below $20,000 will struggle financially and be forced to levy higher than average property tax rates or income taxes. (The per capita tax base is the taxable value of all property divided by the population.) Flint has a per capita tax base of $7,785: the local economy has been destroyed by the loss of over 70,000 well-paying automaking jobs since the 1970s; as a result, the median home listing price is around $50,000.
Cities with low tax bases are faced with a Hobsons choice: If they set taxes high enough to provide decent services, residents and businesses move out; if they keep tax rates low, poor municipal services drive residents and businesses out. A strong regional revenue sharing program would allow communities with low tax bases, such as Flint, to maintain a reasonable level of services while avoiding uncompetitive taxes. Without revenue sharing, cities are caught in a vicious cycle that results in ongoing financial problems. This is demonstrated by the fact that Michigan has had more communities under an emergency managers control than any other state.
When I was state treasurer, we never forced an emergency manager on an unwilling municipality. We appointed a total of five, and only when a local official, such as a mayor, a city manager or a county treasurer, asked us to conduct a fiscal review, and when the review concluded that the financial problems had been caused by mismanagement or corruption.
Thats because an emergency manager cant solve a financial crisis created by a low tax base and a lack of revenue sharing. The forced austerity that resulted in Flint switching its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River had no chance of improving the citys financial condition. The only realistic long-term solution is increased revenue sharing and consolidating Flint into a metropolitan government with the rest of Genesee County. The water crisis makes state aid even more urgent, because its going to drive down Flints already bargain-basement property values. Whos going to buy a house in a city with lead-tainted water? Flint may never suffer another water crisis, but without structural changes to state and local government, its financial crises will never end.
My comments;
I have been reading all of the horror stories about Flint, Michigan's water crises on the internet of late, and until now, I must confess, I haven't yet taken a close enough look at it to actually know what the problem is.
What I DO know however is, any time you hear Micheal Moore blathering on and on about....."anything"......it's a safe bet that, A. 98% of what Micheal Moore says about ANYTHING, on closer investigation will always turn out to be FALSE. I won't waste much time on M.M. because everyone is aware of what a loud-mouth fool M.M. is.
I just found this article by former Michigan Treasurer, Robert J. Klein; at this moment, I don't even know if Mr. Klein is a Republican or a Democrat. What I do know however is, the state of Michigan has had a LOT of major problems for a very long time now, and most of them aren't even necessarily due to politics per se'.
As everyone in the whole world knows, Michigan is said to be the "home" of the auto industry in the U.S. That was a fact for many years, but over the last maybe 60 or 70 years, since WW 2, more and more of the auto industry has left Michigan and "migrated" to other places, both in the U.S. and also all over the world.
From the very beginning, this mass migration has had more to do with labor costs, and as anyone at all familiar with the U.S. auto industry is aware, when you talk about "labor" and the U.S. auto industry, you're also talking about the U.A.W.
If you are wondering why all of the auto assembly plants that "used to be" in Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, & Saginaw, Michigan are now in Oh, In, Ill, Ky, Mo, NC, Geo, Al, (in other words, "all over the U.S. AND Canada and many foreign countries).......just ask the U.A.W.......(The United Auto Workers)....it's largely due to their greed.
I'm NOT "anti-union"; I AM "anti" corruption, greed, (and a few more things, all of which are illegal ).
I don't have time right now to write a book, and it would require a whole bunch of books to have any chance of covering this vast subject; just a few key "facts";
For many years, the U. A.W. was completely dominated by the powerful labor leader, the late Walter Reuther;
Walter Philip Reuther was an American labor union leader, who made the United Automobile Workers a major force not only in the auto industry but also in the Democratic Party and the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the mid 20th century. (We don't hear much about the "C.I.O." any more, do we?)
While Wikipedia will describe Walter Reuther as being a Democrat, I can tell you that he was also very "sympathetic" to "Marxism" and "Communism";
I happen to be quite familiar with the auto industry because for the last 25 years of the 41 years I was in the Teamster's Union, my job was completely dependent on "the new car business". (and I spent much of this time "in & out" of every General Motors plant in Michigan, not to mention all the rest of them from N.J to Calif.)
I'm also very familiar with Flint and Pontiac, as I even worked out of Pontiac for a time in the early 1980's and I've been in & out of the old Buick plant in Flint hundreds of of times; I happen to have a close friend who is a plumber and who lives just south of Flint; when I see him I'll know exactly what the biug water problem in Flint is all about.
IMO, the UAW, General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler had more "to do" with Michigan's demise than all other things combined. (even though in Twardlow's simple mind, it was "all the Republican's fault"! )
For any U.A.W. "retirees" who may be reading this; my purpose here isn't to "bash" unions per se'; it is only to point out that the shallow-minded fools who are right now attempting to lay all of this current water crises in Flint Michigan at the feet of Michigan's current Republican Governor, Rick Snyder are all a bunch of lying liberals. There's a hell of a lot more to this story than just "politics", although at the end of the proverbial day, I'm sure we'll find that "politics" were indeed "involved" along the way.
As mentioned above, I'm hardly "anti-union"; I am however, anti- "unions being run by organized criminals", as the Teamster's Union was for many years.
.
EAST LANSING, Mich. From 2006 to 2010, I was the treasurer of Michigan. I oversaw the emergency manager program, which has been blamed for causing the Flint water crisis under a different administration. In my view, Gov. Rick Snyder misused the program in an attempt to achieve an impossible goal for post-industrial Flint: financial self-sufficiency. Not only did the people of Flint suffer because of Snyders cost cutting, they suffered for a futile cause and at the hands of a state government that has made deep cuts to the revenue sharing their struggling city needs to function.
That said, whats happening in Flint cannot simply be blamed on a hard-hearted governor nickel-and-diming a poor city into a public health disaster that will taint its reputation for years. This crisis was decades in the making. Michigans combination of deindustrialization and lack of public support for cities created the conditions that allowed Snyders poor decisions to have such a terrible outcome.
[Flints water crisis reveals government failures at every level]
There is no question that Michigan has the some of the poorest, most decrepit cities in the United States. Flint regularly has among the highest homicide rates in the nation. Detroit, which has lost two-thirds of its population since the 1950s, is an international symbol of decay. This is not simply a matter of neglect; its a matter of policy.
Whos who in the Flint water crisis
Play Video1:44
The water emergency in Flint, Mich., is two years in the making. Here are the people who've played a key role in the crisis.
Time and again, Michiganders have said no to measures that could have put their cities in a state of financial solvency. In 1958, Flint suburbanites voted against joining the city, even though General Motors favored the plan. In the 1970s, legislators voted down Gov. William Millikens bill to distribute industrial and commercial taxes equally among cities in metro Detroit. In the 1990s, Detroit cut its income tax rate from 3.5 percent to 2.4 percent in exchange for a promise by the state not to cut revenue sharing. The state broke its end of the deal, and the combined loss of $200 million in state funding and $110 million in lost tax collections pushed the city into bankruptcy. According to a study by Michigan State University, constitutional amendments passed in 1978 and 1994 imposed the second-tightest local taxation limits in the nation.
Michigan incubates financial stress among its local governments, the study concluded. Michigans particular mix of stringent limitations on local revenue and its relatively low level of financial assistance to cities, coupled with spending pressures stemming from spiking local service burdens and increased labor costs, creates conditions that drive up the potential for local fiscal distress.
Much of Michigans hostility toward sharing revenue with cities results from the antagonism between Detroit and its suburbs, which dates back to the 1967 riot and the white flight that followed. Metro Detroit dominates the states politics, but Flint also pays the price for this rivalry (and for statewide budget cuts and a prevailing recent philosophy of limiting government). Allowing suburbanites to say not my responsibility anymore to the cities theyve left behind is a nationwide issue, but nowhere have the consequences been more severe than in Michigan. Since 2001, over $6 billion earmarked for cities has been diverted to cover state budget shortfalls. Between 2003 and 2014, Flint lost a total of $54 million.
[Flint could have saved money without using corrosive river water, some say]
Any city with a per capita tax base below $20,000 will struggle financially and be forced to levy higher than average property tax rates or income taxes. (The per capita tax base is the taxable value of all property divided by the population.) Flint has a per capita tax base of $7,785: the local economy has been destroyed by the loss of over 70,000 well-paying automaking jobs since the 1970s; as a result, the median home listing price is around $50,000.
Cities with low tax bases are faced with a Hobsons choice: If they set taxes high enough to provide decent services, residents and businesses move out; if they keep tax rates low, poor municipal services drive residents and businesses out. A strong regional revenue sharing program would allow communities with low tax bases, such as Flint, to maintain a reasonable level of services while avoiding uncompetitive taxes. Without revenue sharing, cities are caught in a vicious cycle that results in ongoing financial problems. This is demonstrated by the fact that Michigan has had more communities under an emergency managers control than any other state.
When I was state treasurer, we never forced an emergency manager on an unwilling municipality. We appointed a total of five, and only when a local official, such as a mayor, a city manager or a county treasurer, asked us to conduct a fiscal review, and when the review concluded that the financial problems had been caused by mismanagement or corruption.
Thats because an emergency manager cant solve a financial crisis created by a low tax base and a lack of revenue sharing. The forced austerity that resulted in Flint switching its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River had no chance of improving the citys financial condition. The only realistic long-term solution is increased revenue sharing and consolidating Flint into a metropolitan government with the rest of Genesee County. The water crisis makes state aid even more urgent, because its going to drive down Flints already bargain-basement property values. Whos going to buy a house in a city with lead-tainted water? Flint may never suffer another water crisis, but without structural changes to state and local government, its financial crises will never end.
My comments;
I have been reading all of the horror stories about Flint, Michigan's water crises on the internet of late, and until now, I must confess, I haven't yet taken a close enough look at it to actually know what the problem is.
What I DO know however is, any time you hear Micheal Moore blathering on and on about....."anything"......it's a safe bet that, A. 98% of what Micheal Moore says about ANYTHING, on closer investigation will always turn out to be FALSE. I won't waste much time on M.M. because everyone is aware of what a loud-mouth fool M.M. is.
I just found this article by former Michigan Treasurer, Robert J. Klein; at this moment, I don't even know if Mr. Klein is a Republican or a Democrat. What I do know however is, the state of Michigan has had a LOT of major problems for a very long time now, and most of them aren't even necessarily due to politics per se'.
As everyone in the whole world knows, Michigan is said to be the "home" of the auto industry in the U.S. That was a fact for many years, but over the last maybe 60 or 70 years, since WW 2, more and more of the auto industry has left Michigan and "migrated" to other places, both in the U.S. and also all over the world.
From the very beginning, this mass migration has had more to do with labor costs, and as anyone at all familiar with the U.S. auto industry is aware, when you talk about "labor" and the U.S. auto industry, you're also talking about the U.A.W.
If you are wondering why all of the auto assembly plants that "used to be" in Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, & Saginaw, Michigan are now in Oh, In, Ill, Ky, Mo, NC, Geo, Al, (in other words, "all over the U.S. AND Canada and many foreign countries).......just ask the U.A.W.......(The United Auto Workers)....it's largely due to their greed.
I'm NOT "anti-union"; I AM "anti" corruption, greed, (and a few more things, all of which are illegal ).
I don't have time right now to write a book, and it would require a whole bunch of books to have any chance of covering this vast subject; just a few key "facts";
For many years, the U. A.W. was completely dominated by the powerful labor leader, the late Walter Reuther;
Walter Philip Reuther was an American labor union leader, who made the United Automobile Workers a major force not only in the auto industry but also in the Democratic Party and the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the mid 20th century. (We don't hear much about the "C.I.O." any more, do we?)
While Wikipedia will describe Walter Reuther as being a Democrat, I can tell you that he was also very "sympathetic" to "Marxism" and "Communism";
I happen to be quite familiar with the auto industry because for the last 25 years of the 41 years I was in the Teamster's Union, my job was completely dependent on "the new car business". (and I spent much of this time "in & out" of every General Motors plant in Michigan, not to mention all the rest of them from N.J to Calif.)
I'm also very familiar with Flint and Pontiac, as I even worked out of Pontiac for a time in the early 1980's and I've been in & out of the old Buick plant in Flint hundreds of of times; I happen to have a close friend who is a plumber and who lives just south of Flint; when I see him I'll know exactly what the biug water problem in Flint is all about.
IMO, the UAW, General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler had more "to do" with Michigan's demise than all other things combined. (even though in Twardlow's simple mind, it was "all the Republican's fault"! )
For any U.A.W. "retirees" who may be reading this; my purpose here isn't to "bash" unions per se'; it is only to point out that the shallow-minded fools who are right now attempting to lay all of this current water crises in Flint Michigan at the feet of Michigan's current Republican Governor, Rick Snyder are all a bunch of lying liberals. There's a hell of a lot more to this story than just "politics", although at the end of the proverbial day, I'm sure we'll find that "politics" were indeed "involved" along the way.
As mentioned above, I'm hardly "anti-union"; I am however, anti- "unions being run by organized criminals", as the Teamster's Union was for many years.
.
U.A.W. President Walter Reuther
Walter Reuther On Time Cover
Walter Reuther & LBJ
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