This is a vital distinction to recognize as media outlets report on the judge's decision and the bankruptcy process.
As retiring Detroit City Council member JoAnn Watson reminds us: The city of Detroit did not file for municipal bankruptcy.
"The emergency manager (EM) filed the bankruptcy petition, and he is an appointee of the governor of the state of Michigan based on Act 436 -- a law formerly known as PA 4 -- which was repealed by 2.3 million Michigan citizens statewide on Nov. 6, 2012," explains Watson. "The EM is only accountable to the governor, the EM only answers to the governor, and the EM can only be 'checked and balanced' by the governor."
The new mayor and the new city council will not have the essential democratic authority to "check and balance" the emergency manager -- or to guide the process that Watson argues "has clearly been crafted in a right-wing playbook to seize assets, dismember electorate voting powers, dismantle unions and the families/neighborhoods supported by union jobs, disable local elected officials, smear and tarnish the image and viability of Black elected leadership, and broadly claim that the legacy costs related to retiree pensions are largely to blame for the city's debt crisis."
Watson's frustration is real. And appropriate.
Detroit's greatest challenge has not been municipal governance. It has been deindustrialization, which has shuttered hundreds of factories and left hundreds of thousands of city residents unemployed or underemployed. And that great challenge extends beyond Detroit.
Too many American cities face financial challenges similar to those that have destabilized Detroit . Snyder's anti-democratic "answer" could well become the model for a response to those challenges that begins by blaming the victims and ultimately denies them a full and effective franchise.
"I believe Detroit and Michigan are 'test cases' for certain right-wing agents who want to do all they can to control future elections for this nation's highest office and other posts," says Watson. "Voter suppression, including the Supreme Court's role in gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965, are not incidental to the myriad of malevolence in Michigan."
There is a lot more at stake in Detroit, and in Michigan, than one city's balance sheet.
Our understanding of democracy, itself, is being subverted.
The voters of Michigan sent a clear signal last fall. They rejected emergency-manager authoritarianism.
Unfortunately, a federal bankruptcy judge has sided with a governor who could not win an election in Detroit and an approach that Detroit voters rejected.
This has nothing to do with budgeting, debt or broader fiscal matters. Those issues could, and should, be addressed by an elected mayor and city council.
This has everything to do with allowing unelectable and unelected officials -- and the interests they serve -- to achieve political results that could not be secured at the ballot box.
Chris Hayes ponders the constitutionality of Detroit's bankruptcy filing.
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