DETROIT – Theodore Roosevelt is credited with most famously using a West African proverb "speak softly and carry a big stick. You will go far."
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder quite evidently agrees.
The consent agreement he signed this morning along with acting Mayor Kirk Lewis puts the City of Detroit on the path to financial solvency. But the document we link to here has the teeth of an alligator. The mayor's office and the city council are accountable to a nine-member financial advisory board. It will require the city to spend no more than it takes in, which it hasn't been able to do for generations. The City will have to make the kinds of decisions and cuts foreign to anyone with any memory of the remotest history inside City Hall. The mayor and City Council will get all the opportunity to get it right, but only two chances to get it wrong.
That is where the big stick comes in.
Today, based on my column from yesterday called "All Roads Lead to Chapter 9 in Detroit," I asked Gov. Snyder the following question: Can you categorically say that the Chapter 9 is out of the question at any level at any time?" He replied: "No, I wouldn't say that because that would not be appropriate. Again I view this as we're following the appropriate steps to solve this problem in a very thoughtful, rational way and a partnership approach."
Note: He used the phrase "the appropriate steps". That is another way of saying the City of Detroit has little choice but to get this right because the alternatives are particularly distasteful. The next step is the emergency manager that no one in the city appeared interested in and fought tooth and nail to prevent. OK so there isn't one now. But taking that "step" to the ultimate conclusion here the emergency manager might just find [as many turn around experts I know] that the city's $17 Billion dollar total debt load is simply too vast to conquer.
In that case the emergency manager would recommend the governor pull the trigger on a Chapter 9 Municipal Bankruptcy. Notice again Governor Snyder's unwillingness to take this option off the table. He knows he needs that big stick to show the mayor and council he is serious. He clearly is.
The governor is smiling, acting like the nice nerd he likes to portray. Underneath the soft demeanor lies a singular focus on results. He is treating the city much like the employees of the companies he ran and/or created. He sets a goal, designs a plan to get from point a to point b. Should any team member he's hired to execute the plan not get to point b they are out. It's simple math and the agreement anyone of us who work in the private sector fully understands. But inside City Hall where today State Treasurer Andy Dillon said there are 65 full time employees just to manage the payroll for 2600 police officers [1 for every 37 cops!] there appears little understanding of that carrot and stick pact everyone else in the real world must live by. That will soon change or else.
Of course lost in all of this are residents in the City of Detroit. They are paying some of the highest taxes anywhere within a thousand miles to live in a place where if there is a shooting on their street it might take a police officer half an hour to get there. If they accidentally cut themselves or somehow end up severely hurt at home a call to 911 may or may not yield an ambulance. The street lights don't work and haven't for years. They get little if anything for their money. This is the world upside down and one Detroiters have become so weary of living in they don't even bother to complain anymore.
The governor, through this consent agreement, wants all of this to change immediately. If it doesn't he still has his big stick; an emergency manager and a Chapter 9. It should get someone's attention at City Hall.
Detroiters can only hope they will go far as a result.