Detroit

[Greed]

Koch Brothers group prepares to fight Detroit deal

Koch Brothers group prepares to fight Detroit deal
By DAVID EGGERT
5 hours ago

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group supported by the Koch brothers, has launched an effort to torpedo a proposed settlement in the Detroit bankruptcy case, potentially complicating chances for completing the deal just as its prospects seemed to be improving.

The organization, formed to fight big government and spending, is contacting 90,000 conservatives in Michigan and encouraging them to rally against a plan to provide $195 million in state money to help settle Detroit pension holders' claims in the case, a key element of the deal.

The group has threatened to run ads against members of the Republican-controlled Legislature who vote in favor of the appropriation before the state's August primary. An initial legislative vote may come this week.

Using public money for Detroit's case "is very toxic, especially to out-state and Republican, conservative-leaning individuals," said Scott Hagerstrom, director of the Americans for Prosperity's chapter in the state. "Even out-state Democrats, why send any more money to Detroit? Certainly other areas of the state have needs."

The group's move is a blow to Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who proposed the state cash as a final ingredient to bring the 10-month-long bankruptcy case to a conclusion. Some creditors are fighting the "grand bargain," but it recently drew support from major retiree groups and unions. The bankruptcy court trial on the city's case will be held this summer.

"This is a settlement. This not a bailout," Snyder said. "And I want to be very, very clear about that."

Ten-year-old Americans for Prosperity, which plans to spend at least $125 million nationally helping conservatives in the midterm elections, is becoming more active in state politics. Its willingness to spend millions for advertising has made it a powerful player in political contests.

Dave Doyle, a political strategist and former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, said the organization's opposition could make a difference even though polling shows considerable public support for a settlement.

"What does have an impact is if they start spending a lot of money on TV and radio and doing mailings into people's districts. The threat of that would get some people to pay attention," he said.

Snyder, who took the lead in resolving Detroit's fiscal crisis by appointing an emergency manager for the city's operations, proposed the $195 million to match commitments from private foundations. The money would limit pension cuts for the approximately 30,000 retirees and city workers to no more than 4.5 percent and avert the need to liquidate the Detroit Institute of Art's collection to raise money. Snyder and city leaders say the museum is important to rebuilding Detroit as a world-class city.

Despite the cost, "It would be more positive to get this behind us," Snyder said. "How many of us have traveled somewhere in the country or the world and had to listen about this bankruptcy?"

But the question is a tough sell for many Republicans, who blame the Democratic-dominated city's problems on corruption and overly powerful labor unions.

"I think every member of the Legislature wishes we weren't in this situation where we even have to consider it," said Rep. Robert VerHeulen, a Republican from conservative western Michigan.

VerHeulen said he worries about setting a bailout precedent if other cities fall into financial ruin but also sees the value in settling to keep pensioners from suing.

Snyder, a computer company CEO and venture capitalist before he became governor in 2011, has a mixed record in lobbying the Legislature's more conservative Republicans. He persuaded just enough to support expanding Medicaid to more low-income adults yet failed to win legislative support for a state-run health insurance marketplace.

Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger has warned that the bills may not advance unless the city workers' unions agree to kick in some cash toward the settlement. Snyder must also persuade Democrats despite their unhappiness with his use of his executive powers to take over control of Detroit's finances.

Americans for Prosperity intends to turn up the heat on the Republicans, who hold 26 of the 38 seats in the Senate and 59 of 110 House districts.

"Tell Lansing politicians that Detroit has gotten enough of our tax dollars," the group says on a website created to oppose the aid. "More money can't fix Detroit."

http://news.yahoo.com/koch-brothers-group-prepares-fight-detroit-deal-065637829.html

 

[Greed]

Babies Pay for Detroit’s 60-Year Slide With Mortality Above Mexico's

Babies Pay for Detroit’s 60-Year Slide With Mortality Above Mexico's

 

[Greed]

Detroit emerges from bankruptcy

Detroit emerges from bankruptcy
By Nathan Bomey and Matt Helms,
Detroit Free Press staff writers
11:07 p.m. EST December 10, 2014

With Detroit officially out of bankruptcy, now-former emergency manager Kevyn Orr said it's not the next couple of years he's worried about for the city, or even five years out.

"I think Detroit's pretty well-situated in the near term," Orr said Wednesday, hours after he, Gov. Rick Snyder and Mayor Mike Duggan announced Detroit's departure from the nation's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy.

"It's got a pretty good team in place. It's got people who've done this before and have good track records; they understand city government inside and out," Orr said. "My concern really is in the long term."

Crediting Duggan's administration as being top-tier, Orr said he worried that, if Detroit does well, starts to turn around and even reflect some of the remarkable recoveries that parts of cities like Miami and New York have seen in recent decades, Detroit leaders and residents won't remember the lessons learned about out-of-control borrowing, mismanagement and corruption at City Hall.

"I hope people don't forget what it took to get here," the bankruptcy lawyer said as Detroit's historic Chapter 9 status ended, setting in motion a sweeping plan to slash $7 billion in debt and reinvest $1.4 billion over 10 years to improve city services.

In a wide-ranging interview with Free Press reporters and editors, Orr was alternately serious and playful, detailing the challenges a post-bankruptcy Motor City faces, but also saying he's now unemployed with no job offers, will take the rest of the year off, and even breaking into song, inspired by the interview setting: the newspaper's conference room named after Stevie Wonder.

Orr said at a news conference Wednesday morning that the final paperwork required to allowed the city to emerge from bankruptcy would be completed by the end of the day.

Judge Steven Rhodes approved the city's restructuring plan in November, giving the city the authority to implement the grand bargain to help reduce pension cuts, preserve the Detroit Institute of Arts and start improving basic services.

The end of the bankruptcy also marks the end of Orr's tenure. His resignation was effective at the same time the city emerged from bankruptcy.

"I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity and very fortunate for the outcome," Orr said. "The reality is the city is moving forward and that gives me a great deal of pride and satisfaction."

Snyder appointed Orr in March 2013 to take over the city's operations. Orr, a Washington, D.C. bankruptcy attorney with Jones Day, authorized the bankruptcy on July 18, 2013, and led restructuring talks with creditors.

"It's truly historic," Snyder said at the news conference at Detroit's public safety headquarters. "It really happened because of great partnerships, of people working together."

He added: "This has been an extremely difficult and hard process for many people, but people worked together. We have the city poised for a new chapter."

Duggan welcomed Orr's exit. The mayor and City Council will regain control of the city following Orr's exit, but they will report to a state oversight board called the Financial Review Commission, which has broad powers to reject spending, borrowing, contracts and labor agreements.

"We're better off today than we were 18 months ago," City Council member Gabe Leland said.

Duggan noted the challenges he and city officials face in coming years, with requirements to stay within budget for three years in a row before Detroit can come out of strict state oversight.

The city's plan of adjustment calls for up to $1.7 billion for blight removal and improvement of city services over the next decade, but that only comes about if Detroit can improve collections on revenues such as property and income taxes and make the city operate more efficiently.

There's no check for $1.7 billion, Duggan said.

"Basically it's money we're going to see if we produce," he said.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/loc...uptcy-kevyn-orr-rick-snyder-chapter/20192347/

 

[Greed]

New hope and old woes as Detroit exits bankruptcy

New hope and old woes as Detroit exits bankruptcy
AFP
By Joe Szczesny
January 4, 2015 1:03 AM

Detroit (AFP) - After the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history, Detroit hopes outsiders see its potential and not its history of racial conflict, financial crisis and dramatic population loss.

The city, founded as a small French fort on the Detroit River that grew to be a hub of the global auto industry, emerged from bankruptcy last month after shedding almost $7 billion of its roughly $18 billion debt.

Under the bankruptcy provisions, city workers made concessions and the healthcare coverage of pensioners was reduced -- but the pensions themselves remained largely intact.

And in a boost to remaining civic pride, the Detroit Institute of Arts' famous collection, with paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Brueghel, remained intact thanks to donations by foundations and private individuals.

"Working together, we can transform the city," said Mary Barra, chief executive of General Motors, the city's most famous corporate resident, after a judge approved the exit from bankruptcy.

"And you can see clear progress in the restoration of downtown, the entrepreneurs who are flocking here, the massive building projects getting underway and the work being done to improve education, neighborhoods and city services," she said.

"People always ask me about what's going on in Detroit," said Ania Eaton of the Library Street Collective, who said she had recently been in Miami for an art show and found a lot of interest in Detroit.

More galleries are now opening in the city.

"You have more people walking by the gallery. When I moved here five years ago, I only expected to stay a year, but I think there is a lot of potential" said Eaton, who came to the US from Romania.

In the Russell Street Delicatessen in the 124-year-old Eastern Market, the center of the Detroit's whole sale food business and one of the city's major attractions, patrons line up for tables.

"We're packed like this every Saturday," said waiter Kamaul Prendergrass.

Work is also progressing on other fronts.

Rock Ventures, one of the companies spawned by billionaire landowner Dan Gilbert, has commissioned one of New York's most popular architects, SHoP, for new development on the long-vacant site of the vanished Hudson's Department Store on Woodward Avenue, the city's principal thoroughfare.

There is a new three-mile (five-kilometer) rail line along Woodward, which is lined with several new office, medical and residential developments up into the bustling midtown area.

But some of the old problems have not gone away.


- Vandals and 'scrappers' -

Detroit's housing stock, mostly built during the first half of the 20th century, continues to melt away under the pressure of de-population.

The city's population has dropped from 1.6 million in 1960 to around 800,000 today, and most of the jobs created by a recovery of auto sales are in Detroit's suburbs.

The outward migration has left thousands of houses vacant and open to vandals and "scrappers", who tear out the plumbing and electrical wiring and sell it.

Detroit's city government now has plans to demolish more than 20,000 vacant houses over the next several months with assistance from the federal government.

The city's public transit system, despite the construction of the new rail line, is generally considered one of the worst of any major city in the United States.

Residents can take hours to commute by bus from one part of the city to another.

The sprawling west side, now home to the majority of city residents, continues to deteriorate, with well-kept homes sitting side-by-side with abandoned property.

"Not all that much has changed," noted one city firefighter stationed at Engine 29 on Jefferson, who declined to give his name because he wasn't authorized to speak to the press.

Detroit's well-deserved reputation for violence hasn't been curbed.

While the crime rate has dropped, the city still has the highest murder rate and violent crime rate of any city with a population of over 100,000, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

With budget cuts reducing the police force to just 2,300 officers, Detroit Police Chief James Craig has suggested the best thing residents can do is buy a gun.

http://news.yahoo.com/hope-old-woes-detroit-exits-bankruptcy-060307433.html

 

[Greed]

Whites moving to Detroit, city that epitomized white flight

Finley: Will downtown Detroit be a white enclave?
Nolan Finley
NOVEMBER 17, 2013 AT 1:00 AM

Whites moving to Detroit, city that epitomized white flight
By COREY WILLIAMS
May 21, 2015 5:54 PM

DETROIT (AP) — Whites are moving back to the American city that came to epitomize white flight, even as blacks continue to leave for the suburbs and the city's overall population shrinks.

Detroit is the latest major city to see an influx of whites who may not find the suburbs as alluring as their parents and grandparents did in the last half of the 20th century. Unlike New York, San Francisco and many other cities that have seen the demographic shift, though, it is cheap housing and incentive programs that are partly fueling the regrowth of the Motor City's white population.

"For any individual who wants to build a company or contribute to the city, Detroit is the perfect place to be," said Bruce Katz, co-director of the Global Cities Initiative at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. "You can come to Detroit and you can really make a difference."

No other city may be as synonymous as Detroit with white flight, the exodus of whites from large cities that began in the middle of the last century. Detroit went from a thriving hub of industry with a population of 1.8 million in 1950 to a city of roughly 690,000 in 2013 that recently went through the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. In that time, the city's population went from nearly 84 percent white to a little less than 13 percent white.

In the three years after the 2010 U.S. Census, though, Detroit's white population grew from just under 76,000 residents to more than 88,000, according to a census estimate. The latest annual census was released Thursday and estimates that Detroit lost about 6,400 more residents in 2014, but it doesn't include a racial breakdown.

Simple math convinced music producer Mike Seger to move from adjacent Oakland County into a rented two-story house on Detroit's east side that also houses his Get Fresh Studio. Seger, 27, pays $750 per month in rent, and said he wouldn't have been able to find anything comparable in the suburbs for that price. The average monthly rental rate of a three-bedroom single-family home in Detroit is about $800, as opposed to $1,100 to $1,400 in the suburbs, according to RentRange.com, which collects rental market information.

"A young person can move here with $10,000 and start up a small flex space for artists or artists' studios," Seger said. "It's the uprising of the youth being able to have the opportunities to make a future for themselves."

Eugene Gualtieri, a 41-year-old lab technician at the Detroit Medical Center, took advantage of an incentive program. Live Midtown, offered by his employer and several others in the Midtown neighborhood, allowed him to take out a $20,000 home loan that he won't have to repay if he stays in his condo for five years. The program is aimed at getting workers to live closer to their jobs, which can benefit employers and employees.

"The condo is eight minutes from work ... super close, nice neighborhood and really reasonably priced," Gualtieri said. "Like any part of any city, I'm sure there are good parts and bad parts. You just make sure you don't end up in the areas you are not supposed to be in."

Live Downtown is a similar incentive program offered by employers located in downtown Detroit, which is home to General Motors, Quicken Loans and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. Three professional sports teams and stadiums, three casinos, restaurants and bars are entertainment anchors.

Blacks appear to be weary of waiting for Detroit to turn things around and have been migrating to nearby suburbs in search of comfort, better schools and lower crime.

The city's black population was nearly 776,000 in 1990. By 2013 it had dipped to an estimated 554,000.

Elizabeth St. Clair, 27, and her family may count themselves among black former Detroiters.

St. Clair and her boyfriend are searching for rental homes in Detroit and several inner-ring suburbs. She has two school-aged children.

She acknowledges things are getting better — pointing out Detroit's current campaign to tear down vacant houses and eradicate blight. But the high cost of car insurance, underperforming schools and the condition of many neighborhoods are obstacles.

"As I see a resurgence of Detroit, I really want to stay here," St. Clair said. "I feel there are two Detroits. There's a Detroit where you are able to go downtown and enjoy, and then in our neighborhoods there's not much change."

Susan Mosey, who heads the nonprofit planning and development group Midtown Detroit Inc., said about 1,150 people have participated in the Live Midtown program, 38 percent of whom are white and 38 percent of whom are black. She said it's great to see whites moving back to Detroit, but the city needs to attract more people and stop others from leaving.

"The reality is this town is not diverse enough," Mosey said of Detroit as a whole. "We need new immigrants and more whites to move in. We lost so many of the middle-class African-Americans during the recession. We need good numbers of all people to come back."

http://news.yahoo.com/whites-moving-detroit-city-epitomized-white-flight-052128215.html