So does this mean OCP will be taking over Detroit?
Not if Murphy has anything to say about it.
OCP can take over, if they can get all these damn Nuke junkies off the streets!
IANAL but it looks to me like the state government can do what it wants to city governments:
I am appalled at what Michigan is doing here as it flies in the face of my notions of democracy.
Like it or not though, if I am reading that right, if the state passes a law that says the Governor can tell a city council to fuck off then it is legal.
Do you think this is a fair description of what happened with, for instance, GM?
You are aware that there are laws about how bankruptcy is declared and carried out, are you not? Because, as has been pointed out -
Regards,
Shodan
What does the national Guard have to do with fucking anything?
I wonder how all the teabaggers would react if Obama did this on a national level - taking emergency control of state goverments.
That would apply to states, though, not localities.
No, do you think that was a fair description? Do you understand the difference between a voluntary bailout and forced receivership? Nor do I recall the wholesale firing of GMs executives, or even its board.
And this bill is not about involuntary bankruptcy, but very loosely defined ‘financial emergencies’
From the PDF I quoted above.
Who and how do they decide if something is likely to occur? Something that is rather conspicuously absent.
This whole bill is a cure worse than the disease is and is nothing more than a power grab by the governor and will be far more likely to exacerbate any financial crisis, especially those caused by exogenous shocks like the recession or a housing bubble which deflated property values. Rather than do the sensible thing of increasing revenue (which can be done through bonds and other measures, not just taxes) to cover temporary shortfalls and ride out the crisis, this bill grossly over-expands the states control over local matters and destroys the local ability to respond as they and their voters see fit.
Maybe you aren’t, but Michigan is deep in one.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20042299-503544.html
It seems the Repubs argued that the bankers had to be kept and given their bonuses because they had contracts. Now they will declare contracts null and void. They will ignore teacher contracts.
What a lot of crap.
I think that’s a very good question, gonzo. So good that I started a thread to talk about just that.
As was said before, though, it’s a different situation. Local governments are creations of state governments in a way that state governments aren’t of federal governments. If the federal government tried to take control of state governments, it would almost certainly be unconstitutional.
I see that you have not read any of the thread. So it goes.
Regards,
Shodan
Bolding mine. That’s mostly correct, but it also depends where you live. Some places did great.
I’d be more interested in how the country as a whole would react to a President behaving in a manner more authoritarian than Lincoln did at the height of the Civil War. Especially since Obama faces no such threat to the nation that might excuse his actions in the eyes of the people.
So how do those that think this is the most evil thing ever done propose a State handles this situation:
In California, many small municipalities are tied in to the state wide public employee retirement system. A small municipality decides to start paying its small staff of civil servants $800,000 a year. These actions eventually cause the municipality to go bankrupt. However, the pensions that these individuals are now entitled to are not washed away in that bankruptcy, instead the taxpayers of the whole State of California have to foot that bill. Since pensions are based typically on x number of years of your highest earnings, these people will be entitled to massive annual benefits, in perpetuity.
Should States have no recourse to such actions?
You do not fire the duly elected people of that town.
I agree there are instances where the state can and should step in.
If there is a financial meltdown then the state needs to clearly delineate under what circumstances they take control(e.g. the city is facing imminent bankruptcy or it is in debt over [say] 75% of its budget…just made up examples).
When those circumstances occur then the state puts someone in charge, preferably a court and lawyer, to go in and make the fiscal decisions necessary to return the city to solvency. The local council cannot overrule any of it. If they think something is terribly wrong they can appeal to the court overseeing the process and make their case. The court is the final word if there is a dispute.
The terms under which control is passed back to the city council also needs to be clear.
In the meantime the duly elected officials are still working and doing other city council stuff that is not related to the budget.
Hopefully if the city council loses control such that the state takes control the populace will vote the do-nothings out in short order.
This whole premise is based on the premise that the state government will do a better job. What the Repubs in Michigan would do is kill unions, lower wages and bust any agencies that help the needy and the poor. The Repubs will act with helping their party and hurting the Dems as their main drive. This whole thing is political.
The fact that the two situations may be different in law is not really relevant to whether they are morally or prudentially equivalent. I think what people are suggesting is that, even if it is legal for states to usurp municipalities in this way, it will almost always be a very bad thing for them to do so, just as the Framers apparently believed that it would be a very bad thing for the federal government to usurp the states (and thus wrote the constitution accordingly).
What Michigan is trying to do may well be legal, but it still might be both wrong and stupid.