The [Banana] Republic of Michigan

Trey Smith

When the city of Pontiac, Michigan, shut down its fire department last Christmas Eve, city councilman Kermit Williams learned about it in the morning paper. "Nobody reports to me anymore," Williams says. "It just gets reported in the press." This was just the latest in a series of radical changes in the city, where elected officials such as Williams have been replaced by a single person with unprecedented control over the city's operation and budget.



Gov. Rick Snyder put Louis Schimmel in charge of Pontiac last September, invoking Public Act 4, a recent law that lets the governor name appointees to take over financially troubled cities and enact drastic austerity measures. Under the law, passed last March, these emergency managers can nullify labor contracts, privatize public services, sell off city property, and even dismiss elected officials.

Schimmel got to work quickly, firing the city clerk, city attorney, and director of public works and outsourcing several city departments. City fire fighters were told that they would be fired if their department was not absorbed by Waterford Township's. Schimmel has proposed putting nearly every city property up for sale, including city hall, the police station, fire stations, water-pumping stations, the library, the golf course, and two cemeteries.

Williams and his six colleagues on city council have been stripped of their salary and official powers. "Nearly the whole city has been privatized," he laments.
~ from Michigan's Hostile Takeover by Paul Abowd ~

Well, there is a lot I could write in terms of this nefarious law. For the purposes of this post, I'm going to focus on just one aspect -- it's the one highlighted in the last paragraph.

Under the concept of democracy, the people elect representatives to run the government. If the people become dissatisfied with their elected representatives, they can a) recall them before their term expires or b) vote them out of office at the next election. Nowhere within the democratic scheme is the power to appoint dictators and that's what these emergency managers are!

What we have here is the corporate model on steroids. Corporations make their decisions behind closed doors and are not accountable to anyone (theoretically they are accountable to shareholders, but that doesn't seem to be true anymore).

If Russia, China or Iran imposed a law of this nature, we all know that US leaders would be all over it. They would point to it as yet another example of the difference between the so-called democratic ideals of America and the dictatorial machinations of these authoritarian regimes. But when such authoritarian schemes are implemented in this country, most of these same leaders and much of the general public yawns.

I hope the good people of Michigan can find a way to beat back this undemocratic strategy. If not, its supporters (the money-grubbing elite) may try to implement it across the nation to the peril of us all!