Oakland County Government

Michigan's governor tramples democracy

Abraham Lincoln mourned the sacrifice of those who had given the last measure of devotion to insure that a “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.” Now, without the clash of armies, government of the people is at risk of perishing in the state of Michigan.

There is nothing about an economic crisis that should allow a states’ rights ideology to suspend democracy by stripping an elected mayor and city council of authority and then empowering an unaccountable and unelected czar to nullify worker contracts and sell off assets.

In Michigan, a state devastated by misguided corporate trade policies that undermined U.S. manufacturing, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has made himself the tribune of a corporate shuttering of the democracy. Snyder passed a law — Emergency Financial Manager Law Public Act 4 — that added extensive powers for state-appointed emergency financial managers to rule over communities or school districts in financial distress.

In the wake of the Great Recession caused by Wall Street’s excesses, many communities in Michigan — as elsewhere — are in difficult fiscal straits. Snyder has used this crisis to appoint managers who have, in the words of a civil suit filed challenging the law, “nearly unlimited, unilateral and unchecked authority” to make or change laws, to sell off public assets, to run up taxpayer debt, and to abrogate contracts of all sorts.

These are dictators neither elected by the people nor appointed by the city’s authorities, but imposed by the governor to enforce what one of the legislation’s sponsors called “fiscal martial law.”

Pontiac, Mich., has had an EFM for years now. But the most recent appointee, Michael Stampfler, has used his powers to institute a reign of misery. The democratically elected city council has essentially been fired by Stampfler, whose first order was to cut off city council meetings and strip the council of its powers entirely.

Stampfler is paid $150,000 per year, and his assistant $135,000 per year. He unilaterally slashed the salaries of the elected city council and mayor to zero.

The Pontiac Silverdome, burdened with debts and decrepitude, had been budgeted for sale at $7 million; a previous EFM sold it off for $583,000.

Caravan of supplies leaves Oakland County for Joplin, Missouri ...

51st District Court Judge Jodi Debbrecht and Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson stand next to one of four truckloads of supplies collected to help tornado victims of Joplin, Mo. A convoy led by Debbrecht and Main Street Oakland County program coordinator Bob Donohue left at 2 p.m. Thursday and is expected to arrive late this morning with the supplies donated by southeast Michigan residents.
Journal Register Newspapers photo by Vaughn Gurganian

51st District Court Judge Jodi Debbrecht and Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson stand next to one of four truckloads of supplies collected to help tornado victims of Joplin, Mo. A convoy led by Debbrecht and Main Street Oakland County program coordinator Bob Donohue left at 2 p.m. Thursday and is expected to arrive late this morning with the supplies donated by southeast Michigan residents.

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