Detroit’s mayoral candidates were quick to express their opinions on Detroit’s impending emergency financial manager (EFM) after an announcement last week gave Gov. Rick Snyder the green light to appoint an EFM to Detroit.

Mayoral contenders, former DMC CEO Mike Duggan, Wayne Country Sherriff Benny Napoleon, and Lisa Howze, found various ways to sound off on the topic.

While Duggan and Howze are still fighting the idea of an EFM for Detroit, Napoleon has said it’s time for Detroit to accept the fact that an EFM is on the way.

Napoleon posted on his campaign’s Facebook page:

“The winds have changed. Let's partner with the Emergency Financial Manager (likely to be appointed) to swiftly address the city's finances, improve city services and then focus on a strong Detroit future with local elected leadership. As a partner in repairing city government and setting our future, we have a voice.”

So far, Napoleon is the only candidate who has retired his fighting words about the looming EFM.

Howze said in a recorded statement last week:

“I beg to differ with this public perception that only option for the City of Detroit is an emergency financial manager. What we need is strong senior and middle level management in areas of human resources, finance, and legal. Where the State can partner with us is in passing legislation that will allow Detroit to better collect its income tax revenue through withholding.”

Duggan took the fight to an op-ed, published in the Detroit Free Press.

In the piece he blasts Detroit Public Schools emergency management, calling it an example of failure. 

Duggan wrote:

“Turnarounds demand exceptional management talent. Without that talent, the greatest strategies in the world are just documents on a shelf."

He then he dissed the future EFM team, whoever that may be:

“What successful executive is going to make a career change to join a city of Detroit emergency manager with an expected tenure of 6-18 months?

While Duggan, Howze and Napoleon all have their opinions, they hold little sway with the state. Even current Mayor Dave Bing has declared any decision on a Detroit EFM on out of his control.

Does that mean that we should all keep quiet and leave the financial fate of the city in the Governor’s hands?

Not necessarily. But the real battle against an EFM was, in a way, already fought. Last year when voters rejected the emergency manager law, Public Act 4, it was thought to have been won. But a month later, the state passed a new, very similar law, PA436. 

The silver lining to PA436 is that the governor can’t just snap his fingers and appoint an EM. The city would have a chance to opt out—they could offer up a restructuring plan of their own, ask for another consent agreement, file for chapter 9 bankrupty, or get a mediator involved. Another notable difference is that PA436 is referendum-proof, meaning it's protected from ever going to public vote.

Here’s the catch: PA436 doesn’t kick in until late March. Currently, the state is operating under Public Act 72, the earliest EFM legislation passed in 1990. If Snyder acts before March 27, the city would be grandfathered into PA72, where the city cannot, in a sense, pick their poison.

So, should Detroit opponents of EFMs  accept their fate, or keep on fighting what seems like the inevitable?

In his fourth (and possibly last) State of the City Address, Detroit mayor Dave Bing avoided the fact that the city is likely about to fall under state receivership.

His only acknowledgement of the issue  came when he boasted that his administration has had “no emergency manager to date.”

Local political pundits took to the social media website Twitter to point out the Mayor’s game of dodge ball on the topic.

Detroit Free Press columnist Stephen Henderson tweeted:

“Bing should also take credit: No swarms of locusts since he has been mayor. To date, that is. #BingSOTC2013”

Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley also took a crack at the mayor via Twitter:

“Elephant? What elephant? Bing barely mentions consent agreement and says nothing of pending financial manager. Reality avoidance.”

Free Press Columnist Rochelle Riley tweeted her two-cents as well:

“Bing speech sounds like its being delivered by a guy who knows it soon won't matter.”

The tweeting pundits noted that much of the Mayor’s claimed progress in the city has come from handouts rather than internal changes.

City Council President Pro-Tem Gary Brown posted:

“As Mayor points out, the business & philanthropic community are moving forward. It's city government that is failing. #Detroit #SOTC”

Riley agreed:

“Mayor Bing lists accomplishments; he can be proud. But most came by way of federal funds. He better hope that keeps coming. #BingSOTC2013.”

Riley took the chance to note something else: Recently Bing closed 50 city parks due to a $6 million budget shortfall but…

“Mayor Bing announces plan to raise $60 million to keep 17 rec. centers open a week after he announced plans to close 51 parks. #BingSOTC2013”

Interestingly, Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon, who is planning a run for mayor in 2013, tweeted his agreement with the Bing more than once during the speech, avoiding criticism of his possible opponent in the race.

“Again I agree, public safety must be the top priority of any administration. #Detroit #BN4theD #SOTC.”

After Bing refused an interview to prominenet (and often abrasive) Fox 2 news reporter Charlie LeDuff,  Fox 2 pulled Bing’s post-speech airtime altogether.

LeDuff tweeted:

Detroit Mayor Bing refuses me as his interviewer after State of City. Fox2 bosses Refuse him airtime all together. I work for a good org.

Bing also avoided giving any hints as to whether he plans to run for re-election this year.

Did anyone else watch the State of the City? Your thoughts?

As early as last fall when former DMC head Mike Duggan became more open about his intended run for Detroit Mayor, he started on a major task: to distance himself from current Mayor Dave Bing and Governor Rick Snyder, both of whom are widely unpopular among Detroit voters, polls and pundits and plain old word on the street have shown.

Everything Bing has supported, Duggan has pinned as a bad idea, from the Belle Isle Lease to the proposed lighting authority and the privatization of city services. the consent agreement to claiming in November that Bing and Governor Snyder were going down “the wrong road.” Duggan’s big job over the next few months will be to find ways to be relatable to Detroiters and to unravel the rumors that he is a union buster.

In an interview Monday with Angelo Henderson on WCHB-AM 1200, Duggan continued to distance himself from Bing and disputed the idea that privatization is the answer, something Bing has often turned to in his role as mayor. Over the past three years, Bing has pushed to privatize the  DDOT bus system, the city lighting department, the health department and even trash collection. He has also hired a number of outside firms to perform services that the city offers. Bing has said the city’s last resort is to privatize services and that hiring outside firms is necessary to fix problems within the city.

But Duggan, when asked how he felt about privatization, said it was a result of leadership failure. He told Henderson on Monday:

“Privatization is an admission of management failure. A private company has to make a profit. The government does not. So if government can turn over to the private sector for running it cheaper, the government has to be pretty messed up in the way it was running.”

Less than a week after being ousted from her perch at the top of Detroit’s Law Department, former Corporation Counsel Krystal Crittendon has announced her intentions to explore a mayoral run.

Crittendon gained name recognition only this year after challenging the legality of the city’s consent agreement with the state this spring with a controversial lawsuit that pitted her against current Mayor Dave Bing as well as state officials.

At the time the Bing administration painted Crittendon as a rogue lawyer who acted out of line to dampen city progress. But Crittendon asserted that the lawsuit wasn’t about her, that it was about doing her job to make sure government was acting within the city charter.

Since then Bing has opted to hire his own lawyers from the private firm Miller Canfield a move that has cost the city more than $300,000, city bond ratings have slid further into the junk bin and Crittendon has been demoted.

But her hasty post-firing announcement of a possible run raises questions that one can’t help but ask: Was Crittendon planning a run all along? Did she make a big (and ultimately unsuccessful) show of an attempt to halt the consent agreement, (a controversial compromise tied directly to the unpopular emergency manager law) to gain name recognition and position herself for a plausible run?

It’s true, politicians have to stay continually ahead of the game, in months, sometimes years of strategically planning. A telltale sign is that Crtittendon says she already has eight people in place to run her exploratory committee with less than a week of job displacement behind her. She told The Detroit News she heard about her ouster over the news media “like everybody else”.

If that was the case, it seems like she had been planning a run for some time regardless of whether she would be fired.

In a radio interview with Mildred Gaddis on Inside Detroit WCHB-AM: News Talk 1200 Monday morning, Crittendon had all of her talking points ready, and still insisted that it wasn’t about her but about the law and the voice of the people.

It almost seems as if her rise to fame or in some cases infamy was a calculated power play. Which as far as poltics goes, would be brillaint. Or maybe the events of the past year steamed her up for a run.

“The papers have portrayed me as a polarizing figure,” she told Gaddis Monday morning. “This is not true. I can work with both branches of government, as well as residents and the business and corporate community. This is not about me.”

She said her legal actions to block the consent agreement gave people hope, that the legal fight got people “believing we can reclaim this city”.

Crittendon said she has seen an outpour of support, residents approaching her asking how they can help in her mayoral bid. She also struck on a cord that resonates with many Detroiters who are worried a state receivership would mean a loss of voice for residents by declaring that the city can manage its own financial crisis.

What would be Mayor Crittendon’s first action? A thorough audit, and a beefed up collections taskforce to get back money owed to the city, she said.

Although she obviously is against recievership, she said kowtowing to State pressure in order to stave off the dangling threat of an emergency manager is not her course of action. She said the state will likely appoint an EM anyway, so fear is not the answer.

“The City Council should not be afraid to take a bold stand and listen to the people, not be afraid,” she said adding that even if an EM is appointed prior to the election, “he will not be here forever”. It seems likely that after establishing herself as a fighter for the people, she has positioned herself in the spotlight as a sort of martyr, perhaps gaining a soft spot in voter’s hearts.

The second question is, will it work?

Pitted against the likes of former DMS frontman  Mike Duggan and Wayne county sherrif Benny Napoleon, Crittendon has some big fundraising to do. And fast.

It remains to be seen: What side of history will the woman who tried to stop Detroit’s state-mandated restructuring process fall on?

Teach Me How To Duggan

Haters will be haters.

But if Mike Duggan—or any other Detroit mayoral candidate— shares a genuine, hopeful and realistic vision to move Detroit forward through choppy economic seas, then more power to them.

It hasn’t been a week since Detroit Medical Center (DMC) head Mike Duggan threw his hat into the mayoral race and there have already been tough criticism of his status and work in Detroit.

Two-time mayoral candidate Tom Barrow charged Duggan with being an outsider and chided him for having to move into Detroit from Livonia in order to run for mayor. The Michigan Nurses Association accused him of being a “union buster” for ending an effort to unionize nurses at the DMC.

It would seem that in order to earn the title “union buster”, there have to be unions there in the first place to bust.

Duggan, like current mayor Dave Bing, is a businessman who lived outside of Detroit and moved into the city to make his mayoral run.  Duggan, too, looks at running the city like running a business. He said his experience turning around the DMC when he came on board in 2003 would be similar to turning around Detroit.

As much as I don’t agree that cities should be run like businesses (a business’s bottom line is money, a city’s bottom line is people), I think Duggan deserves a fair shot.

The fact that Duggan would be the first white mayor since the 70’s should be considered a non-issue. It really doesn't matter if you’re black or white as long as you can do right by the city and do it well.

Duggan told the Detroit Free Press:

“What I’m focused on is we need to get the violence down, get the streetlights on, and get people moving into abandoned homes, not just knocking them down. That’s what I find everyone wants to talk about. And what I find is when you talk about those issues, issues like race melt away.”

While Duggan has shown successful leadership of the DMC, he still has a lot to prove. But let’s observe a bit before we start with sipping the Hater-aid.

Does Benny Napoleon Want to be Sherriff or Mayor? 

Wayne County Sherriff Benny Napoleon has a lot on his plate. As sheriff, he serves a county with one of the highest crime rates in the nation. Plus, in order to keep his job, he’s running for re-election in next week’s primary for a four-year term. But that’s not all. Napoleon is also considering a run for Mayor of the City of Detroit.

Has Napoleon bitten off more then he can chew?

Eyeing two public offices at once sure seems like it. How can he convince voters he’s committed to his job as sheriff if he plans to run for mayor in a matter of months after being elected?

Voters need to know that their county sheriff wants the job and isn’t distracted by another political race.

It’s not that Napoleon isn’t qualified for either job. It just seems like the honorable thing to do for voters and supporters is to stick to one goal. If he is elected as mayor next year, someone else will replace him as sheriff who was appointed and not elected into the position.

There are many who believe Napoleon could be a viable candidate in the 2013 mayoral race.

When asked who would be the next mayor of Detroit, Congressman Gary Peters had his answer ready: Benny Napoleon.

For voter’s sake, pick one public office to run for and commit to it.