Poor Detroit.
First it was Mitt Romney making the case as to why the federal government should have let it go down the drain a few years ago, but now a state senator in Michigan is proposing to do away with the financially-strapped city altogether.
State Senator Rick Jones says enough is enough.
“At some point we’re going to have to seriously consider dissolving the City of Detroit,” Jones told Insider.
Jones, a Republican from Grand Ledge, is proposing the Legislature, which has the power to establish municipalities, make the city part of unincorporated Wayne County.
Jones was unclear about what good it would to do to turn the city and its services for 700,000 residents over to a county with its own financial and political problems.
But he said state lawmakers like himself are growing tired of the Detroit City Council delaying implementation of the financial consent agreement state and city leaders signed in April and inching perilously closer to payless paydays and bankruptcy.
“If the City Council doesn’t come to their senses and start working with the mayor and the governor for solutions, we have to explore every option,” Jones said.
He says all options should be considered.
“If this goes to federal bankruptcy, every employee down there will suffer, the city will suffer and the vultures will come in and take the jewels of Detroit and they will be gone,” Jones told the CBS affiliate in Detroit.
The idea is actually one that has come up in the past, but, to no surprise, it’s never played well among Detroiters.
On the radio yesterday, Republican Governor Rick Snyder said he wouldn’t count anything out.
But State Senator Bert Johnson, who represents parts of Detroit, called the proposal “ridiculous.”
“This conversation to bastardize Detroit has got to stop,” said Johnson, a Democrat from Highland Park. “Detroit doesn’t do that to other people and they shouldn’t do it Detroit.”
