It's time for Gov. Rick Snyder to get real and get tough about keeping Detroit "from plunging over its own fiscal cliff," Detroit News editorial page editor Nolan Finley says.
He credits the governor with first trying "the kumbaya approach to saving Detroit," though nit was doomed because "a majority of [council members] are either puppets of the public employee unions, outright dolts or both." So Finley suggests a new way forward in his Sunday column:
The most positive action [Snyder] he can take on behalf of Detroit is to ask lawmakers for a new emergency manager law that allows him to sit the City Council and [Corporation Counsel Krystal] Crittendon on the sidelines, where they can watch somebody smart do their jobs.
Finley slaps Crittendon as "even more dangerous than the council."
Crittendon believes she's been tapped by God to protect the city from reform and is suing to block implementation of the consent agreement with the state.
As for the elected council, The News' top opinion editor believes 'it very likely sealed Detroit's fate this week."
The governor had set down a few simple milestones for Detroit to reach before releasing the $10 million in bond money the city needs to keep its doors open. Council whiffed on the simplest of the three, refusing to allow Mayor Dave Bing to hire the Miller Canfield law firm to advise him on the restructuring.
Snyder is learning what a Republican predecessor did, in Finley's view:
The Detroit City Council demonstrated again this week the gross incompetence that led former Gov. John Engler a decade ago to dub it the worst elected body in America.
