Daniel Howes asks in the Detroit News if Robert Ficano's Wayne County is going the way of Dave Bing's Detroit.
Howes zeroes in on the county jail fiasco -- "the county executive is buying (in its entirety) the argument of Dan Gilbert’s Rock Ventures LLC: namely, Ficano wants the prospective penal colony on the edge of Greektown to be redeveloped by the private sector" -- but looks at the gathering clouds of Wayne County's fiscal situation.
"The last thing financially moribund Wayne County needs is to press ahead with a wildly over-budget, poorly executed public works project that would preclude, because of its tax status and proximity to downtown, incremental tax collection from private re-investment.
"Worse, Ficano’s county is hurtling toward the beginnings of a state takeover, evidently the only kind of reckoning understood by clueless politicians south of Eight Mile. Anything less is license to practice business as usual — development boondoggles (county jail, Pinnacle Race Track), expensive early retirement packages, local and federal investigations.
"We’ve seen this movie before in southeast Michigan: Wayne County’s credit ratings are tanking. Its budget deficits are widening. Its pension fund for county retirees is woefully underfunded. And what passes for financial management has the attention of the Treasury Department in Lansing.
“We’re working with them right now,” state Treasurer Andy Dillon said in response to whether Wayne County could be next in the emergency manager barrel. “It could go faster.”
Translation: Michigan’s most populous county is at risk of tracing a downward spiral similar to Detroit. The county’s municipal crack-up is exacerbated by hapless management and cushy retirement packages for high-level appointees that signal just how out of touch its decision-makers are from the real world.
