Topic: Detroit filed for bankruptcy

[trapeze]

During the Civil War the south saw the collapse of the Particular Institution.

Yeah, I know...I'm being a dick here...but it was the "peculiar institution" that was used by southern slave holders to describe slavery.

[Glock32]

Also known as "the greatest mistake in American history".

[trapeze]

The recent bankruptcy filing in Detroit is raising red flags about other major U.S. cities also dealing with billions in under-funded retiree benefits, prompting the question -- who might be next?

Just last week, Chicago’s credit rating was downgraded as a result of its $19 billion in under-funded pension liabilities.

Moody's Investors Service called the liabilities “very large and growing" and warned that Chicago, the country’s third-largest city, faces a “tremendous strain’’ in trying to meet future funding requirements and public safety demands.

....

Other cities now on the radar include Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Portland, Ore., and Santa Fe, N.M. -- following Moody’s saying in April that they and 11 other municipalities were being reviewed for a possible credit downgrade, the result of a new analysis system that further considers pension liabilities.

LINK

[IronDioPriest]

Right now in Detroit they have a golden opportunity. They have a massive mess to clean up. they have a ready-made workforce. They could have an incentive - if any of them have the brass to do it. Just organize relief camps. Set up staff to help assign work details. And turn off the welfare. Tell them that there is no such thing as free lunch, that there are no strings, but if they want to eat they will need to work for it.

They are welcome to stay or go, but staying means contributing.

And tell the neighboring communities no new applications for welfare from recent arrivals - instead point them in the direction of the Detroit relief camps - or create a camp of their own!

This could really catch on!

Shiiiiiiit, Negro!

[Libertas]

The recent bankruptcy filing in Detroit is raising red flags about other major U.S. cities also dealing with billions in under-funded retiree benefits, prompting the question -- who might be next?

Just last week, Chicago’s credit rating was downgraded as a result of its $19 billion in under-funded pension liabilities.

Moody's Investors Service called the liabilities “very large and growing" and warned that Chicago, the country’s third-largest city, faces a “tremendous strain’’ in trying to meet future funding requirements and public safety demands.

....

Other cities now on the radar include Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Portland, Ore., and Santa Fe, N.M. -- following Moody’s saying in April that they and 11 other municipalities were being reviewed for a possible credit downgrade, the result of a new analysis system that further considers pension liabilities.

...as it should be...has been run by one leftist asshat after another for...my entire life...and then some.

To Hell with them all.

LINK

Minneapolis in that short list

[AlanS]

The stupidity will continue

Since Detroit declared bankruptcy on July 18, the city's crippling problems with corruption, unfunded benefits and pension liabilities have gotten the bulk of airtime. But equally at fault for its fiscal demise are the city's management structure and union and civil-service rules that hamstring efforts to make municipal services more efficient. I would know: I had a front-row seat for this dysfunction.

Last year, I served as chief operating officer of the Detroit Department of Transportation. I was hired as a contractor for the position, and in my eight months on the job I got a vivid sense of the city's dysfunction. Almost every day, a problem would arise, a solution would be found—but implementing the fix would prove impossible.

We began staff meetings each morning by learning which vendors had cut us off for lack of payment, including suppliers of essential items like motor oil or brake pads. Bus engines that the transportation department had sent out to be overhauled were sidelined for months when vendors refused to ship them back because the city hadn't paid for the repair. There were days when 20% of our scheduled runs did not go out because of a lack of road-ready buses.

The obvious solution for a cash-tight operation is to triage vendor payments to ensure that absolutely essential items are always there. But in Detroit, no one inside the transportation department could direct payments to the most important vendors. A bureaucrat working miles away in City Hall, not responsible to the transportation department (and, frankly, not responsible to anyone we could identify), decided who got paid and who didn't. That meant vendors supplying noncritical items were often paid even as public buses were sidelined.

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A major expense for Detroit is the cost of lawsuits filed against the city for various alleged injuries on municipal property. At the transportation department, there were hundreds of claims arising from bus accidents alone. How many of those claims were fraudulent? How many were settled (with the cost of settlement and legal fees posted against DDOT's budget) at unnecessarily high cost?

It was impossible to know, since the city's law department handled all litigation and settled cases without consulting the DDOT staff. It was the law department's policy to settle virtually all claims—which meant that the transportation department became easy prey for personal-injury lawyers bringing cases with little or no merit, costing the city millions.

In the DDOT we tried to hire our own lawyers to fight these claims. But we were blocked by city charter provisions prohibiting any city department from hiring outside counsel without the approval of the Detroit City Council. When we inquired with the mayor's office we were told that the union representing the law department—in Detroit, even the lawyers are unionized—would block any such approval.

Disability and workers' comp claims were routinely paid with no investigation into their validity. More than 80% of the transportation department's 1,400 employees were certified for family medical-leave absences—meaning they could call in for a day off without prior notice, often leaving buses without drivers or mechanics. Management's only recourse to get the work done was to pay the remaining employees overtime, at time-and-a-half rates. DDOT's overtime costs were running over $20 million a year.

Then there was the obstructionism of the City Council. While I was at the DDOT, roughly 10% of bus-fare collection boxes were broken. In another city, getting a contract to buy spare parts to repair these boxes would be routine. The City Council publicly expressed outrage that we didn't fix the fare boxes, since the city was losing an estimated $5 million a year in uncollected fares.

But the reason we couldn't fix the fare boxes was that the contract for the necessary spare parts had been sitting, untouched, in the City Council's offices for nine months. Due to past corruption, virtually every contract had to be approved by the council, resulting in months-long delays. Micromanagement by the council was endemic; I once sat for five hours waiting to discuss a minor transportation matter while City Council members debated whether to authorize the demolition of individual vacant and vandalized houses, one by one. There are over 40,000 vacant houses in Detroit.

Union and civil-service rules made it virtually impossible to fire anyone. A six-step disciplinary process provided job protection to anyone with a pulse, regardless of poor performance or bad behavior. Even the time-honored management technique of moving someone up or sideways where he would do less harm didn't work in Detroit: Job descriptions and qualification requirements were so strict it was impossible for management to rearrange the organization chart. I was a manager with virtually no authority over personnel.

When the federal government got involved, it only made things worse. A federal lawsuit charging that the DDOT did not fully comply with the law in accommodating disabled riders had dragged on for years because of idealistic but painfully naïve Justice Department attorneys seeking regulatory perfection. I felt like a guy in the boiler room of the Titanic, desperately bailing to keep the ship afloat for a few more hours while the DOJ attorneys complained from their first-class cabin that their champagne wasn't properly chilled.

Detroit's other municipal departments had similar challenges. I would often compare notes with managers trying to run the city's street lights, recreation programs, police departments and smaller offices. All of us faced similar gridlock.

The last thing Detroit needs is a bailout. What it needs is to sweep away a city charter that protects only bureaucrats, civil-service rules that straightjacket municipal departments, and obsolete union contracts. A bailout would just keep the dysfunction in place. Time to start over.

Mr. Nojay, a Republican, is a member of the New York State Assembly, representing the 133rd District in upstate New York.

[Glock32]

And that's pretty much how it is in any city run by Democrats for decades. The only real difference is that some of the other places still have vestigial industries or historical, cultural aspects that keep them barely afloat in spite of themselves. That's not going to last forever. Sooner or later they're all heading to Detroit's fate.

[Libertas]

Yes...and Obama & Co are the leading champions of the Detroitification of Amerika.

[warpmine]

It might be more merciful to drop a Mk-41 25mt and let the pieces fall where they will.

Seems to me, the city of Detroit hired only those that were willing to be the most corrupt bureaucrats looking for the "it's my turn to get a piece of the pie" upstanding residents.

In a world full of corruption it's sad to say the only solution would be to have them all swept out of their corrupt positions voluntarily but since none would  submit to this and you obviously refused to then dispatch them with extreme prejudice.  Blood sucking vampires they all are and the host is dead but nobody wants to kill the parasite. DemonRats, hate'm.

[Libertas]

And we can expect the libiots running the rest of the big urban centers into the ground to join Detroit soon.

Free Shyt Army voters, Free Shyt Army pimps...and King Free Shyt Obama on the big throne...

The Detroitification Process has been kicked into overdrive.