It is without question that Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan putting the limelight on insurance redlining in his first State of the City Address is sending chills down the spinal cord of the powerful insurance lobby, the Insurance Institute of Michigan, which has already cautioned the mayor in a letter stating that it would be a difficult task to create D-Insurance for residents because Detroit will have to cover the claims. The group even offered to help. Quite ironic. We’ll see what that help means and whether it slows the process down and seduces those involved in the project to drink what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism, do-nothingism and standstillism.”
And if you are familiar with the Insurance Institute of Michigan, you know that it is a very influential interest group that is the government and public affairs voice of more than 90 property/casualty insurance companies, a mainstay in Lansing politics, that over the years has opposed virtually every effort to end insurance redlining in urban centers: Detroit, Flint, Pontiac and others under the pretext that the problem is not the high insurance rates, rather it is density and car thefts that are to be blamed for Detroiters paying exorbitant rates. There were many times when Linda Waters, the former commissioner, the Office of Financial and Insurance Services for Michigan, battled with the Insurance Institute of Michigan over reducing rates.
But now the problem those who are afraid of this potential seismic shift in the quality of life for everyone who calls Detroit home have to realize is that Duggan was not elected by the Insurance Institute of Michigan or the powerful interests, who would stand in the way of the city finally been relieved from the shackles of redlining that has forced them into substandard living.
“It is not justified. It doesn’t matter if you have a perfect driving record and never been in an accident. Most Detroiters are paying more a month for car insurance than the car payment itself,” Duggan put it bluntly in his State of the City Address.
You can earn the same salary as your friend in Royal Oak or Ann Arbor, but because you live in Detroit, your quality of life decreases and becomes unbearable because you are paying thousands of dollars in car insurance, when your friends, by the change of a zip code, are paying hundreds of dollars less in monthly premiums. That is the unfortunate reality of insurance redlining in Detroit.
So I support Duggan’s push to change this unfair equation and to address what has been at the core of the city’s quality of life. If Detroit is going to come back, it will take more than just erecting buildings and bringing businesses downtown. It will have to be a place that people can call home without having to sacrifice other living essentials to do so.
In pressing on with D-Insurance, Duggan is keeping his campaign promise, and it is impressive that the mayor hasn’t waited until two or three years into his tenure to do so as most politicians would do in order to milk votes for re-election. The mayor is starting this project this summer to galvanize support and find ways to address the insurance problem.
I must admit when Duggan first mentioned this idea to me at the downtown campus of Wayne County Community College District (WCCCD) when he appeared on the Global Conversation Speaker Series I was moderating, I was taken aback by the idea and didn’t expect anything to come out of it more than just another campaign promise. I thought it was innovative but I’ve seen many politicians in this town use insurance redlining as a political hot button issue and come back to residents with nothing. I’ve seen press conference after press conference with fists up in the air about ending insurance redlining by some of our legislators and nothing happened.
I’ve seen a former Democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm, during her 2005 re-election bring together an unprecedented group of clergy members to the Cadillac building in Detroit for a major press conference vowing to reduce rates for Detroit residents, and it amounted to zero. It turned out to be a clever ploy to enlist the support of some of the trusted voices in our community — pastors — to get the vote out for Granholm’s re-election with the specter of eliminating insurance redlining. That was it.
I’ve seen the chess game that politicians have played around insurance redlining and gotten away with it while struggling residents either have to move out of the city or use a suburban address while living in Detroit just to get past paying high premiums.
So I had every reason to be skeptical about Duggan when he first proposed this idea on the campaign trail. But giving this issue prominence the way he did in his first major policy speech last week has deflected my skepticism and has shown that the mayor is serious about attacking an issue undermining quality of life in Detroit. You don’t have to be a Duggan supporter to agree with him that it is time to end redlining. And if the battle against insurance redlining turns out to be an Armageddon battle, so be it.
For Detroit, whatever it takes to finally bring a halt to this economic dragnet should be welcomed by everyone whose pocketbook is being hit by the issue. If you have to choose between replacing an aging roof or getting prescriptions and your car insurance, it is time you stand up and support the D-Insurance proposal.
The argument that auto theft continues to be the reason for high rates doesn’t hold much water anymore because a report released for the sixth consecutive time by the Michigan Automobile Theft Prevention Authority (ATPA) whose seven-member board of directors, drawn from law enforcement, automobile insurers and consumers of automobile insurance appointed by the governor, indicated that auto theft overall is on the decline in the state, while insurance companies continue to make big profits.
Auto theft, according to ATPA, decreased 6.8 percent from 2010 to 2011 and continued that decrease by .03 percent from 2011 to 2012. ATPA noted that since its inception in 1986, auto thefts in Michigan have decreased by over 65 percent.
Detroit has always been a special case when it comes to issues affecting the rest of the state, and it will take a special project like the D-Insurance to begin to address this financial nightmare that most Detroiters are facing. Yes, there are bad drivers, auto theft is commonplace, but it does not qualify for the kind of rates that anyone with a Detroit address is being forced to pay.
If Duggan can write the wrongs of insurance redlining it will go along way towards making Detroit whole.
For too long insurance redlining has subjected Detroiters to an unacceptable quality of life. Hopefully that will change.
Bankole Thompson is the editor of the Michigan Chronicle and author of the forthcoming 2014 book on Detroit titled “Rising From the Ashes: Engaging Detroit’s Future with Courage.” His most recent book “Obama and Christian Loyalty,” deals with the politics of the religious right, black theology and the president’s faith posture across a myriad of issues with an epilogue written by former White House spokesman Robert S. Weiner. He is a political analyst at WDET-101.9FM (Detroit Public Radio) and a member of the weekly “Obama Watch” roundtable on WLIB-1190AM New York. Email him at bankole@bankolethompson.com and visit www.bankolethompson.com.
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