I’ve been receiving all sorts of emails, both in support of and in opposition to the bipartisan “Grand Bargain” following my column last week, “Inconvenient Truth,’ about why Detroit retirees should embrace the plan hatched in Lansing to ensure they walk away from the table of compromise with significant benefits.
Some correspondents accused me of writing a “well designed” and “brilliant article of subversion,” aimed at hoodwinking those who are opposed to the “Grand Bargain,” and that my apparent reference to Mahatma Ghandi on the power of compromise, was basically crafted to blindfold the opposition.
But surprisingly, this particular set of readers did not debate or contest any of the facts I laid out in the article. Putting aside emotional acrobatics, let’s discuss the facts.
True, there is a deep distrust about government and Detroit’s government, like most municipalities in the state, and across the country has repeatedly failed its constituency.
That is why the arrival of the “Grand Bargain,” at a unique time in Detroit’s bankruptcy process is being met with resistance from people who don’t believe that elected officials can be sincere enough to do anything for the public good.
They do not have any faith in the system of governance because the delivery of service to the people who bankroll city hall has always been punctuated by visionless officials who most often are bottomless feeders at the public trough rather than doing the job they were charged to do.
So I understand the difficulty and the reluctance by some to embrace the “Grand Bargain.” Others are incorrectly describing it as some sort of an economic conspiracy designed to give pensioners the kill pill or the full blown shaft instead of the agreements contained in the package of 11 bills that would ensure that retirees walk away with dignity rather than empty-handed.
But applying the distrust of government to the “Grand Bargain,” and using this potential bankruptcy settlement as a ready political punching bag is a grave mistake and a risk that could be averted if the truth were told.
And the creditors are not the reliable sources to tell the truth in the first place because they’ve already cried out loud that Detroit pensioners are been favored more in this bankruptcy process than they are, who seek to return to Wall Street with sacks of gold and silver from Detroit.
That is why it is no surprise that three creditors, Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp., Berkshire Hathaway Assurance Corp. and Financial Guaranty Insurance Corp., are vehemently opposed to a current plan by the city’s lawyers to take Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes on a tour of the city to see the devastation and economic malaise of Detroit.
The unconvincing and self-serving argument of the creditors is that it is not safe. But they added that the tour is irrelevant and unprecedented in bankruptcy court.
I hope retirees are closely following the actions of the creditors before taking the snake oil they are trying to sell in order to squash the “Grand Bargain,” because it underscores the need for the facts to get out instead of the propaganda. Just because you distrust government does not mean you should write off the deal.
For example, on Monday evening as I was driving home I was listening to Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr who had granted an interview to Mildred Gaddis, host of “Inside Detroit with Mildred Gaddis” on AM1200-WCHB.
What was surprising to me was that though Gaddis’ platform has been an engaging center that always remained critical about Detroit government and wrongheaded politicians, very few people called with challenging questions.
As I listened it became clear that Orr should have been clearing the air like he did on the program a long time ago, rather than waiting for a “Grand Bargain,” to give Detroiters an accountable account of what is happening.
The last time Orr came to my office in the wake of his controversial remarks about Detroit in the Wall Street Journal, we had a similar conversation for almost an hour about being straight-up with Detroiters. No sugarcoating. Just tell people what the deal is.
For example, there’s been a lot of controversy about the Belle Isle lease, aside from the police dragnet that greeted the start of the state overseeing Belle Isle, which seems to have slowed down, now backed by conspiracy theories. I’ve been copied on many emails in the past suggesting all kinds of plans that Orr has for Belle Isle that some believe won’t benefit Detroiters.
But on the Gaddis program Orr said he flatly rejected several plans submitted to him by deep-pocket developers to convert Belle Isle into some sort of a luxury estate like Palm Beach in Florida. According to Orr, some of the plans suggested developers would even be satisfied with owning half of the island and converting it into a private estate.
So why are we just finding that out now, especially given the battle that took place before the state leased Belle Isle?
No matter how rightfully confounded you are about the state of affairs in Detroit — because government hasn’t worked the way it should work for the people — it is important to put things in perspective and not to be confused by the series of events that are taking place.
The “Grand Bargain” is a deal unheard of anywhere in the history of municipal bankruptcy.
We don’t need a special session in law school to know that once you enter into bankruptcy, all things are open and that there is really nothing binding except that the parties are at the mercy of the court.
And in this case we’ve seen an unprecedented collaboration among parties that otherwise would not come together to engage in a joint venture under any circumstances.
We are witnessing a federal court whose senior officers have taken a deep interest in the case with the goal of ensuring that the resolution of this bankruptcy is one that is amiable and also doesn’t hurt the most vulnerable.
Like I indicated in my previous column, if in fact Detroit’s bankruptcy was being heard by another judge outside of the Eastern District jurisdiction, and the mediation team chosen out of this area, it is likely that Detroit retirees would be slowly singing a different song by now and that song would not be one they could put their hearts into.
While government distrust remains a legitimate and fundamental issue in all things related to governance of this city, it would be a disservice to label the “Grand Bargain,” as a prototype of distrust as opposed to a rare bipartisan opportunity to grant retirees some meaningful closure on this difficult and historic process that they are a part of.
When I initially found out that the city’s largest union under the leadership of Al Garrett, the powerful president of AFSCME Local 25, supports the “Grand Bargain,” I wanted to confirm for myself if it was a half-support or full-blown support of the deal.
Because in pure political parlance we’ve seen how often deals are reached and the parties at the table sometimes reluctantly support the deal while holding their nose and telling their foot soldiers a different story in contravention to the position they took at the table.
So I called up Garrett Monday morning, but couldn’t reach him on his cell phone. I tried his office and got him right away.
“I am not reluctantly supporting the deal. I support the deal because I believe it is the best we are going to be able to fashion out of this debacle,” Garrett told me in a phone interview. “Think about the hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone to consultants. So our financial standing today is worse than when we began down this road.”
Garrett said he and his group initially had issues with the “Grand Bargain” when it was being crafted because there were “various aspects we thought were overburdened. There were a number of lawsuits they wanted us to drop, some we were involved in and others challenged the legitimacy of the emergency manager law.”
Another sticking point before AFSCME came to support the deal was that 20 years was too long to have in place the financial oversight team, which was consequently reduced.
“They also put certain things in the law that would have infringed on collective bargaining that we had just worked with Kevyn Orr and Jones Day on. All of them have been modified in one way or the other,” Garrett said. “Basically this was a question of minimizing our losses to the best we could.”
Garrett maintained his position as other activist groups had contended that “we think the bankruptcy was contrived in the first place and the numbers have never proven to be severe as it relates to the pension obligations.”
So I asked him directly if he was suggesting that he was not comfortable with the “Grand Bargain.”
“I am comfortable with a bad situation. It is a bad situation but it is about the best we are going to get,” the union boss said. “The city is not collecting uncollected revenues, the state is not going to give the city its revenue shares. It looks like this was the best deal we were going to get out of it.”
He said he wants more from the state.
“The state should have passed a law where we could collect revenue for city residents who work outside of the city,” Garrett said. “What I would have done was those things that would facilitate the city being in a best situation to collect revenue the city is owed. That discussion hasn’t taken place.”
When I asked if he had candid conversations with Kevyn Orr about such issues, he said the two only met and had a conversation once.
“Retirees are correct that they are getting the short end of the stick, but the reality is that the stick will get much shorter if we don’t approve this settlement,” Garrett said.
Bankole Thompson is the editor of the Michigan Chronicle and author of a forthcoming book on Detroit. 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 senior political analyst at WDET-101.9FM (Detroit Public Radio) and a member of the weekly “Obama Watch” Sunday roundtable on WLIB-1190AM New York. Email bthompson@michronicle.com or visit https://www.bankolethompson.com.
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