Democracy derailed in Flint crisis: Column

The divergent paths of Flint, Mich., and Detroit pose a vivid lesson about the dangers of spurning democratic consensus when addressing municipal financial crises.

For years, both cities have been reeling from the crushing collision of industrial disinvestment, racial inequality, bureaucratic mismanagement and exorbitant debt.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder appointed emergency managers to both cities to repair their financial crises, which had wreaked havoc on citizens, draining each city’s budget of cash for basic services such as police and fire.

Under emergency management, Flint plowed ahead recklessly with a decision to use the Flint River as a temporary source of water even though the city could not afford the potential $61 million investment in a water treatment plant that was needed to make the water safe to drink.

After state and federal regulators failed to sound the alarm, Flint residents were poisoned with lead in their water — a full-blown American humanitarian crisis in the 21st century.

By comparison, Detroit’s sprawling water system also was at a crossroads in 2013 and 2014 under the leadership of emergency manager Kevyn Orr.

In the midst of the largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history, Orr was presented with the opportunity to privatize Detroit’s water system, as I document in my new book, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back.

A deal to sell the Detroit water system could have yielded several billion dollars for the broke city and its 170,000 creditors, who were owed $18 billion.

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But the elected officials of Detroit — including Mayor Mike Duggan and the City Council — as well as suburban leaders uniformly despised the idea, fearing huge rate increases and loss of political power.

Still, Orr had no legal obligation under the emergency management law to consider the will of the city’s elected officials.

What Orr quickly recognized, however, is that major decisions on city infrastructure demand a consensus — because long after you’re gone, the community must live with the result.

So Orr brought Duggan into the negotiation process on how to overhaul the system, which delivers services to 4 million customers throughout southeast Michigan.

Together, Orr and Duggan struck a deal with the suburbs to create an independent water authority with regional management, improved oversight, rate limits and a fund to assist low-income residents with their bills. Unlike a deal to privatize the system through a sale, Detroit maintains ownership over its water infrastructure, which is simply being leased to the external authority.

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Perhaps best of all — particularly in light of heightened awareness about lead pipes — the city will receive $2 billion over 40 years from the newly created Great Lakes Water Authority to overhaul aging water pipes and plants.

The Detroit City Council — which had initially blasted Orr’s appointment — eventually developed a working relationship with the emergency manager and voted to approve the water deal.

One of Orr’s fiercest critics, City Council President Brenda Jones, even pledged to support the emergency manager’s comprehensive bankruptcy plan, which slashed $7 billion in debt and set aside $1.7 billion over 10 years for police, fire and other critical city services.

Similarly, Duggan vowed to support Orr’s bankruptcy plan, having already been given day-to-day authority over most city operations in a power-sharing deal while Orr was still in office.

Today, Detroit’s bankruptcy plan is on track — with the city posting surpluses, hiring police officers, upgrading fire equipment, improving tax collection rates, relighting the streets and demolishing abandoned homes.

Because of Orr’s leadership during Detroit’s reorganization and his cooperative approach to overhauling city services, Detroit has a second chance at life.

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The contrast with Flint is striking.

The Flint City Council, it turns out, never endorsed the emergency managers’ plan to temporarily use the Flint River as drinking water without making upgrades to a water treatment facility that were necessary to deliver corrosion control chemicals required to make the water safe.

The hope, it seems, was to deliver cheaper water by exiting the too-far-away Detroit water system — perhaps a noble objective in a city swamped with poverty.

The disquieting reality, however, is that it was made clear to the Flint City Council in a public meeting in March 2013 that the massive costs required to temporarily use the Flint River were extremely prohibitive, as my former Detroit Free Press colleagues recently documented.

A city with meager financial resources like Flint could not afford a massive upfront investment in a water treatment plant.

The fact is, Flint City Council members were prepared to wait for new pipelines to be constructed to draw water from Lake Huron instead of switching to the Flint River without corrosion control chemicals, according to the Free Press.

Thus, we can safely presume that if Flint’s emergency managers had taken the route Orr did with water in Detroit — that is, coordinating with local officials to make an authentically democratic decision — Flint’s crisis could have been averted.

Nathan Bomey is a business reporter for USA TODAY and author of the forthcoming Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back. You can follow him on Twitter @NathanBomeyor email him atnbomey@usatoday.com.  

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