Crooks and Liars picks up a story that I first saw mentioned by Rachel Maddow. There is a bill in Michigan that would allow the governor to declare financial emergencies in municipalities and school districts. This would allow him to appoint managers to resolve the issue by cutting services, abrogating contracts, selling assets, kick out elected officials or even eliminate or merge the municipalities and districts in question. The bill, as currently written, provides for no public input and very little transparency. Citizens could be left with no remedy and very little idea what the appointed managers were doing to govern their communities. Clearly, this a very bad bill. It is contemptuous of the democratic process and is completely with conservative political philosophy, which favors devolution of authority to the local level.
Having said what an awful power grab this is, I also have to say that the idea behind it, namely that many municipalities and school districts need to be eliminated or merged, is a valid one. Look at Pennsylvania. We have 501 school districts, 67 counties, and over 2,500 cities, townships and boroughs. Think of the duplication of administrative functions that entails. Each of these entities has staff and many of these people are doing identical things. Are we really well served by having 501 superintendents for our school districts, thousands of mayors and council members and commissioners, etc. Think of how many new teachers could be hired by redistributing the salaries and benefits of redundant administrators.
Doing this sort of thing unilaterally and without public input is wrong, but one has to face the reality that this sort of thing may be somewhat necessary given the fiscal state of the country and many of its political subdivisions. I suspect that most people would react very negatively to the idea of voting their town, borough, school district, etc. out of existence, but the idea at least needs to be considered.
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