The Detroit Free Press’ recent editorial invited candidates for governor to offer clear plans for strengthening urban areas and accelerating cooperation across community lines. Mike Cox, who is seeking the Republican nomination for Governor, answered today with an op-ed comparing Detroit to New York City (and himself to Rudy Giuliani) that is so riddled with faulty history and economics that you wonder if the Attorney General knows much about either city.  And calling on Detroit to emulate NYC while later prescribing the Far Right’s pet panacea of tax cuts displays logic worthy of one of those hot pretzels that, along with very high taxes, New York is famous for.  

Rather than focus on New York City or its failed presidential candidate, Michigan would do well to look at cities and regions across the country that are leaping into the 21^st century economy. Those places, from Minneapolis to Boston to Washington, DC are distinguished by the regional decision-making and smart investments in infrastructure and technology. What does this mean for Michigan? A smart urban strategy is really a metro strategy that recognizes the interdependence of our urban and suburban communities and the crises we all face. If you live in Madison Heights and are fortunate enough to have a job, there’s an 80% chance that you work in another city and quite possibly another county; the same holds true in most communities.  Nearly 70 cities in Michigan could slide into bankruptcy this year. Vibrant cities like Royal Oak and Sterling Heights are being forced to make dramatic cuts in essential services. Individual cities cannot and should not be expected to weather this situation alone. It is time for leadership in Lansing that recognizes that the lives and livelihoods of Michiganders cut across government boundaries.

The next governor and legislature should come together around an agenda that prioritizes reinvestment in older communities’ and rewards groups of cities, school districts and other public entities that devise innovative approaches to sharing services and attracting public and private investment to their area. Lawmakers in our region must provide collective leadership by coming together in a bi-partisan Southeast Michigan Caucus that becomes a voice for regional solidarity and a vehicle for a new direction in state policy. Those who seek state offices should be asked to articulate a clear vision for leveraging the metro reality of our economy.

Not satisfied with enabling corporations to flood America’s political system with money, the Supreme Court has overturned decades-old interpretations of the Clean Water Act to allow many of those same corporations to flood our precious waterways with poison. Not only is this a threat to the water we drink but it has the potential to do great harm to Michigan’s economy by fouling fisheries and beaches and preventing us from leveraging one of the state’s greatest assets – our abundance of fresh water. For me, this is especially galling because as a young Congressional staffer in 1992 I had the privilege of drafting legislation, which became law, to strengthen the Clean Water Act. Later that year my boss at the time, U.S. Representative Nita M. Lowey, was honored as “Legislator of the Year” by the American Planning Association, because of legislation I helped her develop designed to strengthen financial support for the CWA and create thousands of good jobs by investing in the nation’s water infrastructure.

Instead of nullifying laws that protect our waters, health and quality of life, we should be working on cost-effective strategies to prevent pollution and enable more people to enjoy our beaches and waterways. If we do this, metro Detroit can leverage its inland lakes, Detroit River and Lake St. Claire as destinations and job generators the way Chicago and Toronto maximize their waterfronts.

Article on Supreme Court decision

Learn more from Clean Water Action

At the February meeting of the Royal Oak Area Democratic Club, a bright but freezing Saturday morning, members learned about the important work of the Welcome Inn Day Center for the Homeless, which provides warmth, food, medical attention, job search resources and clothes to people in need from the community meeting room of the Unity Church of Royal Oak. Just weeks earlier new data from the U.S. Census Bureau confirmed what people at the Welcome Inn already knew – the number of poor people and struggling families in the suburbs grew dramatically in the last decade. Over 119,000 people fell below the poverty line in metro Detroit’s suburban communities. This is also occurring in the rest of the U.S. but at a much slower rate. For the first time more people are living below the poverty line in Detroit’s suburbs than in the center city.

This does not mean that the suburbs are poorer than the city; Detroit’s poverty rate far exceeds that of its surrounding communities. What it means is that residents of southeast Michigan are suffering like nowhere else in America, and Washington should take notice. But the federal government won’t take action unless we speak with one voice. In 2002 I worked with a group of mayors and city managers to create the Michigan Suburbs Alliance for that very purpose:  to bring communities together to tell Lansing and Washington that the time has come to shift priorities away from subsidizing sprawling development in places where cows recently outnumbered people. Instead of cutting grants that support efforts such as the Welcome Inn, we should be scrutinizing and eliminating tax give-aways that fail to produce jobs. We should insist that state-supported research institutions looking to sell their patented technology give priority to investors who promise to create jobs in Michigan, instead of selling to the highest bidder anywhere in the world. We need fresh ideas and new priorities and we need them now.

Article about Welcome Inn Day Center for the Homeless

Report from Brookings Institution on Poverty in the Suburbs

In theory, no state should have had a stronger case than Michigan’s for securing a large portion of the Obama Administration’s recently unveiled grants for high-speed rail. In reality, the state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate whose high speed line would link directly to the President’s home town received $40 million out of a total of $8 billion allocated for the program – that’s one-half of one percent for those keeping score at home. What happened? I have a hunch that despite what would seemed to be compelling political reasons for making a large high-profile investment in a state that some are putting into the swing column in the  next presidential election, the Administration’s planners saw more risk than reward in betting on Michigan’s transit future. Given Lansing’s failure thus far to create a regional authority in Detroit to even administer federal transit grants, it’s hard to imagine that the USDOT was itching to spend big in the Great Lakes State.

In a blog last April I cited a Citizens Research Council study which found that in 2008 Michigan ranked 45^th in per-capital federal funding. It was clear then that President Obama’s stated intention to give priority to metropolitan areas that demonstrate a commitment to collaborate across city lines would mean that Michigan, and metro Detroit, could potentially leave a lot of desperately needed federal money on the table unless we got our act together. We didn’t, and now hundreds of millions in transportation funds will help speed people from Tampa to Disney World instead of Detroit to Chicago. We can and must do better and that’s why I want to establish a Southeast Michigan Caucus in the Michigan Legislature that will bring together state lawmakers from our region to take action on an aggressive agenda to create jobs in metro Detroit and finally position us to secure the federal support our residents deserve and our economy desperately needs.

Detroit Free Press Article on $40 Million for Michigan

The Royal City Commission made a wise choice this week when it approved the transfer of a liquor license that will allow the opening of a new Greek restaurant downtown. Mayor Ellison and his colleagues on the commission correctly pointed out that Royal Oak is in the enviable position of drawing visitors from a large area across SE Michigan, which means that the state’s quota of 40, which is based only on the City’s population, is too low and needlessly prevents new investment and jobs from coming into downtown Royal Oak. My friend and campaign supporter, Professor Jeff Horner of Wayne State, in this week’s RO Review supported the state’s quota system and pointed out that downtown’s need to attract high revenue office space.  

What’s missing in this discussion is the fact that Royal Oak along with other cool downtowns around the country is leading a growing 2^nd story office space trend, where high tech firms and other entrepreneurs are choosing the upstairs of urbane spots like Royal Oak because of their vibrant mix of retail and dining.  Let’s reject the false dichotomy between entertainment and office and recognize that growing Royal Oak means fostering both with reason and care.

Royal Oak Review Artcle

Article in Metromode on RO's Emerging 2nd Story

Facts about the Issue