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michiganchronicle.com
Volume 79 – Number 33
April 27 - May 3, 2016
‘I made a mistake’
Hardest Hit Fund, a big hit in Detroit By Roz Edward
Judge Rhodes admits error with transition team, plans correction
The Hardest Hit Fund is becoming a big hit with Michigan and Detroit. The U.S. Department of Treasury began distributing the new Hardest Hit Funds to Michigan in February of this year. Michigan received $74.49 million immediately for blight removal and homeowner assistance. Recently, the feds awarded an additional $188 million in new blight removal funding — the most of any state in the country — from the U.S. Treasury Department in its round of funding to states for urban revitalization efforts. Though Detroit's share of the historic level of funding has yet to be finalized, it is likely to be a great deal more than the $42 million recently awarded to the city out of the state's nearly $75 million share. Total funding to the state from the Hardest Hit Fund for this year is $262 million. The unprecedented award will allow Detroit to increase the pace of demolition for abandoned and open and hazardous residential structures from the 4,000 structures torn down in 2015, to 5,000 buildings in 2016 and 6,000 in 2017. “This new funding would not have been possible without the diverse coalition that came together in support of the Detroit-led effort to get congressional approval for $2 billion in additional
See FUNDS page A-4
WHAT’S INSIDE
Photo Credit: Kimberley P. Mitchell/Detroit Free Press. Reprinted with permission.
By Keith A. Owens Senior Editor
Last week, DPS Transition Manager Judge Steven Rhodes generated some unwanted headlines when he released a list of candidates he had selected to serve on his hand-selected transition team. The transition team will be saddled with the sweat-inducing responsibility of bridging the (unbelievably huge) gap between where DPS is right now and where he hopes it will be in the fall, which remains the goal for when DPS will once again have a publicly elected school board. The problem with what Judge Rhodes now says was only a partial list is that all the listed candidates except for one were white, and hardly any of them actually lived in Detroit. So yes, that was a problem. Not the only problem, to be sure, but certainly a problem. To his credit, once the glaring omission was brought to Judge Rhodes’ attention, he wasted little time reaching out to various and assorted community leaders and shapers of opinion to acknowledge the mistake and to say that he immediately planned to take steps to rectify what he ac-
A Celebration of our Future Stars
Michigan Chronicle Salutes the 2016 S.W.A.G Finalists See page A-3
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knowledged was a large and embarrassing oversight in the context of a city that is more than 80 percent African American, and a school system that hovers closer to the 100 percent mark. What remains troubling, however, regardless of how good his intentions may have been, is an automatic thought process on the part of the judge that didn’t consider the ramifications or the optics of choosing a “transition” team that looked nothing like the community it was supposed to be helping transition.
tive heavy lifting, this third retirement will likely stick. Perhaps the most encouraging thing Judge Rhodes said during the course of the discussion (to me, not necessarily shared by others in the room) was that he fully supports democracy and local elections, and trusts the judgment of the people of Detroit to select their own leaders.
On Friday morning, I was one of several local media people who responded to Rhodes’ call to have a roundtable discussion at his office on the 14th floor of the Fisher Building to talk about his intentions and to clarify his vision for DPS, to whatever degree he can affect real change in the brief time he plans to remain in the driver’s seat. Because as he said, once a new school board is elected, he is gone.
“What is the alternative? To keep me in office forever?” he said. “You don’t want that, and frankly I don’t either. I’m retired, remember? I’ve already retired twice. I believe in the willingness and the ability of the citizens of the city of Detroit to elect the best possible school board they can. That’s why I’m here. I believe in democracy. If you don’t believe in democracy, your alternative is one emergency manager after another. I am not just another emergency manager to babysit this school system for another 18 months. The governor asked me to do this on the premise that the legislation will pass, and that a school board will be elected in the fall. And when they’re elected, I’m done.”
And, as someone who has been pulled out of retirement twice to perform overly exhaus-
Which, I would add, is why Detroiters should be allowed to elect their own school board
But that’s done. So we move on.
that is not burdened with the additional bureaucratic layer of a Detroit Education Commission with the power to oversee the board and veto their decisions. Nor should the superintendent be appointed by anyone except the school board. If you’re going to give it back, just give it back. The following are responses given by Judge Rhodes to questions presented by those present as well as his own unprompted speculations On what went wrong with the transition team I made a mistake, and I’m in the process of fixing it and correcting it. When I prepared my 45-day report, my financial and operating plan, I didn’t pay as much attention to that section of the report that dealt with the transition team as I should have. I should have said that was an incomplete list and that we are working very hard to include a cross section of Detroit and a representative of the entire community. That was certainly my intention all along. The committee when it’s finally constituted will be be-
See DPS
TRANSITION page A-4
National celebrities join Day of Action in Flint Days after the first charges were filed in the Flint water crisis, celebrities and thousands of activists are joining national environmental group Green for All for Earth Day to demand that Governor Snyder #FixFlint. The day of action is the official launch of Green for All’s “Make #PollutersPay” campaign to fix the problem of families paying to clean up the messes created by elected officials like Governor Snyder and big polluters like the fossil fuel industry. Green For All is joined by National People’s Action in the call for Governor Snyder to rebuild Flint — starting with fixing every pipe in Flint with local labor. Celebrities and national social justice groups have all joined in — from ColorofChange.org to EarthJustice and the US Climate Action Network, along with thousands of people across the country on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Kory Woods photos Participate or follow along on Twitter with Green for All at @ GreenforAll or at #FixFlint and #PollutersPay. “Families in Flint are tired of paying to fix Governor Snyder’s mistakes, it has to stop,” said
Vien Truong, director of Green for All. “This Earth Day, it’s time to talk about the people affected by pollution, starting in Flint. We won’t stop until Governor Snyder pays to fix every pipe in Flint, with local labor. Justice means
Governor Snyder bringing back not only Flint’s water, but also Flint’s wealth.” “It's incomprehensible that communities have to pay to fix the damages caused by polluters,” said Van Jones, CNN political commentator and founder of Green For All. “Governor Snyder needs to fix what he’s broken in Flint, and diligently work to rebuild the local economy that has been decimated.” “It’s not just the water, our homes are now worth nothing and business around us are closing. Flint had been forgotten long before this water crisis, and we need to ensure that fixing all of the pipes is just the first step in this rebuilding process,” said Melissa Mays, Flint resident and founder of a community action group. “The same companies that have polluted our community for years should be the same
See DAY
OF ACTION page A-4