If you are in the metro Detroit area, please join the protest planned for Tuesday, April 1, starting at 10 AM in front of the Federal Courthouse (231 W. Lafayette). The action is to demonstrate public opposition to the bankruptcy settlement proposal made by Detroit "Emergency Manager," Kevyn Orr. Orr's proposals as a whole do nothing to put Detroit and Detroiters on a sound footing; instead, they bid fair to impoverish retired Detroit public workers, increase neighborhood blight, and facilitate the continued looting of the city.
This protest was originally timed to mark the last day to submit public comments to Judge Steven Rhodes, who is overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings. However, NB: the deadline for comments ABOUT THE "PLAN OF ADJUSTMENT OF DEBTS" has been postponed to April 28th. Comments regarding the "DISCLOSURE STATEMENT" with respect to the Plan are still due on April 1st. To file your own comment(s), please see the Moratorium Now! website for detailed instructions. People who may file objections include "interested individuals" who have something to say. Even without filing your own objections, however, you are still welcome at the rally. Again, please note: such an objection to the Plan of Adjustment must be filed with the court, in person or by U.S. mail, on or before April 28th.
Moratorium Now! activists have been working for years to help keep people in their homes and to claw back some portion of the millions of dollars that have gone to mortgage holders through their fraudulent or at least deceitful practices. Now that there is new administration in place for Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae, activists have renewed hope that the long campaign for suspending foreclosures and working to keep people in their homes might pay off.
These activists, too, are supporting the call to action on April 1st. The related effort to "Save Detroit--Save Our Homes" has been endorsed by a long list of community organizations, including major labor unions (e.g. the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO, the UAW and several of its locals, and the AFT); major community groups (e.g. the NAACP--Detroit, the National Action Network, Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management, and the Sugar Law Center); faith-based organizations (e. g. several large Detroit congregations, Catholic and Protestant, plus the Detroit Interfaith Outreach Network); and over two dozen neighborhood associations.
To give you a sense of the impact of the proposed cuts to city workers' pensions, I offer some personal testimonials, plus excerpts from recent LTEs decrying the overall terms below the jump. It cannot be repeated often enough: calling these "pensions" is misleading if the term causes people to think this income supplements Social Security benefits. These benefits REPLACE Social Security; city workers are covered for retirement in this way INSTEAD of by Social Security.
From an article in the Michigan Citizen of 3/27/14, "Orr's Cuts Devastate Retirees," a couple of short profiles (though the entire article is worth reading):
Gloria Killebrew, 73, worked for the City of Detroit for 22 years and now spends her days caring for her husband, J. D., who has had three heart attacks and multiple kidney operations, the last of which left him needing dialysis three times a week at the Henry Ford Medical Center in Dearborn, Mich.
Now there is a new worry: Detroit wants to cut the pensions it pays retirees like Ms. Killebrew, who now receives about $1,900 a month.
“It’s been life on a roller coaster,” Ms. Killebrew said, explaining that even if she could find a new job at her age, there would be no one to take care of her husband. “You don’t sleep well. You think about whether you’re going to be able to make it. Right now, you don’t really know.”
Ora Mae Mott worked for the city of Detroit in the Finance Department for 30 years. She is 81 years old and her monthly pension is $1100. She believes her pension is constitutionally-protected pension, but Gov. Rick Snyder and his appointed financial manager want to slash her benefits.
“There’s no way in hell I’m living large, I’ll tell them that… I have to make sure I keep my clothes well because I cannot afford to go shopping.”
Some people like to say public employees are overpaid, that they caused the crisis in Detroit. Just don’t say that to Ora Mae.
From
a LTE to the Detroit News, 3/27/14, signed by the official committee of retirees for the city of Detroit, Michigan:
First, even if retirees were to take the “deal” as Finley describes it ["Retirees Risk Hurting Themselves," 3/23/14], they would need to accept pension cuts significantly greater than the 10 percent for public safety workers (police and fire) and 34 percent for general service workers he claims will befall them. In fact, when one considers that the city is also seeking to eliminate supplemental adjustments (COLA) increases — which would generally harm younger retirees (e.g., police and fire) — the amount of pension cuts under the city’s plan grows closer to 26 percent for public safety workers and 50 percent for general service workers. Considering that public safety workers do not receive Social Security benefits, and that general service workers receive on average only $19,000 yearly in city pensions, it is understandable why retirees have not raced to embrace the city’s plan.
Second, Finley fails to mention that the city plans to cut retiree health care spending by approximately 85 percent. Such cuts will require retirees to dig deeply into their pockets for significantly increased premiums, co-pays and deductibles and at the same time receive less coverage. Coupled with the proposed pension cuts, the elimination of such health care and other post-employment benefits will be dire for many retirees and their families.
Third, in contrast to private workers who receive defined pension benefit protection from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, municipal retirees have no safety net. Therefore, to chastise Detroit’s public retirees who accepted careers with lower salaries in exchange for a constitutionally-protected right to pensions, is both misguided and mean-spirited. Perhaps this is why the Michigan attorney general has lined up with city retirees by arguing that the bankruptcy code cannot be used to reduce their Michigan constitutional guaranteed pensions.
From a
LTE in the Detroit News, 3/26/14, by Bruce Babiarz, spokesman, Police and Fire Retirement System, city of Detroit:
Yes, there is a valid argument that the governor should never have placed the state constitution and guarantee of pension benefits in jeopardy by allowing the city to file the bankruptcy last July.
Interesting that the immediate request for an appeal to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on this important question of constitutionally-protected pension benefits under Article 9, Section 24 of the Michigan Constitution has gone unanswered in many months. Attorney General Bill Schuette managed to get a stay in one day on the issue of gay marriages in Michigan, but no answer from the same court on a question that impacts every public pensioner in the state, with implications for all pensioners in America. Curious indeed.
Perhaps the most telling testimony about this whole “pre-scripted” process that Judge Rhodes conceded in his December 3, 2013, ruling allowing bankruptcy, was that of former State Treasurer
Andy Dillon who described the case as “pre-mediated” — a word you might normally ascribe to a criminal case. We may indeed find out in the future that this whole process was tantamount to a pre-planned crime to rob pensioners of their hard-earned funds.
Below the fold I will supply some of the complaint submitted by
Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management (D-REM). D-REM welcomes allies and supporters to sign the
"People's Declaration of a State of Emergency," a community-based document to be revised and updated as conditions change. This statement provides excellent background and context for understanding the scope and causes of Detroit's current problems, now exacerbated by the suspension of democracy represented by the installation of the Emergency Manager.
In another diary I'll publish soon, I'll provide links to some important and useful resources to read in order to grasp the magnitude of the crisis facing Detroit, from the perspective of long-time Detroiters who are also activists and social analysts.
All of this reading material, however, is offered to encourage you to take action on behalf of this fair city now in crisis. I hope to see you at the courthouse bright and early on Tuesday, April 1st!
Here are the salient points of the objection filed by D-REM with the Bankruptcy Court:
a. These proceedings and Detroit’s situation require a power shift to deeper democracy for the benefit of the People who are most directly and significantly affected. The restructuring and rebirth of Detroit will not be delivered by a state-imposed emergency manager, nor through Chapter 9 bankruptcy proceedings, foundation contributions, closed door deals, or other devious and misleading corporate schemes. Detroit’s rebirth will be the result of the People’s unrelenting demand for democratic self-governance, equal access to and management of the natural and economic resources of the city. ...
b. The solution must fit its cause in Detroit’s State- and bank-engineered revenue collapse, not inflated claims about long-term debt. Detroit’s financial crisis results from decades of revenue decline caused by redlining, housing discrimination and deindustrialization. Heavily subsidized and policy driven suburban expansion decimated the City’s population and its tax base. A series of misguided and racist decisions by Wall Street bankers and regional corporate elites plunged the City into deep debt. ...
c. Due to incomplete and bad faith discharge of fiduciary responsibility by Orr, a limited-purpose trustee should be appointed, tasked with the responsibility of pursuing the litigation, and answerable only and directly to This Honorable Court. ...
d. No cram down of pensions should be allowed. Orr and Jones Day’s cynical attempt to use this latest settlement with the counter parties to buy a favorable vote for the plan of adjustment and enable them to enforce it against other creditors should be rejected. The State of Michigan and the Governor’s participation in this fraudulent, bad faith scheme should also be prevented, because the State has conflicted interests in the disposition of its revenue sharing funds that are at issue. The counter parties and the State should be precluded from voting to force the terms of the plan of adjustment on People of Detroit.
e. Restructuring must include just development and land use. The Governor’s emergency management policy being implemented by Orr and Jones Day via bankruptcy is only one series of steps in a larger suite of racially discriminatory, unjust and inequitable private development plans, including but not limited to the “Detroit Future City” plan, blight task force and associated non-transparent, unaccountable emergency managed gentrification initiatives that are already prejudicing and violating the human rights of Detroit’s People.
f. Detroit’s water and the Great Lakes are too important to public and ecological health to privatize or monetize for the benefit of subsidized suburban ratepayers. The emergency manager’s vague, non-transparent and unaccountable plans to regionalize and/or privatize the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department are unfair, inequitable, and potentially devastating attacks on the integrity of the Great Lakes, the commons water resources of southeastern Michigan, and the associated critical public health and social benefits inherent in this vital public infrastructure.
g. Transit is the key to Detroit’s revitalization. The absence of effective plans to increase access, availability, affordability and quality of public transit in the disclosure statement and plan of adjustment is a fatal flaw. ...
h. Land grabs by billionaires must end. The disclosure statement’s discussion of the so-called “Catalyst” Project, which provided hundreds of millions of public taxpayer dollars, as well as 39 parcels of real estate in the downtown/midtown investment corridor to private corporate interests for $1 so they can build an extremely profitable new National Hockey League arena and associated mixed-use entertainment district, is highly misleading. The emergency manager and the State, by facilitating this lucrative land grab of public resources for private gain, have revealed the intended inequitable, unfair and self-interested nature of the restructuring they are implementing through this bankruptcy proceeding. These schemes should be rejected.
i. The bankruptcy and restructuring process being implemented in Detroit via emergency management, including the proposed swaps settlement, the disclosure statement and the plan of adjustment, fundamentally mischaracterize Detroit’s issues and our path to recovery. Detroit’s bankruptcy was caused by revenue collapse as a result of capital flight, speculative and predatory investment by banks, including subprime mortgages, residential racial housing segregation, withdrawal of state revenue sharing and associated factors beyond the control of the city itself, including the Wall Street banking, bondholder and bond insurer interests who are making claims in this proceeding. The failure to address these structural causes of bankruptcy, in lieu of brutally unjust social austerity measures being imposed on Detroit’s People, evidences the absence of meaningful, fair or equitable solutions in the plan of adjustment. ...
j. Public trust in these proceedings must be restored.
Mon Mar 31, 2014 at 7:41 AM PT: Anyone needing a ride from Ann Arbor or en route, please let me know via Kosmail.