Detroit’s Financial Woes Worsen

Dave Bing announced Tuesday that he will not seek a second term as the mayor of Detroit. Bing has been unable to bring the city out of its financial free fall. The crisis has been so bad that Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has appointed a powerful emergency manager to try to fix what Bing could not.

Detroit was once the heart of a successful American auto industry. But the Motor City is now careening toward bankruptcy. Decades of corrupt leadership, poor management, high crime rates, selfish unions, high taxes and excessive spending have taken their toll.

Emergency manager Kevyn Orr reported on Monday that the city’s finances are even worse than expected. Its deficit is expected to rise to $386 million before July 1. Long-term liabilities are calculated to exceed $14 billion.

Officials are hoping that Orr can do for the city what others did for one of its biggest automakers.

Daniel Little, chancellor of University of Michigan, Dearborn: “When General Motors went into bankruptcy, it was able to eliminate its fixed costs and its future liabilities, and it had cars to sell. But the city of Detroit doesn’t have cars to sell. Really, what it has to sell are high-quality services, which people will then be willing basically to pay taxes for.”

However, about half of Detroit’s property owners don’t pay taxes.

East-side homeowner Fred Phillips asked, “Why pay taxes? Why should I send them taxes when they aren’t supplying services? It is sickening. … Every time I see the tax bill come, I think about the times we called and nobody came.” On Phillips’s block, only five people paid their taxes in 2011.

Bible prophecy shows that Detroit’s problems are coming to cities throughout the United States. For insight into this city’s slow-motion financial demise, read “Detroit Has a Spending Problem.”