Politics

Update: Robert Reich Swipe at Oakland Draws Rebuke From County Official

September 17, 2014, 9:18 AM

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy pokes at a recent essay by former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who frames Detroit's bankruptcy as "a model for how wealthier and whiter Americans escape the costs of public goods they would otherwise share with poorer and darker Americans.”

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Robert Reich, who was Bill Clinton's labor secretary from 1993-97, claims Oakland residents "won't sacrifice a cent" in Detroit's bankruptcy workout.

In his Sept. 5 commentary, republished last Thursday as a Detroit Free Press guest column, Reich singles out "the mostly white citizens of neighboring Oakland County" as "a very large and prosperous group close by [that] won't sacrifice a cent" in the city's court-supervised restructuring. Tom Gantert shares a suburban leader's reaction at the policy center's Capitol Confidential blog:

“That piece is clearly misinformed,” said Robert Daddow, Oakland County deputy county executive. “He doesn’t understand what he is talking about.”

The Mackinac Center senior correspondent, a Jackson journalist with experience at three Michigan newspapers, has a lesson for Reich, a public policy professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

By all accounts, the state and Oakland County are major stakeholders in Detroit. Here’s some things Reich overlooked about how county and state taxpayers help fund Detroit.

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Gantert lists four examples to make his case:

  • Suburbanites working in Detroit pay a 1.2-percent city income tax that generates $248 million a year (19 percent of city revenues).
  • Detroit is the only one of Michigan's 22 cities with casinos that can collect a “wagering tax” from gambling sites. "That amounted to $181.4 million in 2012, or 13.5 percent of the city's revenue."
  • Detroit is budgeted to get $140.5 million in revenue sharing from statewide sales taxes, "which will account for 14 percent of the city’s revenue in fiscal 2015."
  • Oakland County and its residents financially support the Detroit Zoo and Detroit Institute of Arts.

Related coverage at Deadline Detroit:

Economic Equity Crusader Robert Reich Soars Into a 'Greater Detroit' Fantasy, Sept. 7


Read more:  Michigan Capitol Confidential


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