EDITORIAL: Proposed 'financial emergency' bill an affront to democracy
No emergency or governmental crisis is ever so desperate to justify betraying the fundamentals of democracy.
House Bill 4214, which has already passed through the Senate with a number of amendments, would allow state financial authorities and Gov. Rick Snyder to declare a “local government” such as a city or township to be in a “financial emergency.” Once declared in a financial emergency, they would appoint an “emergency manager” to revamp the municipality’s financial situation.
Such an emergency manager would be able to redistribute and restructure the government’s finances however they see fit. They would have the authority to terminate any contracts, end collective bargaining agreements with labor unions and even dissolve the municipal government, according to information on www.legislature.mi.gov.
The bill, which gained national attention when it was covered on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” is an affront to the democracy this state and country were founded on.
The emergency managers described in the bill can be government officials, private citizens or even corporations. Allowing private citizens or companies to fire elected officials or dissolve an entire government purely on their own authority is unacceptable.
If a city is truly in a financial emergency, drastic measures may be required. However, this bill is far too drastic and far too broad on every level.
It does not narrowly define a “financial emergency.” Although logic would suggest that such measures would only be used in the most dire situations where there are no other options, the bill does not say that.
There is nothing stopping Snyder from declaring financial emergencies in municipalities whose officials he has a problem with, appointing his friends from corporate circles as the emergency managers who would then run the municipality in the way most profitable to themselves.
In other words, this bill would enable everything that a democratically-elected government and the accountability it provides is meant to prevent.
Snyder was hired primarily on the platform of revamping Michigan’s economy in big, tangible ways. However he and the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Al Pscholka, R-Stevensville, need to do so within the boundaries of the democratic process.
Hopefully the legislators of Michigan have more respect for their fellow elected officials and the constituents they govern than to pass this bill.
Hopefully the citizens of Michigan — and the federal government, if necessary — will not allow such a broad, overreaching and morally bankrupt bill to go into effect.
