Former lawyer and Detroit mayor elect Mike Duggan expects to have an impact on the Detroit bankruptcy.
It is unknown what impact the former attorney will have on the bankruptcy. Bankruptcy attorneys that have commented on the matter believe a new mayor will have no influence on Detroit’s pending bankruptcy matter.
Bankruptcy lawyers in the case will be the ones guiding the case and ultimately decisions come down to the bankruptcy judge.
Mayor-elect Mike Duggan rescued a county, a bus system and a 14,000-worker hospital network, served as a prosecutor, plotted Democratic campaigns and coached his four children’s soccer teams.
Now, Duggan, 55, is back-seat driver of a city under state control and seeking to become the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy. He wants to take the wheel sooner rather than later.
“The only authority I’m going to have is the authority I can convince the governor and emergency manager to assign me,” Duggan, a Democrat, said last week by telephone. “I’m attempting to persuade them. We’ll see.”
With plans to combat blight, crime and population losses, Duggan must remake a dysfunctional government that’s in the hands of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, a former classmate at the University of Michigan law school. Orr can be ousted by Detroit’s City Council — with the mayor’s approval — as early as September 2014, though Duggan said he hopes to manage operations well enough to take control even sooner.
Duggan will be sworn in Jan. 1 with the city under the cloud of more than $18 billion of obligations, understaffed police and fire departments and a cityscape scarred by blight and more than 70,000 vacant buildings. The home of General Motors Co. (GM) had 1.8 million residents in the 1950s, a figure that has dwindled to 700,000 scattered across 139 square miles (360 square kilometers).
Transformative FigureDuggan brings energy and experience, and Orr should let him improve city operations, said Doug Rothwell, president of Business Leaders for Michigan, an organization of executives.
“We’ll see more change than we’ve seen, with Mike there,” Rothwell said. “For the first time, it feels like maybe this really is turning the corner.”
Duggan was elected mayor Nov. 5 in a nonpartisan race to succeed Dave Bing, a Democrat, and will become Detroit’s first white leader in 40 years — a label that he says irks him. He beat Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon, who labeled Duggan an outsider who moved to Detroit in 2012 from suburban Livonia solely to run. Duggan won with 55 percent of the vote.
More white suburbanites than black Detroiters expressed doubts he could be elected in a community that’s 83 percent African-American, Duggan said.
“People in the city are tired of living in the dark, they’re tired of living in fear because police don’t come,” Duggan said. “They’re tired of living in blight because the city can’t get rid of abandoned houses.”
“Most people think I can do something about those things.”
