Detroit Council Wants Hike In Own Budget Despite Massive City Deficit
as reported by WDET 101.9FM - Detroit Public Radio - March 28, 2006
"The Detroit City Council is requesting an increase in its operating budget…despite a city deficit estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.WDET’s Quinn Klinefelter has more…Council has voted each year for more than a decade to give a raise to members and their staff.Now the nine-person Council wants a nearly 16 million dollar increase in its budget.That’s almost two million dollars for every council member…compared to about one million per member in New York City…and 300-thousand per member in Chicago.But the request may be changed.Council’s own fiscal analyst estimates the city budget is stained with 300 million dollars of red ink.Officials in Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s administration say they have cut their overall budget by 40 percent in recent years…and are accepting a 10 percent pay cut the Mayor wants all city employees to accept.Yet even with the cuts…the Kilpatrick Administration still spends four times the amount that…for example…the Mayor of Chicago spends on a per capita basis.Some council members reportedly say they need a larger budget than their counterparts in other cities…because each member represents ALL of Detroit…rather than a lone district or ward.Former Council Member Alonzo Bates faces indictments for having allegedly used his budget to hire employees who did no work on behalf of the city. "
posted by Mal @ 11:59 AM
1 Comments:
So 'respect' is probably too strong a word, but one really has to hand it to 'em for their sheer, unmitigated chutzpah. If you're gonna be raked over the coals by possibly the most useless, backbiting, and race-baiting politicians in the country, you're not really being raked unless they're annually asking for more money to do it. A cloud of swear words and other colorful epithets swarms over my head...
What I especially liked is the comment that they need proportionally more money than those in other cities because they rule/legislate/perpetrate at large, instead of by district. A better argument could not have been made for nailing their feet (but not their hands, lest we make them undeserving martyrs) to districts to which they could then be held accountable.
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