Detroit Mayor Dave Bing says that Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, who has threatened to take the city into bankruptcy over its unsustainable finances, is bluffing. “I think he’s using it, at this point, judiciously to make sure that he can use it as leverage more than anything else,” Bing told the press. “He said to me, more than once, ‘[bankruptcy] is not where I want to go, but at least it’s on the table, and if I have to go there, nobody’s gonna like it.'”
Bing added that he was glad he was leaving office thanks to Detroit’s status as an undeclared disaster area. “When you talk about a $15 billion debt and long-term liability issue, you don’t solve that in a short period of time. So that is somebody else’s issue at some point. And I’m glad that’s not me!”
Bing said that the city had seen the flight of its most important assets, “police and fire.” More than half no longer live within the city, so “not only don’t people feel safe anymore, but you also lose the tax benefits that you were getting.”
Bing wants to pass a law forcing the city to hire people who must stay within the city for seven years. “In seven years a lot of things can change,” Bing explained, neglecting to explain how the city could legally force employees to stay within the city limits.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).