Metro DETROIT SCHOOLS
Sources: Bobb could leave before June
The new contract renewal for Detroit Public Schools emergency financial manager Robert Bobb leaves open the possibility that a replacement can be appointed sooner . 10A Sources: Bobb could go before official time is up
Snyder mightappoint DPS replacement soon
The contract renewal that Gov. Rick Snyder signed with Robert Bobb on Tuesday will allow him to continue as the emergency financial manager for the Detroit Public Schools, but also leaves open the possibility that the governor will appoint a replacement soon. Bobb’s appointment was effective Wednesday, expires “no later than June 30” and “immediately terminates” if Snyder appoints a new emergency financial manager before that date, according to a copy of the contract the Free Press obtained Wednesday evening. Bobb is expected to leave the post well before June, several sources told the Free Press. Snyder could not be reached for comment. Steve Wasko, spokesman for DPS, said Bobb is working with the governor to ensure a fluid transfer of power to the next state appointee — whenever that occurs. “He is committed fully to working with the Governor’s Office to ensure a smooth transition on a timeline that will maintain consistency of programs for schools and parents and strengthens future leadership of the district, until a new EFM is appointed,” Wasko said. Anthony Adams, the school board president, said morale in the district is low because of the uncertainty about the future leadership. “The governor should work with the community to come up with a plan to rid ourselves of an EFM,” Adams said. “The only thing it has brought us is deeper into deficit.” Bobb’s contract renewal comes as the state Legislature considers two packages of bills that seek to give emergency financial managers more power over school districts and cities in deficit. Bobb has controlled the district’s $1.1-billion budget since being appointed in March 2009. The deficit was $219 million in 2009, and is now $327 million. The contract renewal provides Bobb a $259,000 annual salary — $280,000 salary with a 7.5% concession — which will be prorated. It does not stipulate any additional pay such as the $145,000 in compensation he received last year from private foundations. • CONTACT CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY: 313-223-4537 OR CPRATT@FREEPRESS.COM
Detroit Public Schools emergency financial manager Robert Bobb’s new contract, signed Tuesday, expires “no later than June 30.”
Do Snyder and Bing have a secret plan?
A series of bills that rocketed through the state House last month would significantly expand the authority of emergency financial managers appointed by the state treasurer to administer municipalities and school districts whose elected leaders had led them into insolvency.
A state Senate committee approved similar legislation Wednesday, and it hasn’t escaped anyone’s attention that, besides endowing EFMs with new authority to sell public assets, modify pensions and rescind labor agreements, the bills would make elected officials like Bing eligible to accept such an appointment. The Senate version also jettisons a provision in the House bill that would bar anyone appointed to serve as an EFM from running for public office for 10 years. In the eyes of politicians and union leaders, who would be reduced to spectator status if an EFM were tapped to oversee Detroit’s finances, the bills are transparently designed to allow Snyder to appoint Bing (or someone close to him) as receiver if the council members and/or city workers rebuff the mayor’s plans for eliminating the city’s $150-million deficit. Nonsense, says state Sen. Phil Pavlov, R-St. Clair Township, whose Senate Education Committee sent the legislation to the full Senate late Wednesday on a straight party-line vote. “The whole thrust of this is to avoid the appointment of an EFM,” Pavlov told me in a phone interview after the vote. By allowing the state to intervene at the first sign of trouble — a payless payday, a missed bond payment, or a failure to fund retirement obligations are among the events that would trigger a formal review by the state Treasury Department — the EFM legislation would force officials to take action well before their cities or school districts became candidates for receivership, Pavlov said. Snyder says he expects Detroit to right itself without state intervention and that he has no plans to appoint Bing or anyone else as the city’s receiver. Pavlov also doubts there’s an EFM in Detroit’s future, and adds that he “can’t imagine a scenario in which it would be Dave Bing.” Bing himself insists he has no interest in exchanging the mayor’s circumscribed authority for the superpowers of an EFM. And I believe him, up to a point; no one familiar with the Sisyphean burdens Robert Bobb has assumed as the Detroit Public Schools’ EFM would be eager to assume similar responsibility himself, even at Bobb’s lofty salary. But it’s easy to see how the mere possibility of such an appointment would enhance Bing’s negotiating leverage with any number of people who might be tempted to block his fiscal reform agenda. The council members and labor negotiators with reservations about Bing’s plans might be more cooperative in the present if they could imagine a future in which their reservations would be irrelevant. I have no reason to believe Bing and Snyder have an explicit understanding about what would happen if Detroit’s fiscal circumstances were to deteriorate. But I’ve been struck by the mildness of Bing’s public objections to Snyder’s budget, which would reduce Detroit’s share of state revenues by a whopping $176 million. You needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to believe that each of these ex-CEOs knows where the other is coming from. And the more dire Detroit’s circumstances become, the better positioned both men will be to administer the bitter fiscal medicine they’ve prescribed.
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