Tagged: emergency manager

The referendum to challenge Michigan’s emergency manager law is officially on the November ballot, and the law is suspended until after the election. Now, there’s a new fight brewing over whether the old emergency financial manager law now takes over.

Attorney General Bill Schuette says if Michigan’s emergency manager law is rejected by voters in November then the old law takes over – and that still allows the governor to name a financial manager to run a city or school district.

The Michigan Supreme Court has ordered the referendum on the state’s emergency manager law onto the November ballot.           

State Treasurer Andy Dillon says the emergency managers running four cities in Michigan will be quickly re-appointed to serve as emergency financial managers under the former law – with one exception.

The Michigan Supreme Court will decide the fate of a referendum on the state’s emergency manager law after spending more than an hour and half listening to arguments. The case also brought a few hundred demonstrators to Lansing.

The group that’s trying to keep a referendum on Michigan’s emergency manager law off the November ballot has taken its case to the state Supreme Court.

A special seven-judge panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals will decide whether a referendum challenging Michigan’s emergency manager law will appear on the November ballot.

Michael Brown has spent decades in public service putting out fires.  Nine years ago, he restored order at the Capital Area United Way after a $900,000 embezzlement scandal.  He’s also served as interim mayor of the city he grew up in, Flint.Today, Brown is battling his biggest firestorm yet.  For the last six months, he has served as Flint’s Emergency Manager.  WKAR’s Mark Bashore has this profile of a Lansing resident in the eye of a political storm.

Take a seat in Michael Brown’s downtown Flint office and it’s impossible not to see the man who inspired his career.

While efforts continue to reverse Michigan’s controversial Emergency Manager law, seven of these appointees continue their work across the state. They’re trying to restore financial stability in four cities and three school districts.  

Opponents of last year’s law say it subverts the democratic process by granting Emergency Managers unprecedented authority.  That includes the power to cancel union contracts, dismiss employees and sell assets.  Proponents, including Governor Rick Snyder, say it’s the only way out for cities and school districts mired in debt.