U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen

When A Devious, All Too Clever Plan Goes Awry

Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Steven W. Rhodes got just a bit too clever in his latest ploy to stampede the Michigan Legislature. He is trying to ram a $ 720 million bail out for the Detroit Public Schools through the Legislature, but wound up creating a labor relations firestorm. He even managed to grievously damage the prospects of the bail out in the Legislature. As always, it is the DPS students who are suffering the fallout.

Judge Rhodes, the DPS ‘transition manager’, sent out an email on Saturday telling all and sundry that DPS would have no money to pay teachers after June 30^th. He urged Michigan lawmakers to “act thoughtfully, but with the urgency that this situation demands”. The Detroit News later reported:

Rhodes, who warned over the weekend the district would run out of money June 30 and stop making payroll for employees who get paid over the summer, urged employees, parents and others Monday to press lawmakers to pass the rescue plan.

This is a reprise of the successful panic tactics he and his buddy U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen developed to force acceptance of the phony Detroit bankruptcy Plan of Adjustment. This effort, celebrated by Michigan’s nitwit media, left a smoking, $ 491 million crater in Detroit’s post bankruptcy finances. Mayor Duggan has been reduced to chiseling money from demolition contracts. Don’t forget that the $ 720 million bail out plan also turns total, absolute DPS control over to Mayor Duggan and his crack team of demolition contract negotiators. Out of the frying pan and into the fire we go.

This is how Michigan’s devious elites now get what they want, when they want, from an embarrassingly slow and cantankerous constitutional government process which they despise.

Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Dogies

Some boys goes up the trail for pleasure,
But that’s where you get it most awfully wrong;
For you haven’t any idea the trouble they give us
While we go driving them all along.

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Rewarding Incompetence and Corruption With Your Tax Dollars

Mayor Mike Duggan startled Michigan yesterday by disclosing that Detroit found the actuarial accrued liability (AAL) in their pension plans to be $ 491 million higher than that calculated in their U.S. Bankruptcy Court Plan of Adjustment. The very expensive Detroit bankruptcy consultants used an outdated version of the IRS Static Mortality Table when calculating Detroit’s future pension payments. Detroit’s unfunded actuarial accrued liability (UAAL) was not the $ 731 million stated in the Plan of Adjustment, rather it was $ 1.222 billion. Big money in a city whose total governmental revenues were $ 1.415 billion in FY 2014. Mayor Duggan blames erstwhile Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr for this little oversight, but others were also responsible.

No word yet from the Great Lakes Water Authority whether all those Detroit Water & Sewerage Department employees they absorbed from the City of Detroit have the same AAL calculation error in their pension funding schedules. You can bet they did, and the suburban ~~geniuses~~ politicians who spent a year doing due diligence also missed it. The DW&SD pension funding schedules were determined by the same very expensive bunglers who wrote the Detroit Plan of Adjustment.