If the Wayne County airport board thought firing Turkia Mullin would end the controversy surrounding the “severance” she received – and then gave back – after leaving her last job, it looks like they are wrong.
Unless the board finds a face-saving way to sever Mullin’s employment contract on terms acceptable for both sides, this circus is going to be in town for a long time. It’s a show nobody wants to see. And it has the potential – like the continuing Kwame Kilpatrick saga – to make the state’s most populous region look silly, backward and dysfunctional. Something has to change.
At this point, it is hard to make judgments about the merits of Mullin’s threatened lawsuit. Politically, the decision to fire her seemed unavoidable. It now will be up to the lawyers to decide whether the terms of her contract were violated and whether or not the board acted properly when it made its choice in a closed session.
What’s very clear is that Michigan can’t afford more drama like this. The predictable partisan attacks, finger-pointing and posturing that are sure to follow this won’t help, either. What we need is for some grown-ups (if they can be found) to take a long look at how southeast Michigan is governed and figure out how to make the region’s governments more transparent, sustainable and well-managed.
There already have been calls for new leadership in Wayne County. Maybe that is required. But that won’t solve the problem either, unless the new leaders (or the current ones) are willing to start thinking radical thoughts. We have to be prepared to re-think just about everything and move beyond our historical aversion to sharing power and working together across municipal lines.
Here are some things the Detroit region should ponder now:
Are our executives too powerful? Organizers of the annual Detroit Regional Chamber Mackinac Policy Conference like to trot out the region’s “Big Four” leaders, which are Ficano, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and (most recently) Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel. There is a lot to say for having identifiable, accountable people at the top who have the authority to get things done. But, in the wake of the Mullin fiasco, it is worth considering whether such figures are subject to enough oversight and well-defined rules. Call me crazy, but I’m thinking there could be room for improvement there.
Do Detroit and Wayne County have to be separate entities?Indianapolis has a consolidated city-county government under which city and county governments are largely (though not entirely) consolidated. Would that kind of thing work here? It’s hard to say. But we should look at it.
Does it make sense for local governments to run their own benefit and retirement systems, each with their own rules and investment policies? The massive California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) provides retirement and health benefits to more than 1.6 million public employees, retirees and their families and more than 3,000 public employers in that state. The CalPERS system is far from perfect. But, again it’s an approach worth considering.
How does metro Detroit become the transportation hub it ought to be? Whatever one thinks about how Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano has handled the Mullin situation, his aerotropolisvision is compelling. Add to that a comprehensive, regional mass-transit plan, rail improvements, repaired roads and a second border crossing over the Detroit River and we’ll be onto something. We are nowhere near there yet, and that is a tragedy.
I have no clue whether the ideas expressed above are the best possible ones for the Detroit region. I can think of plenty of problems that could be created by implementing any of them. Politically, each is probably as toxic as nuclear waste.
But then again, how is the status quo working out? Maybe we need to start thinking radical thoughts.
