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Response Times: If You Don’t Like The Numbers, Change the Definition
Bridge Magazine investigation finds emergency response times haven’t changed much.
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The Detroit Today Conversation about “Detroit Bankruptcy: One Year Later”
Detroit makes it through one year post bankruptcy. What challenges remain? What’s improved?
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Detroit’s Finances [CHARTS]
Here’s a look at some of Detroit’s finances, before and after bankruptcy.
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Picking It Up: Changes to Detroit’s Trash and Snow Removal
Trash pick up, snow removal improvements seen in post-bankruptcy Detroit.
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Voices of Detroit: A Year After Bankruptcy
Residents have wide-ranging opinions on the city’s needs, improvements a year after bankruptcy.
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City’s Finances, Leadership Culture Changed by Bankruptcy
With a financial plan in place — without deficits of the past — Detroit officials look forward.
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The Story of Detroit’s Bankruptcy: A “Takeover” or an Inevitable Financial Crisis?
From chaos and unmanageable debt to order and oversight. Here’s Detroit’s path into and out of bankruptcy.
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After Detroit: Fiscal lessons learned for other U.S. municipalities
Detroit’s bankruptcy did not set off a national wave of municipal Chapter 9 filings, but the case continues to draw attention and serve as a warning to cities, villages and townships across the United States to keep their fiscal houses in order. That’s according to Mary Murphy, manager on The Pew Charitable Trusts’ state fiscal health and economic growth project. She was one of the authors of the new report “After Municipal Bankruptcy: Lessons from Detroit and other local governments.” She spoke with WDET’s Sandra Svoboda.
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Detroit’s Bankruptcy Judge Advising Puerto Rico
Officials in Puerto Rico are hearing from Detroit’s former bankruptcy judge about how Chapter 9 works and how it allowed Detroit to restructure its debt, including pensions. Now-retired Judge Steven Rhodes is advising the Commonwealth about federal bankruptcy law. With its roughly $70 billion in bond debt and $35 billion in unfunded pension obligations, Puerto Rico has nearly five times the obligations Detroit did when the city filed for bankruptcy two years ago. Rhodes spoke with WDET’s Sandra Svoboda.
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Bankruptcy’s Big Three: Two judges and a (former) emergency manager walk into a lunch…
Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes and Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen appeared together to receive awards from Goodwill Industries. The nonprofit agency also honored the 12 foundations that chipped in for the grand bargain. As the men were honored at the lunchtime event, held at the Detroit Athletic Club, they made brief remarks. Here are the highlights:
Photo by Michael Ference
Orr drew a standing ovation as he took the podium.
“The 21 months that it took us to get through the emergency manager’s term was at times both tumultuous, exulting and, finally, exceptionally rewarding. As I look through the room I see the real, shall we say, heroes of Detroit. It was the people of Detroit that soldiered through a tumultuous and somewhat destabilizing time as we went through the bankruptcy to the end,” Orr said.
Rhodes recognized the team effort involved in the complicated case.
The now-retired judge said he was accepting Goodwill’s award not only for himself, but for all the professionals who acted as a team to move the case, “in 17 months, from its chaotic beginning to its successful conclusion.” He said the smartest thing he did was appoint Rosen as chief mediator, who now “deserves the mass majority of credit for the ultimate success of the case.” After quipping about the moments of tension that they shared during the trial, Rhodes thanked Orr for handling the political and personal challenges of the Grand Bargain with “grace, competence and success.” “As I go around the country and speak about Detroit, people are enthusiastic about its future and rooting for the city,” said Rhodes.
Rosen called the event “old home week” for the bankruptcy.He said unlike most stories, which require heroes and villains, the bankruptcy case only has heroes and heroines. Calling it “one of the most remarkable experiences” of his career, Rosen also said the bankruptcy case was like the “big bang theory” in that it “brought together unrelated people and events colliding to form a great universe that brought new hope to a great city and its people.”
in Bankruptcy Court, DIA, Feature, Kevyn Orr, WDET
