Why I'm glad to be on the west side.

Have you heard about Detroit’s mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick? He’s in all sorts of trouble. There’s so much crap floating around this guy that you should probably check out his Wikipedia site. Or if you are a good minded academic sort, Lexis Nexis might just be for you too. (Hmmm, I wonder if I still have access to that through my university…) Right now, the mayor is facing felony charges for two of which is perjury and obstruction of justice when he lied about having an affair with one of his Chief of Staff. That had come up during a whistle blower suit. The Detroit City Council finally got sick of this guy and called on him to resign which he has so far refused to do.

An article turned up today in which the Council refused to hear the mayor’s annual budget address. It’s fairly obvious that the council wants to express their displeasure with the mayor—and I’m putting that nicely. However, I think that the Council was wrong to do so. They can hate the mayor all they want. They can employ everything in their arsenal to boot the guy out of office, but they need to do city business. Like it or not, Mr. Kilpatrick is still the mayor of Detroit and has duties that he needs to carry out.

One of the more interesting notes to this story is that the City Council may have violated the law by refusing to let Mayor Kilpatrick speak. Michigan has a law call the Open Meetings Act. Generally speaking, under this act, public bodies that make decisions on policy must do so in a meeting open to the public. Apparently the Council President called up the members individually to take a vote on whether or on not to accept the mayor’s budget proposal and whether or not they should allow the mayor to make his presentation. Under the Act, a public body such as the City Council has to make their decisions in a public meeting. According to the Free Press article, the council voted to adjourn the meeting in which the presentation was to be made but that is separate from the decisions to 1.) accept the budget and 2.) deny the mayor his chance to make a presentation.

Do I really think that things are going to go anywhere with Open Meetings? No. I don’t think that it’s really worth the time.



*photo from the Detroit Free Press.

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