Detroit’s Home County Accepts State’s Plan to Avoid Bankruptcy

Horace Julian Bond: Remembering A Stalwart Soldier

Last Thursday (Aug. 13), Wayne County, the home county of the City of Detroit, avoided declaring bankruptcy. But just like once-vibrant Motor City, the county’s fiscal future is far from sound or settled.

Eight months after a federal judge approved a contentious, state-imposed bankruptcy plan to discharge an estimated $20 billion in debt, the Wayne County Commission voted 14-1 last Thursday to accept a “consent agreement” with the state, giving it direct authority to call the shots on drastic cuts the county will make to fund an annual $52-million debt.

Tom Barrow, an expert in municipal finance, former chairman of Michigan’s Board of Accountancy, and president of Citizens for Detroit’s Future, dissects the rippling effect of Detroit’s bankruptcy.

Julian Bond, a stalwart soldier in the continuing struggle for freedom and equality in the United States, died in Fort Walton Beach, Florida on Aug. 15. He was 75 years old.

In a speech Bond gave at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Bond discusses what creates change: “Ordinary women and men proving they can perform extraordinary tasks in pursuit of freedom.”

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