Kevyn Orr will end his 18-month term as Detroit's emergency manager this week, leaving a city still mired in operational and fiscal uncertainty and arguing in court for approval of its bankruptcy plan, Reuters reported today. His widely anticipated removal by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and the nine-member city council — which could happen as soon as Thursday — would be the first ouster of an emergency manager under a 2012 Michigan law. The city's elected leaders have made it clear that they want their powers back once the clock stops ticking. Orr is expected to continue as an outside adviser to the city, but his departure from the post and Detroit's speedy run through the bankruptcy court so far are turning attention to Michigan's emergency manager law.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/25/usa-detroit-bankruptcy-orr-id…
In a related Bloomberg analysis, the practical need for Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to conclude the city’s journey through chapter 9 protection may trump elected leaders’ opposition to state control, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The council may vote this week on a revised role for Orr, though Michigan law allows members to remove him entirely after he marks 18 months in office Sept. 27. With five new members on the nine-person council, the council displays a more civil and cooperative tone, said former member Sheila Cockrel. “This is a profoundly different council,” said Cockrel, who teaches about city politics at Wayne State University in Detroit. She pointed out that Mayor Mike Duggan and his staff attended a recent council retreat outside Detroit, a collegial meeting of the two government branches unheard of in the past 20 years. The decision on Orr will reveal the council’s temperament and its relationship with Duggan, Detroit’s first white mayor since 1973, to whom Orr has given control over much of the government of the city, which is 83 percent black.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2014-09-24/orr-is-object-of-desire-…