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Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan yesterday won 69 percent of votes in the city’s mayoral primary, a strong sign that residents are pleased with the progress the city has made under his leadership, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The nonpartisan mayoral primary means Duggan will face off in November against his top challenger, Coleman A. Young II, who garnered 27 percent of the votes. Each of the six remaining candidates received less than 1 percent of the vote. Yesterday’s election was widely viewed as a referendum on the advances the city has made since its historic bankruptcy in 2013. Duggan campaigned on Detroit’s turnaround under his leadership, including a revitalization of its downtown and improvement in basic city services like street lights, blight removal and public transportation. He was elected to his first term as mayor in 2013, the same year Detroit filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy ever.

Detroit's need for debt relief in 2013 following six decades of population decline, businesses disinvesting and uprooting for the suburbs, and mismanagement at City Hall was spelled out in then-Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr's declaration seeking what was at the time the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, Crain's Detroit Business reported yesterday. Four years after Gov. Rick Snyder authorized Orr to file bankruptcy, the purpose of Detroit's painful financial reckoning to shed $7 billion in debt owed to creditors and retirees is increasingly evident. As of March 31, the city had a general fund surplus of $51 million, with $52.8 million more cash on hand than in March 2016, according to a May 30 report from the Detroit Financial Review Commission to Snyder. As Detroit's post-bankruptcy unemployment rate has dwindled to a 17-year low and city tax revenues exceed expectations, the focus has turned to addressing more deep-seated problems of rebuilding a middle class in Detroit, fixing the public schools and spreading the "comeback" of downtown and Midtown to long-neglected neighborhoods.

Detroit's post-bankruptcy finances have improved to the point where the city should be able to exit state oversight in early 2018, a Michigan official said yesterday, Reuters reported. Eric Scorsone, who oversees local Michigan governments as a senior deputy state treasurer, said Detroit was on track to end its third-straight fiscal year without a budget deficit. That is a main requirement for the Detroit Financial Review Commission, created as part of the city's bankruptcy exit plan, to go dormant. Michigan's largest city ended the biggest-ever U.S. municipal bankruptcy in December 2014 after shedding about $7 billion of its $18 billion of debt and obligations. If Detroit exits state oversight, the commission, which currently meets monthly, could come back to life if the city had a deficit or debt problem, Scorsone said. Detroit must still deal with an unfunded pension liability of at least $2 billion and pension payments set to resume in 2024, according to Scorsone.

Using explosive language and personal attacks, the Jones Day law firm unloaded on Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan in a letter responding to the mayor's public threats to sue the firm for allegedly misleading him during the city's bankruptcy, the Detroit Free Press reported today. In a 13-page letter sent to the city on Feb. 23, Jones Day Managing Partner Stephen Brogan dismissed Duggan's comments as those of a "political hack" who is using the threat of a lawsuit to distance himself from the bankruptcy. Brogan's letter also attempts to dismantle any legal argument the city would use to sue Jones Day for its performance as Detroit's lead bankruptcy counsel. Brogan's detailed rebuttal of the city's claims against Jones Day is based on a draft lawsuit the city shared with the firm prior to Duggan's comments. "Filing this action would place the mayor in a long line of corrupt Detroit politicians who placed personal political ambition above an objective determination of the city's best interest," Brogan wrote in his letter, obtained by the Free Press through the Freedom of Information Act.

The Jones Day law firm today pushed back on claims that Mayor Mike Duggan was misled during Detroit's historic bankruptcy, promising a vigorous defense of any lawsuit the city brings, the Detroit Free Press reported today. Duggan last week told City Council that former emergency manager Kevyn Orr "concealed" information from him and Detroit CFO John Hill about calculations used to predict the city's future pension payments. Duggan's claims are "categorically untrue," a Jones Day spokesman said yesterday. "There was never any intent to mislead the mayor or John Hill," the spokesman said. "If anyone brings a claim, the firm will vigorously defend itself." Duggan initially raised the prospect of a lawsuit against bankruptcy consultants early last year when the city discovered an estimated $491-million shortfall between pension payments estimated in the bankruptcy exit plan, approved in 2014, and more recent figures.

At the tail end of his career, U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen helped mastermind an $820-million deal that rescued Detroit from bankruptcy, the Detroit Free Press reported on Sunday. Judge Rosen will officially retire from the bench on Jan. 31. Judge Rosen is starting a new career — one that the bankruptcy well prepared him for: He's joining a legal mediation service in downtown Detroit, where his new job resolving legal disputes will no doubt feel like a bankruptcy reunion. Joining Rosen in his new endeavor is retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes, who oversaw the bankruptcy case and chose Rosen to mediate the controversy; attorney Clarence (Rocky) Pozza Jr., the lawyer who represented the City of Detroit in the bankruptcy case, and Mary Beth Kelly, a prominent Detroit lawyer and former Michigan Supreme Court justice and former chief judge of Wayne County Circuit Court.