On March 16, 2011, the Republican Governor Richard Snyder signed into law Public Act No. 4, the Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act, also known as the “emergency financial manager law.” Under this law, the Governor has the power to unilaterally (1) declare a local government or school district to be in a state of “financial emergency”, (2) determine if that local government or school district has a “satisfactory” plan to resolve the emergency, and, if he determines that no satisfactory plan exists, (3) appoint an emergency financial manager to act for, and in place of the, the local governing body (i.e., mayor, school superintendent, city council, school board).

Once appointed, an emergency financial manager, who is an unelected state executive branch official, is given unchecked power and authority over virtually all operations of local government, financial and otherwise.  Under the new law, the emergency manager can unilaterally: (1) repeal existing local laws and ordinances, (2) enact new local laws or ordinances, and (3) act in violation of City charters.  Meanwhile, the law itself provides no standards to guide an emergency financial manager’s exercise of these broad powers, and the law also requires that any city or school district taken over by a state emergency financial manager pay all costs associated with the manager’s work, including the salaries of the manager and his or her staff.

Thus far, emergency financial managers have been appointed over the cities of Benton Harbor, Ecorse, and Pontiac and over the Detroit Public Schools, all of which are among the most economically devastated areas in the state (if not the nation), and three of which (the Detroit School District and the cities of Pontiac and Benton Harbor) are majority Black.