Does Michigan's Emergency-Manager Law Disenfranchise Black Citizens?

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/does-michigans-emergency-manager-law-disenfranchise-black-citizens/275639/



In Michigan, emergency skews black.

State-appointed emergency managers currently run Detroit along with five other Michigan cities and three school districts. While the cities under emergency management together contain just nine percent of Michigan's population, they contain, notably, about half of the state's African-American residents.

Michigan's Public Act 436 allows the governor to appoint emergency managers with near-absolute power in cash-strapped cities, towns, and school districts. Emergency managers can supersede local ordinances, sell city assets, and break union contracts -- leaving local elected officials without real authority.

"It totally decimates democracy," Detroit resident Catherine Phillips says of state takeover. "We have the right by federal law to allow us to go and choose by way of voting who we want to represent us in municipalities and school districts. By implementation of this dictator law, they have taken that right away."

[PDJane]

1. Yes, it does. Which is what, I am inclined to think, it was designed to do.

[xchrom]

2. Indeed. Nt