Detroit's Duggan rides the coattails of Orr’s reforms

With Mike Duggan taking the reigns as the actual mayor of Detroit, not the sideline-sitter of the past, hizzoner has the rare opportunity to make progress in the Motor City, unlike his predecessors of past decades.

Dennis Lennox, a Republican activist and columnist for our sister paper, The (Mount Pleasant) Morning Sun writes this week that Duggan should get off to a fast start by riding the coattails of Kevyn Orr, the Detroit emergency manager chosen by Gov. Rick Snyder.

Here’s a portion of Lennox’s commentary:

“History does not provide much encouragement that Duggan can actually overcome the monumental challenges facing the city, but the tremendous amount of attention and publicity he has received since taking office earlier this year puts him in a unique position to do so. Not least because Duggan was politically insulated from the tough decisions Orr made to fulfill his mandate from Gov. Rick Snyder.

“Moving forward this allows Duggan to benefit from all of Snyder's Orr-implemented reforms without having done anything to support them in the first place. In fact, Detroit's politicians have done very little to prove they have learned any lessons in the aftermath of bankruptcy.

“If an uninhibited City Hall maintains Orr's program of reform then maybe, just maybe Duggan can actually make the proverbial trains run on time.

“That is about the best one can do given the simple fact that Detroit will never return to its former glory.”