Detroit should divorce itself from financially strapped Wayne County

Wayne County officials abandoned the old
 county building in downtown Detroit five years ago.

The Macomb Daily hired a publisher about a decade ago who came to the paper from Canada and he quickly and aggressively pushed us to write about the insanely ineffective means by which local governments operate within the state of Michigan.
Reporters tried to explain that local control – down to very small geographies – is a tradition that goes back to the establishment of the Northwest Territory and the creation of 6 mile X 6 mile townships across the state. But the publisher, who hailed from the Toronto area, where regional government rules, insisted that mass consolidation of local units of government was obviously necessary.

Not soon afterward, as Michigan slipped into massive budget deficits and huge cuts to revenue sharing with communities, consolidation became a subject of frequent public debate. Despite his arrogance on the subject, the man had a point.

You have a village, within a township, within a county, he would say. And within that county you have 21 school districts, some of which are only the size of a few square miles. What sense does that make?
So, a decade later, after some efforts south of Eight Mile Road to consolidate Detroit and Wayne County services, the Motor City finds itself on the road to recovery after emerging from bankruptcy. But now, Wayne County is in such dire straits, driving on fumes, that it is seeking to declare a financial emergency.

Dennis Lennox, a conservative Republican consultant and a frequent newspaper columnist, wrote a piece nearly three years ago, before Detroit had started to turn the corner, that called for the city to cut all ties with Wayne County.

In a Sept. 21, 2012, Op-Ed written for The Detroit News, Lennox suggested that freeing Detroit residents and businesses from WayneCounty taxes would be good for the Motor City’s economy.
Here’s a portion of what Lennox wrote in 2012:

“The solution is simple: Wayne County should cease to exist within Detroit.
“It makes no sense for taxpayers to fund a county government that provides almost no unique services to those who reside within the city. Freeing the city from the county will result in significant savings to Detroit's taxpayers.
“To improve the governance of Detroit, which would empower innovators, job creators, entrepreneurs and even foreign investors, government in Detroit and Wayne County must be wiped clean and started anew.
“A radical reform such as this one will require a leader willing to put politics aside to do the right thing.”

I have no idea what legalities come into play if Detroit wanted to become a separate entity (or emerge as an 84th Michigan county) but I suppose some key county services (the jail, the circuit court) could continue within the city under a contract arrangement.

Now that Wayne County has admitted it cannot make amends for its transgressions of the past, maybe a divorce by Detroit will enter the discussion.