Don’t bail out Wayne County government, eliminate it

Wayne County officials abandoned the old county building
 in Detroit five years ago and put it up for sale

With Gov. Rick Snyder declaring a financial emergency in Wayne County, an emergency manager or possibly a municipal bankruptcy is in the county’s immediate future.

The talk of cost-cutting through government consolidation that flourished during the 2009-10 recession in many counties is now certainly off the table in financially crippled Wayne County.

In a recent Op-Ed piece for The Detroit News, Dennis Lennox, a freelance writer and GOP strategist from Traverse City, suggested that Wayne County should go in the opposite direction.

Don’t find a way to fix Wayne County government, Lennox wrote, eliminate it. That may or may not be feasible, and any move along those lines by the state would certainly spark a fury of lawsuits, but county government is a strange beast and few taxpayers understand what role it plays.

Government at the county level in Michigan serves as the delivery arm of many services funded mostly by the federal and state government – road maintenance, public health programs, water lines, social services, sewers, courts, jails, probation.

In much of the nation, county government plays an even broader role. But Michigan’s overriding emphasis on local control, down to the smallest towns and school districts, is rather unique.

Counties need an overhaul

Here’s a bit of what Lennox had to say:

“Just what value Wayne County provides taxpayers is questionable when its 34 cities and nine townships provide the vast majority of frontline public services.

“Of the services county government does provide … (they) could easily be devolved unto the local
governments, reassigned to agencies of state government or handled by new special-purpose authorities.

“The county has demonstrated little value for money to justify its continued burden upon the wallets of taxpayers. But this discussion shouldn’t just be limited to Wayne County.

“The very role of counties in the structure of local government across the state needs to be reimagined, especially as the lines separating the 83 counties have not changed since 1893.”

One interesting footnote: A Google search on my part while preparing this blog post found not one photo of Snyder and Wayne County Executive Warren Evans together.