  Comment Print Mail ShareFacebookTwitterMore  Emergency
Managers Are Bad, Bankruptcy Far Worse  Ballot proposal would
end some cities' best option at fiscal survival  Michigan’s
recently beefed-up "emergency manager" law gives broad powers to
a state appointee if a local government or school district fails
its citizens financially in one of 18 explicit ways.  Assuming a
referendum passes a legal challenge and makes it to the ballot,
citizens will vote in November on whether to keep or overturn
this law.  Before an emergency manager is appointed, a city or
school district must have created an astounding fiscal mess. For
all the controversy surrounding the law, only seven EMs have
been appointed. Without their EM's "house cleaning," most of
these cities and school districts would probably be headed for
bankruptcy court, where judges have vastly more power than any
emergency manager.  Around the country there are a growing
number of painful examples when there is no effective law in
place to address a local gov