Michigan Governor Proposes Local Government Fiscal Scorecards

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder GovSnyder / YouTube

By Michael Grass,
Executive Editor

Connecting state and local government leaders

By Michael Grass

| January 21, 2015

Rick Snyder: “Let’s avoid emergency managers. Let’s do early warning.”

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder delivered his 2015 State of the State address on Tuesday at the State Capitol in Lansing, reflecting on his previous year in office and outlining his agenda for the year to come.

Issues related to local government came up on a couple of occasions, including the city of Detroit emerging from its historic municipal bankruptcy, which was “a tremendously hard, difficult process,” the governor said.

“The thing I’m proudest to say after how many decades can each one of us say now that we all have the common goal of not dwelling on Detroit’s past but saying let’s grow the city of Detroit, in particular put an emphasis on the neighborhoods to bring them back to be a great place to live in our state,” Snyder said. “Let’s see Detroit keep continuing to go up and Mayor [Mike Duggan] you have my support and partnership in helping to make that happen.”

Beyond Detroit, the Great Lakes State is no stranger to financially distressed local jurisdictions.

Snyder, in his remarks, said that while the state’s emergency manager system has been “generally working well,” and six of 11 different cities or school districts have left emergency management oversight since he’s been governor, he’d like local jurisdictions to avoid the problems that lead to state intervention in the first place.

Snyder proposed a fiscal “scorecard” for local jurisdictions.

“Let’s avoid emergency managers. Let’s do early warning,” he said. “[W]e need to do a scorecard for all local jurisdictions and state jurisdictions about financial performance and performance in terms of objectives that’s easier for our citizens to see. Let’s create this easy-to-use scorecard that our citizens deserve so we can be more accountable and transparent in how we’re operating and what our challenges are within government.”

Watch Snyder’s full State of the State address here:

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