In Detroit bankruptcy, what will happen to DIA?

[Coaccession]

The City Council mentioned the DIA yesterday, but only in terms of eliminating the City's support for its operations. While President Pro Tem Brown talked about the importance of finding a monetization method for City-owned land, no one brought up the possibility of mobilizing the financial value in City-owned artworks... at that meeting. Here's hoping the DIA's vast financial value helps Detroit head off an EFM or bankruptcy that would threaten the integrity of Detroit's DIA collection.

[Coaccession]

If negotiations between the City and the unions don't address the DIA collection as a possible new revenue source -- either through outright sales of artworks or through a cultural endowment generating capital income -- would a bad faith exception let the unions retract their concessions after the fact? The City ought to reduce its bankruptcy risks by actually using its assets to generate revenues rather than pretending that it doesn't own them and can't afford to meet its contractual obligations. Concessions obtained under bad faith could really blow up in the City's face, and leave it with the worst of all possible outcomes -- the DIA stripped nearly bare to meet all the obligations accelerated by bankruptcy. Raising money more deliberately ought to bring in plenty of cash so that they City can pay its obligations as they come due by contract.

[Coaccession]

Joel Kurth reports* in the Detroit News that "[a]n emergency manager has the power to sell off municipal assets, and a bankruptcy could force liquidation. That has prompted speculation the museum's holdings, worth more than $1 billion, could be vulnerable."

Quite so.

Kurth quotes DIA executive and honorary board member Nettie Seabrooks: "Selling off assets? I can't go there because it's too scary. It's very complicated and very complex. That's why we need to become financially stable. Nobody knows where this is going."

Not at all. A competent cultural asset manager could generate great cultural returns from the cultural value of Detroit's cultural assets while generating a very substantial cash income from their financial value. The Founders Society is stuck in the past, so lost that they can't even respond to competent advice.

So, while the Founders Society seeks to have regional taxpayers take on the very same financial obligation that got the Founders Society control of the DIA in 1998, they show they don't know where this is going. They're not thinking far enough ahead to account for what will happen in a bankruptcy for Detroit. Detroit won't avoid bankruptcy just because regional taxpayers cover salaries and expenses for the Founders Society. Once a bankruptcy judge orders Detroit's DIA masterpieces sold off to satisfy Detroit's accelerated financial obligations, the Founders Society will collect those regional taxes for their salaries and expenses to guard an empty building.

This doesn't have to happen. The many, many billions of dollars Detroit has in its DIA art collection can generate sufficient cash to run the DIA and generously support Detroit's other arts, sciences and humanities programs, and essential public safety services to boot. Getting a proper return for Detroit's enormous investment in the DIA just takes intelligent asset management.


*http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2...eum-operations

[Coaccession]

The best discussion on the Founders Society's grab for taxpayer support seems to be at MyFoxDetroit:

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news...ns-20120203-ms

The Detroit News moderator apparently has a bias, since a comment I posted at many other news sites does not appear there in spite of several efforts to get it posted:
Other museums use the financial value of their collections in supporting their operations, and Detroit’s DIA collection — which is worth many, many billions of dollars — can support its operations too. The contractor running the DIA for Detroit — the Founders Society — is trying to make taxpayers pay their salaries even though they got their contract with Detroit by promising to raise their salaries from donors. Detroit should bring in a contractor that knows how to manage these assets financially as well as culturally. A competent asset manager could pay Detroit tens of millions of dollars a year over and above the expenses of running the DIA, letting Detroit better support the arts, sciences and humanities as well as essential public safety services.

[Coaccession]

The closer Dave Bing gets to Rick Snyder's EFM deadline without announcements from the public safety unions, the likelier bankruptcy gets -- an EFM will trigger bond covenants that put the legal process straight into bankruptcy court. The court will value Detroit's art collection and find the city really is solvent, but by then all accounts will be due and payable, so the DIA's liquidation will proceed until all the city's $20 billion in bonds and other obligations are paid off at par. With a clean balance sheet and zero debts, Detroit will be financially pristine but culturally bereft. So it goes in a solvent bankruptcy. If only Detroit started getting liquid now...

[Maria]

Good afternoon. Long time lurker, first time poster here.

I've been reading a bit about the budget woes and staff cuts the Detroit Institute of Arts has been dealing with lately. There's a question that's really bothering me. I understand the museum is owned by the City of Detroit. I think it's wonderful that the people of Detroit own such a jewel. However, if Detroit files bankruptcy, as it appears it will sooner or later, what will happen to the DIA? I have nightmares of them auctioning off the Rembrandts and Van Goghs to pay Detroit's bills. The DIA is an absolutely irreplaceable resource.

Does anyone know how a Detroit bankruptcy would affect the DIA?

Is the museum owned by Detroit in the sense that they own the building or do they actually own the institution. Even if they own the institution I am sure the museum is funded through private donations and if that is the case I am not sure if Detroit would have the legal right to sell off the museums contents.

[Coaccession]

Is the museum owned by Detroit in the sense that they own the building or do they actually own the institution. Even if they own the institution I am sure the museum is funded through private donations and if that is the case I am not sure if Detroit would have the legal right to sell off the museums contents.

Here's the research, Maria, that brought me to DetroitYes in the first place:

Welcome to the Forum, Rosa. I hope you continue to participate here.

In order to answer the question, I think we would need to know what Detroit "owning" the DIA means, if Detroit owns it at all. Does Detroit own the DIA's building? Does Detroit own any of the works of art? Is the DIA owned technically by an entity that is not the city of Detroit? Those are just some of the questions.

In order to try to find more information about the DIA, I consulted the DIA's 2008 Annual Report. [[The 2009 report has not been posted yet).

In the section of Note A of the financial statements entitled, "Art Objects and Collection," it states:

In conformity with allowable museum practice, the value of the Art Collection is excluded from Statements of Financial Position. Title to art objects purchased by or donated to the DIA is offered to the City of Detroit Arts Department and title transferred when accession to the permanent collection has been approved by the Board of Directors of the DIA and the Arts Commission of the City of Detroit...Sales of works of art are subject to a policy that requires proceeds from their sales to be used to acquire other items from the collection.

So the city does hold title to the artwork in the museum.

Note C, "Relationship with the City and State of Michigan" provides a clearer answer to the ownership question:

Effective February 1, 1998, the DIA entered into an operating agreement with the City to administer, manage, and fundraise for the museum with the mission to promote and maintain the excellence of the museum. The City continues to own the museum's permanent art collection, including works of art acquired prior to or subsequent to the operating agreement, as well as the building museum and grounds. The operating agreement expires June 30, 2018.

The note also indicates that the DIA manages the museum without compensation.

So the city does own the DIA and its artwork. I am not sure how that would play out in bankruptcy. The museum does not state the value of its artwork in the financial statements, so I do not know what the estimated value of it is, though I would imagine it is in the hundreds of millions. If I can find any more information about bankruptcy and how it would play out, I will post it here.

So, Maria, cman710 quotes the DIA's report showing that the museum is owned by Detroit both in the sense that they own the building and that they actually own the institution. Even though the museum is currently funded through private donations, Detroit owns the institution because it has funded it in the past and the Michigan Supreme Court wouldn't let Detroit fund it at all unless Detroit owned it [[Jeffrey Abt wrote the book on this history). I am sure Detroit has the legal right to sell off the museum's contents, which it could call surplus personal property if it wanted to bring in Sotheby's or Christie's on Monday.

If Detroit can sell off the contents with call to an auction house, an Emergency Financial Manager or a bankruptcy judge would have even lower barriers to selling the contents. Given that an EFM appointment triggers a payment designed to trigger bankruptcy, Detroit seems very likely to go into bankruptcy with this latest round of fiscal Russian roulette. That's a real shame since Detroit's DIA collection actually makes the City solvent, if illiquid. Detroit could use its solvency to head off bankruptcy and avoid having its art collection liquidated wholesale to cover financial obligations accelerated by bankruptcy.

There are several ways Detroit could use the financial value in its DIA collection to head off bankruptcy. Some are more sensitive to Detroit's cultural legacy than others, but all of them are an improvement over bankruptcy. The saddest thing to see, even sadder than the Bing administration claiming that it doesn't have the assets to meet its fiscal obligations, is the Founders Society trying to get a regional tax to fund their DIA operations when they're doing nothing to head off a Detroit bankruptcy that will leave the DIA as pretty much an empty shell.

[Coaccession]

I predict that 20 years from now, DetroitYESers will be debating whether the long-abandoned DIA should be turned back into an art museum or converted into a mass transit station or a backdrop for movies and outdoor concerts.

If Dave Bing's administration has been telling the unions that the City doesn't have the assets to cover its contractual obligations, then cman710, if he's a labor lawyer, might think the unions may have a basis for tearing up any agreements coming out of these negotiations... in good faith, the City should include all its assets in stating its financial position...

In conformity with allowable museum practice, the value of the Art Collection is excluded from Statements of Financial Position.

Given that the art collection belongs to the City of Detroit and the DIA is in fact the City's Arts Department, supervised by the City's Arts Commission, then conforming to GAAP would seem to require including the art collection's value on the City's books... unless the City of Detroit qualifies as a museum and the unions don't need to know about these assets.

Sales of works of art are subject to a policy that requires proceeds from their sales to be used to acquire other items from the collection.

That's another museum policy, rather than a city policy. If Detroit's a museum rather than a city, then it should keep its art collection off the books because it can only use art collection proceeds to replace one piece of art with another... like selling off the $2 million historic Custer Flag to buy Indian artworks. But if Detroit's a city, it can redeploy its assets in whatever way that best serves its needs as a city... like honestly paying what it owes to union members now so it can avoid a well-informed no vote that leads to an EFM or a bankruptcy that leads in turn to a willy-nilly liquidation of Detroit's DIA art collection to pay what the City always could have paid and an empty DIA redeployed as Retroit predicts.

Effective February 1, 1998, the {Founders Society} entered into an operating agreement with the City to administer, manage, and fundraise for the museum with the mission to promote and maintain the excellence of the museum. The City continues to own the museum's permanent art collection, including works of art acquired prior to or subsequent to the operating agreement, as well as the building museum and grounds. The operating agreement expires June 30, 2018.

The City's operating agreement for the Founders Society to run the DIA was supposed to last a century, but the Founders Society foundered on its side of the agreement before it even came up for its first renewal. Rather than asking the tri-county region to pay a museum tax on top of all the other taxes the region already pays, the Founders Society might ask itself why it can't pay its own expenses when it's managing many, many billions of dollars in assets -- assets that likely generated a billion dollars or more in capital appreciation in 2011. With a contract to manage that much financial value for the City of Detroit, the Founders Society ought to pay tens of millions of dollars a year to Detroit, if not hundreds of millions. Detroit's a wealthy city, and could enjoy that wealth a lot more if its DIA art collection did double duty rather than single duty, paying financial returns as well as cultural returns rather than cultural returns alone.

With an Arts Commission that's a lapdog rather than a watchdog and a Mayor and City Council that haven't yet publicly discussed deploying the financial value of Detroit's DIA art collection to fund essential services and arts investments, it seems increasingly likely that that collection will go from one single duty -- paying cultural returns at the DIA -- to another single duty -- paying off Detroit's creditors in bankruptcy. Given the enormous financial value that the City's leaving idle right now when its proper management could make a huge difference to the City's future and the DIA's future, that's a real shame!

[Coaccession]

Laura Berman's bringing some reality -- a tiny bit, but more than ever before -- to the pages of the Detroit News: "

Even today, there's a presumption that the museum's art and artifacts embody the city's aspirations to high ideals and the hope for a better future. But in an extreme fiscal crisis, the museum's fate may also decide a philosophical contest between the city's soul and its need for dollars and cents."

If this gets into bankruptcy court, it's not a philosophical contest, it's a legal contest... and there, creditors trump curators every time. Here's hoping someone in the Bing Administration can get the City of Detroit to use its assets to save its assets before a bankruptcy judge shows Dave Bing and Kirk Lewis just how much their plans matter when they're out of cash and have bills to pay.


http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2...ON03/202130322

[Richard]

So assets are leveraged to cure a short term problem ,what happens after long term and how does one raise funds from bond sales for future growth with no assets? Its kinda hard to plant seeds on preceived notions.

[Coaccession]

So assets are leveraged to cure a short term problem ,what happens after long term and how does one raise funds from bond sales for future growth with no assets? Its kinda hard to plant seeds on preceived notions.

Richard, you're thinking conventional sales, but Detroit can innovate to have its Monet and money too. True, once it has the money from the Monet it can't go back to that same well again, but if the City creates a Detroit Arts Endowment with the money that investors store in the financial value of the City's Monet, it can use the capital earnings from that cash endowment to fund essential services as well as ongoing investments in the arts, sciences and humanities that have created this magnificent cultural and financial endowment for the City, its residents and its visitors.

Presuming that a Detroit liberally supplied with essential services as well as major new investments in the arts, sciences and humanities actually attracts new residents and visitors by allowing Detroit's natural advantages to shine through once again, then rising property values and personal incomes will give Detroit the backing for new bond sales. Of course, with many, many millions in new revenues coming from the Detroit Arts Endowment, perhaps the City government will find a way to live within its newly-expanded means.

[Gistok]

As a footnote about the Bruegel, most of the world's circa 45 known Bruegel's are in European museums, with about 1/3 of them in Vienna's Art Museum. [[The Hapsburg rulers of Vienna also once ruled the Netherlands and Belgium.)

[Coaccession]

In another aside, Gistok, the big art importers these days are in the Middle East, and the royal family of Qatar just set a new world record for art prices with the private purchase of one of Cezanne's Card Players series for over $250 million. If Detroit should happen to need cash for one reason or another, its DIA collection [[seven Cezanne's listed on its website!) could certainly bring in plenty. Here's hoping Detroit manages to have its Monet and money too -- public art doing double duty -- rather than choosing the single duty of having its Monet and no money [[with attendant public safety layoffs and closings) or the single duty of having its money and no Monet [[with attendant cultural dimunition).

http://www.artsjournal.com/realclear...rdplayers.html

[Gistok]

Thanks for the link...

The DIA would actually be having 8 Cezanne's... if the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House ever decides that the constant summer humidity in the non-air conditioned Ford House at Gaukler Pointe is being damaging to the artwork in the house. Ditto for their Degas.

Beside's Henry Ford II's selling off of his parents Renoir 30 years ago, all the Ford House paintings are still in the family possession, either on loan at the DIA, [[including Van Gogh's famous postman painting) or the 3 major paintings still at the mansion [[there's a Rivera there as well).

But I've always admired Cezanne's landscape painting of Mt. Sainte-Victoire at the Ford House. He painted that mountain nearly 60 times, and this one is considered one of his finest.

Those paintings [[such as the Van Gogh formerly in the Morning Room) that on loan to the DIA have duplicates at the house.

I image that many of the Richard Manoogian paintings at the DIA are on loan as well.

The one Manoogian owned painting I'm particularly fond of is "The Jolly Flatboatmen". Although George Caleb Bingham did an entire group of "Flatboatmen" series of paintings... the Manoogian owned painting is considered the first and finest of the series... and the painting is so iconic that it is considered one of the 1/2 dozen most important American paintings of the first half of the 19th century. I haven't been able to find out where the painting is currently located. It sat at the National Gallery on the Mall in DC for decades [[on loan) before being sold to Manoogian with the stipulation that it remain there for a set number of years. It went on tour, and I'm not sure if it made it back to DC or if it's in the Masco HQ in Taylor MI, where an impressive collection of Manoogian paintings are located as well. But it's not at the DIA.

But my favorite painting at the DIA is Frederick Church's "Cotopaxi".... probably the most valuable American painting there.

Coaccession, you may have to switch your catch phrase from Monet to Cezanne...

[Coaccession]

How lucky for you, Gistok, that the New York Public Library considered art collecting outside of its mission in 1945 and the DIA had some cash in its acquisition fund in 1976 for Church's Cotopaxi.

How much luckier it would be for Detroit -- and you -- if Detroit's arts collection -- Cotopaxi included -- funded a Detroit Arts Endowment that in turn could fund, besides essential services, more hours and more exhibitions and more curators and... more cash in its acquisition fund in 2012, 2013, 2014... Instead of tying up billions of dollars in its current art collection, Detroit ought to recycle many of those dollars in acquisitions to expand its collection, giving it more -- and better appreciated -- highly-secure stores of value to offer more collectors and investors, and a larger collection to choose from in mounting its own exhibits and research and lending to other public institutions. As for donations, the more civic-minded could donate the whole title to their paintings -- adding to Detroit's arts endowment as well as its public domain -- while the less generous could just donate a Cultural TItle, adding to the public domain while keeping their artworks' capital and its potential for capital appreciation for themselves. In making acquisitions, though, the DIA could buy far more art by keeping just the cultural rights in the Cultural Title, recycling any capital it temporarily tied up in buying whole title to an artwork. What a powerful first-mover advantage that would give the DIA until the rest of the museum world caught up enough to compete at art acquisitions!

And how unlucky for the artworks at the Ford House that their financial value doesn't fund a Ford Arts Endowment that ensures proper temperature and humidity controls with cash earnings from their second duty as a store of value for private collectors and investors... among other things it could fund. Every artwork comes with its own cash endowment embedded in its whole title, so poor exhibition and storage spaces really ought to be inexcusable, rather than the dirty little secret that the museum world keeps to itself because almost no museum is without sin.

Hmmm... a Cezanne catch phrase... It's so hard to beat Monet and money! Your Picasso and pesos too... Warhol and wampum... Waterhouse and wherewithal... Dali and dollars... Degas and doubloons... Bacon and banknotes... Greco and greenbacks... Johns and jingle... Rivera and rubles... Shaw and shekels... Titian and tender... Cezanne and sawbucks? Cezanne and simoleons? Any better than Scriven and scrip or Scriven and scratch? No, Monet and money too beats them all. Only Bruegel and bread come anywhere close... and that only because Detroit has THE Bruegel. Yes, Detroit should have its Bruegel and bread too, because the bread's capital income can fund far more municipal services than the Bruegel's capital appreciation. Believe me, investors will want to put their bread in the Bruegel if Detroit offers its capital appreciation to the public. Finding a safer, more socially-responsible investment than the capital appreciation on Detroit's DIA Bruegel would be well-nigh impossible. Heck, I'd suggest Detroit keep the capital appreciation if didn't need capital income so badly to fund essential municipal services, including upkeep and investment in its art collection.

Coaccession... because art does not live by appreciation alone

[Coaccession]

Referring back to Laura Berman's column, did anyone else find it odd that Wayne State's Jeffrey Abt thinks Alfred Taubman and Richard Manoogian have more influence on Detroit's DIA collection than Dave Bing and Charles Pugh? Even though Taubman and Manoogian are billionaires, Detroit's DIA collection makes it far wealthier than they are and Dave Bing has the power to appoint Arts Commissioners to boot. Remember, Detroit's Arts Commission -- Taubman is chair of the commission -- supervises the head of Detroit's Arts Department, aka the DIA's director Graham Beal, for the mayor. I believe they serve at his pleasure. So, if Dave Bing and the City Council want to generate cash for the Detroit's budget, it's certainly within their power -- as long as an EFM and/or a bankruptcy judge doesn't remove their power. Here's hoping the way Detroit's powers-that-be ultimately generate cash with its DIA collection -- whether Mayor/Council, EFM, or bankruptcy judge -- will keep tight control over Detroit's cultural rights, offering the City's art collection as a store of value in a museum much like gold in a vault, rather than dispersing Detroit's artworks to places like Qatar and Dubai. Avoiding an EFM/bankruptcy judge makes it more likely the Detroit can end up with its Monet and money too.

By the way, every time the Founders Society complains that their ~$80 million operating endowment is too small for a museum of their size [[which it is -- Detroit can and should have a multi-billion dollar operating endowment for funding essential services and the arts, sciences and humanities), don't think of the ~$160 million they spent for building renovations, think of the ~$190 million Arts Commission Chair Al Taubman spent on settling his restitution and fines from his Sotheby's price-fixing felony conviction. If he had just skipped those friendly visits with Christie's Sir Tennant, he could have put almost $200 million into the DIA's operating endowment and been little-the-worse financially [[losing only those stock dividends he got from fixing the auction fees that museums and collectors paid) -- and could even have avoided the many months he spent cooling his heels in federal prison.

[mauser]

Lilpup, I did think that many of the works of art are probably donated, and that is a good point. I am not certain how much of the art the city owns, though I will poke around and see if I can find anything. Still, I think the value of whatever the city does own could be in the hundreds of millions.

The City of Detroit owns MOST of the collection outright via direct purchase. This means that there are no donor restrictions on sale as you have with other famous collections. DIA is unique in that the City was very active in the early years to assemble all those works.

What the City owns is worth billions.

[Coaccession]

The City of Detroit owns MOST of the {DIA} collection outright via direct purchase. This means that there are no donor restrictions on sale as you have with other famous collections. DIA is unique in that the City was very active in the early years to assemble all those works.

What the City owns is worth billions.

The City Charter says "Dispositions of personal property which are not in the ordinary course of city operations shall be defined by ordinance and are subject to city council control." So, if Dave Bing wants to mobilize Detroit's many billions of dollars of personal property at the DIA to improve the City, he would need the City Council's approval. I suspect the council members would be amenable to a proposal, especially if it lets the City have its Monet and money too [[heck, even the Founders Society should be OK with that).

So, what should Detroit do with its many billions of dollars in assets? If Detroit's billions weren't already tied up in owning artworks, it seems unlikely the City's first priority with a multi-billion dollar fund would be to buy the DIA collection, even if it were all available today and Detroit could actually have the collection and buildings and all for what it had in its checking account. It seems very, very unlikely Detroit would choose to put all its money into artworks today if that left it broke and unable to pay its bills. Yet, Detroit has essentially all its money tied up in artworks and it seems broke and unable to pay its bills, even with all the union and vendor concessions Dave Bing's administration has negotiated by claiming that the City is broke even as it sits on billions of dollars of personal property.

I've argued elsewhere that the City could maintain cultural control of all its art collection and actual possession of most of it and still have use of essentially all the collection's financial value -- many, many billions of dollars -- to generate interest and dividends from a cash endowment. Methods other than mine would let it use all the value with little or no cultural control and possession -- it could sell the artworks outright to restore public safety and health -- or let it use some value with more or less cultural control and possession. Some of these other methods would let it spend the money as it came in, rather than keeping it in an endowment that generates capital income. How many billions should Detroit keep invested in its artworks and how many billions should it use to provide other city services?

Detroit will only go bankrupt if it chooses to remain illiquid. Its assets -- many, many billions of dollars worth of personal property -- make it solvent, and the City of Detroit can choose, with a variety of methods, to be liquid.

[Detroitnerd]

You've been pitching this for months. Thankfully, the thread died. Now you start a new thread to pitch it again. Please, give up.

[Islandman]

Do you have anything else to talk about other than this? Maybe you should contact someone who can actually get something like this done. Hint: It's not anyone here.

And thanks for starting ANOTHER thread about it.

[SWMAP]

Because the DIA collections were built with private donations [[see DIA on Wikipedia to learn who and what), it seems ethically wrong for the City and its advocates to argue that the City built up the DIA and can destroy it for the sake of paying for public safety. The donors of the art certainly never thought that Detroit would sell off its irreplaceable patrimony for the sake of a few more months and years of the miserable existance we have now.

You should realize that Detroit collection comes largely from a time when works could be purchased. The newer museums in the south and on the west coast are hungry for items such as those in the DIA because most of the old masters and impressionist work is unavailable to them, not purchaseable and potential donors also don't have the items in their possession. I know that the walton Family Foundation will step right in, buy our patrimony in a fire sale and move it all to Bentonville AR to their new museum in the sticks. And the future of our city will be even poorer and more embarrassing.

So, if Detroit sells it - Gone With the Wind and never to be seen here again in any number of lifetimes.

Can you tell that I am so discouraged. My hometown ravaged and pillaged and corrupted and gone. But okay. Everything I knew and loved about Detroit is pretty much gone already. Let that go, too.

[Gistok]

Funny you mention the Waltons Swmap.... ditto for the Getty in LA, which has one of the greatest collections of "2nd tier" arwork in the world.

The truly great stuff is pretty much locked up in world museums long ago, and not often available...

[Coaccession]

The truly great stuff is pretty much locked up in world museums long ago, and not often available...

Which is why, Gistok, Detroit can have its Monet and money too. The City's art assets offer a financial return profile that's virtually unattainable by conventional means today, so investing in DIA artworks as a store of value -- professionally secured and conserved by DIA staff in return for their exhibition to Detroit's residents and visitors -- could be an irresistible opportunity for investors seeking diversification.

Even if Detroit had to choose between its Monet and its money, though, it seems a bit cold for the Founders Society to send a cop into a shooting situation with no backup just to keep that Monet on the wall. Bing has got billions of dollars he can use to expand staffing margins in public safety and health. If he sells artworks outright, one or two masterpieces a year can cover the structural deficit until times are better -- and Detroit's DIA has 60,000+ artworks. He doesn't have to sell artworks outright, though, to start using Bing's billions to make Detroit safer and healthier.

[Wheels]

You think we have corruption now let the assets of the DIA become available to the city's finest!
WHOOPEE!

[Scottathew]

The city needs stop selling assets off to get by and instead fix the issue.

The city is incompetent at managing things, so privatizing will make a lot of sense in many situations.

Beyond mismanagement, terrible union contracts are bankrupting the city.