Detroit will be broke by December, says Joe Harris

[kraig]

Former Detroit CFO James Harris: City could go broke by December [[audio link to interview in MLive story)

Joe Harris, Detroit's former chief financial officer, says the city very well could go broke by December.

"They're using restricted money" to pay their bills, Harris told Paul W. Smith Wednesday on WJR AM-760. "Money that belongs to others."

Harris criticized Mayor Dave Bing for not immediately issuing layoffs to city employees, and supported the idea of the state sending in an emergency financial manager to oversee the city.

"What you need is a person that is in charge that is not making decisions based on the politics. Because you have no idea how much pressure is exerted by the unions. ...You need somebody who's willing to be a one term mayor."

Here's how Harris laid out Detroit's financial situation:

1. "We lost $100 million dollars last year for the year ending June 30, 2009. Which means we have to somehow fill that hole. The major way to do it, and really there's no other way, is through layoffs. But there's been no layoffs. The mayor thinks there's low hanging fruit he can pick off. But there isn't."

2. "We have an unrealistic budget. The budget itself has, for example, a utility tax increase of $5 million. We're going down not up. Instead of layoffs, it has decreased overtime for police and fire. I can tell you that just never happens. Until you have the layoffs you're not going to have a realistic budget."

3. "Lack of a sense of urgency. Every month we go by with not implementing some of these budgetary items, we're going to lose more and more money. We're going to have zero cash even quicker."

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/in...ity_could.html

Notice there isn't a word about Harris saying this in any of the other major Detroit media outlets.

By now, everyone has realized that Joe Harris is full of it. Bing hasn't proposed any amendments to the budget. For the most part, this is the budget that Ken Cockrel submitted while Joe Harris, the man denouncing the budget, was the chief financial officer.

The things that he's saying that Bing should be doing now are the things that he should have had Ken Cockrel doing back in October.

[7miledog]

The things that he's saying that Bing should be doing now are the things that he should have had Ken Cockrel doing back in October.

I thought Bing delayed the layoffs proposed by Cockrel to get the "low hanging fruit" first? Wasn't the announcement just last week [[the beginning of the fiscal year)?