Rochelle Riley: Why does Wayne County exist?

**iheartthed** · October-16-11, 08:02 AM

Does Wayne County have a palace in China that you've been visiting during all those trips?

Why does Wayne County exist? Except for the jail, is there any reason that cities and townships couldn't run themselves, and we cut county government by 100%?

http://www.freep.com/article/2011101...xt|FRONTPAGE|p

Good questions. Anybody want to take a stab at it?

**stasu1213** · October-16-11, 08:34 AM

Maybe it exist to redirect federal money from Detroit ot the surrounding suburbs and townships.

**shovelhead** · October-16-11, 09:01 AM

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/docume...0718-Intro.pdf

See the paragraph, "The Michigan Approach".

A better question is why Wayne County government incompetence exists and perpetuates itself.

**Hamtragedy** · October-16-11, 10:19 AM

It literally took me over five years of calling the county asking them to change the timing of the light at Evergreen and Fenkell. Five years, and not before I called them every single day for a week in August. The light is finally changed.

**Gannon** · October-16-11, 10:49 AM

Who didja call?

I'd LOVE to have that contact...

**313WX** · October-16-11, 07:19 PM

Originally Posted by Dimonhroberts

Seriously, what has Rochelle Riley written in this article that was anything but lazily and poorly constructed false equivalencies or empty questions. Her entire article could have been written by a first year community college English student.

You're one to talk.

Right off the bat, I found 10 basic grammatical errors in that one post.

**detlump** · October-16-11, 07:42 PM

Originally Posted by Dimonhroberts

Great, and good for you. What does that change? Rochelle Riley still wrote a lazy column. Every single question asked is publicly available or already covered elsewhere. She added zero value to the discussion.

I would think someone writing for a newspaper would be writing to a higher standard than someone posting to a blog.

That being said, there are other places where the city and county are the same entity - are they more efficient and less corrupt? I think the larger an entity becomes the more likely waste and corruption will take root.

lilpup · October-16-11, 07:44 PM

The county serves to help protect the area's smaller cities, villages, and townships from their thuggish neighbor.

**Dexlin** · October-16-11, 11:25 PM

I've questioned this, myself. As the most urbanized county in the state, with most of it developed and/or covered by incorporated governments [[cities and villages), the county should have very few responsibilties, definitely less than it currently has.

County governments make the most sense in rural-to-moderately-populated regions where there isn't any incorporated land. Michigan's kind of unique in that there isn't really any such thing as "unincorporated" land as understood in other parts of the country. Every slice of Michigan is covered by a local government, whether it be a township, village or city. Townships are nominally "unincorporated" but they are still associated governments that can levy taxes, so every inch of Michigan is under the control of some taxing body. What that works itself out to mean is that even in largely rural counties, counties still have less responsibilities than counties in most other states.

I'd think that in the case of Wayne County, while groups of municipalities could voluntarily go in together on services that be much better handled at the county level, I think you could make the case against a full-on county government. I could really see two options [[both unlikely given Michigan's entrenched love-affair with very local government) for a county like Wayne. The out-county cities, villages, and townships could merge with one another to either become a single, suburban municipality or larger [[but multiple) suburban municipalities, and Detroit [[with Highland Park and Hamtramck) could become a single-tier municipality [[consolidated city-county). The other option would be one giant, single-tier municipality where the county or city or whatever it would be named would handle all local government.

I like the former option better than the latter, but regardless of the configurement, I don't see any excuses for things like Farmington existing inside of Farmington Hills, Rochester within Rochester Hills, Bloomfield Hills inside Bloomfield, well, you get the point. At the very, very least I'd like to see more mergers for municipal enclaves. I'd also like to see some legislation that requires a township to become a city after a certain population. You've got now heavily urbanized and fully developed townships like Clinton and Canton [[some of which are more urbanized than many out-state cities) with populations of nearly 100,000 still being run as townships when for all intents and purposes these settlements have long been cities.

**Novine** · October-17-11, 05:44 AM

"I'd think that in the case of Wayne County, while groups of municipalities could voluntarily go in together on services that be much better handled at the county level, I think you could make the case against a full-on county government."

I think there's a knee-jerk reaction against county government. But even in Wayne County, there's several outlying townships like Huron and Sumpter that are far more rural than they are urbanized. As for the services that are provided countywide, what's the compelling case to be made for spreading those out to the local units of government? How does it help to have every local community in charge of items like marriage licenses, death certificates or land records? Do we need 50 or 60 new dog catchers in each city, village and township? Is every municipality going to set up a health department to handle what the county does today? The county structure exists precisely because it doesn't make sense for each of those services to be provided locally.

**luckycar** · October-17-11, 05:56 AM

West Bloomfield and Bloomfield are two different townships.

**ghettopalmetto** · October-17-11, 08:12 AM

The way I read the article:

A couple questionable things happened, therefore rather than hold people accountable, we should annihilate the county government. Sounds a little too scorched-earth for my tastes.

I'm sure Ms. Riley would certainly object to shutting down the Free Press just because they publish a crappy column or two, so why the extremism?

**Lowell** · October-17-11, 08:38 AM

Originally Posted by Novine

I think there's a knee-jerk reaction against county government. But even in Wayne County, there's several outlying townships like Huron and Sumpter that are far more rural than they are urbanized. As for the services that are provided countywide, what's the compelling case to be made for spreading those out to the local units of government? How does it help to have every local community in charge of items like marriage licenses, death certificates or land records? Do we need 50 or 60 new dog catchers in each city, village and township? Is every municipality going to set up a health department to handle what the county does today? The county structure exists precisely because it doesn't make sense for each of those services to be provided locally.

I would extend this even further to the metropolitan region as a whole. We already have mass redundancy of services as each fiefdom of incorporated cities and villages tries to preserve their duplicate bureaucracies under the guise of local control, autonomy, self-rule and other high-sounding but wasteful phrases.

In the past a lot of this was about the underlying theme of keeping 'them' out and walling off 'their' problems. But, in reality, it has been about keeping them in, employed and in charge of doling out contracts and jobs. Now that that is breaking down due revenue collapse, IMO the best approach would be to develop something akin to the intermediate school district concept where services common to all in the metropolitan family of communities are pooled.

**louis** · October-17-11, 08:53 AM

counties exist so the state can better manage mulitpal townships and cities within a single body, however in a county like wayne county where over half the county is a single city the county should be deemed inefficiant and have the surrounding cities or townships merge with the largest city in the former county or with a surrounding county

**ghettopalmetto** · October-17-11, 08:59 AM

Originally Posted by louis

counties exist so the state can better manage mulitpal townships and cities within a single body, however in a county like wayne county where over half the county is a single city the county should be deemed inefficiant and have the surrounding cities or townships merge with the largest city in the former county or with a surrounding county

"Inefficient"? On what grounds? The population of non-Detroit Wayne County exceeds 1 million--more than any other county in the entire state, save one, and you want to treat it like a giant unincorporated area???

**iheartthed** · October-17-11, 09:40 AM

Originally Posted by ghettopalmetto

The way I read the article:

A couple questionable things happened, therefore rather than hold people accountable, we should annihilate the county government. Sounds a little too scorched-earth for my tastes.

I'm sure Ms. Riley would certainly object to shutting down the Free Press just because they publish a crappy column or two, so why the extremism?

Wayne County government is perpetually corrupt. It's at least as corrupt as Detroit, and has been a direct pipeline for a lot of the corrupt leadership that Detroit has dealt with over the decades, including the Kilpatrick administration. That said, I think Riley's point is that the county government system in Michigan is flawed and possibly obsolete.

lilpup · October-17-11, 03:41 PM

nah, she just wants Detroit to grab the airport

**R8RBOB** · October-17-11, 04:32 PM

The county isn't going away any time soon but I would like to see the next county executive not be Robert Ficano. He can't use the Ronald Reagan excuse that his people were operating without him knowing what's going on. No one signs off $200,000 until the man in charge gives the go-ahead to do it. I hope the media press Ficano on his misdeeds just like they did to Kwame Kilpatrick. The media needs to know how many people got paid "severance" in Wayne Co. How many cronies got over? We need to know.

boneshaker · October-18-11, 12:18 PM

Was listening to the Mildred Gaddis show the other day... young caller was highly upset using discriptive language about cuts in Wayne county parks in the city of Detroit. Yet Wayne county she said was spending millions of dollars on a project like this:http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2010/11/...ew-rec-center/ caller stated Ficano is ignoring the black community and favoring the arab american community more..

**R8RBOB** · October-19-11, 09:29 AM

Originally Posted by boneshaker

Was listening to the Mildred Gaddis show the other day... young caller was highly upset using discriptive language about cuts in Wayne county parks in the city of Detroit. Yet Wayne county she said was spending millions of dollars on a project like this:http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2010/11/...ew-rec-center/ caller stated Ficano is ignoring the black community and favoring the arab american community more..

One of the things that Detroiters could ding Ficano on is how proposed closing the water park on the eastside because he claimed it would cost the county a million dollars to keep it open yet his office can hand out $200,000 in a sweetheart deal to a trusted employee.