Quote Originally Posted by emu steve View Post
What I like about Duggan is that he is a 'good government' mayor. He has made alliances across all spectrums, and esp. those like Gilbert who can single handedly make a big difference in the city.
Another important thing about Mayor Duggan is that he is neither a control freak nor a crook. I use the QLine as an example, because that's the project with which I'm the most familiar.

Recall in the pre-Duggan area, the city took over the M1 Rail project, ignored the people who had, or planned to, contribute significant funds, and expanded it into something that [[1) they would control, except that [[2) it could not possibly ever be built. But the important thing was for the city to control it, even if that meant nothing would ever come of it. [[The reasons it could not possibly ever be built would make a great Masters Thesis for someone studying public policy. Buy me a beer sometime if you want the long and sordid tale. But trust me on this: the "DTOGS" project was never going to be anything more than a nice video and a bunch of posters for people to look at during sessions at the public library.)

If someone like former Mayor McFelon was still running his personal playground when M1 Rail took the project back over, you can just bet there'd be a lot of stuff like this: friends of the Mayor get hired as "consultants" and get paid a lot of money to do very little work, if any; certain city officials have to be "taken care of" in order for the proper permits to issue; specific contractors would have to be given work whether they were qualified or not, and on and on.

With Mike Duggan there was none of this, none at all. He made the city available if there was any need for anyone to be helpful, but other than that, the non-profits that collected the funds and built the system were allowed to proceed on their own, cooperating with any other entity [[MDOT, Detroit Edison, and so on) without city interference. That was truly a breath of fresh air, and a bit surprising.