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Detroit Mayor Calls It In
[NEWS.YAHOO] After a tumultuous four years overseeing a city long riddled with blight, corruption, crime, and historic financial issues, mayor Dave Bing has had enough, telling a stunned audience at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History Tuesday that he'd leave when his term ends in December.The 69-year-old Bing, a hall-of-fame NBA player who spent most of his career with the Pistons and then was a successful businessman in Detroit had never run for office before narrowly winning the 2009 race to replace Kwame Kilpatrick, who in less than a term in office had gone from rising Democratic star to scandal-embroiled mayor to convicted felon. After winning a full term the same year, Bing tried to turn around a city that has been losing population and sinking into an ever-deeper economic hole for decades, with a City Council resistant to his plans for radical changes to save Detroit and the looming prospect of the Republican governor appointing an emergency economic manager who would effectively take control of the city's finances from its elected officials. When Governor Rick Snyder in March ended months of deliberation by appointing Kevyn Orr emergency manager, with sweeping powers to modify contracts and sell city assets, Bing, whose frustrations had been mounting, had enough. Posted by: Fred 2013-05-16 |
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