Dan Kildee: “Last week, the city of Detroit, Michigan, became the largest municipality in our Nation's history to file for…”

“Last week, the city of Detroit, Michigan, became the largest municipality in our Nation's history to file for bankruptcy. Without a doubt, the situation in Detroit is extreme. Their problems in part have been driven by local mismanagement. But it would be an oversimplification, and I think a dangerous oversimplification, for folks to continue to lay the entire responsibility for Detroit's situation on the failure of management. Since last week, Detroit has been on the front page of America's newspapers and has become the recent, I guess, poster child of municipal decline and insolvency. But for the few cities like Detroit that have actually filed bankruptcy, there are many other legacy cities in this country that continue to struggle day in and day out to provide basic services for their residents. Many municipalities are facing not just fiscal insolvency but service level challenges, perhaps not on the same scale as Detroit, but that does not mean that they are immune to the problems that Detroit is facing. My own hometown of Flint, Michigan, is on that same path and is struggling every day to provide basic services in an increasing period of fiscal stress. Detroit's bankruptcy should be a call to action to have a much bigger conversation in this country about how we support and fund our cities and our great metropolitan areas.…”