opinion

Wayne County letter to state is Detroit déjà vu

Here we go again.

Acquiescing to what is seemingly inevitable, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans asked state Treasurer Nick Khouri on Wednesday to declare a financial emergency in the struggling county.

There's no way to pretend that the county isn't in financial crisis; its pension system and retiree health-care liabilities alone present a staggering financial burden at a time when the county's tax base is still reeling from the housing crash of the last decade. Evans' projections indicate that the county's accumulated deficit will balloon from $9.9 million in 2015 to $171.4 million by 2019, and he has warned that the county could run out of money next year.

Evans' letter triggers a state financial review. A bevy of bean-counters will comb its books, producing what's almost certainly going to be a bleak account of the county's finances, and the governor will likely declare a financial emergency.

Then what?

According to a statement issued this week, Evans hopes to craft a consent agreement, a statutory mechanism that would grant him some powers of an emergency manager and more negotiating clout with union leaders, who have been critical of his recovery plan.

Detroit went down this road in 2012, and wound up in bankruptcy court the following year. A consent agreement signed by former Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and the Detroit City Council proved ineffective; union leaders couldn't accept the cuts and work rule changes detailed in Bing's recovery plan, and tensions within city government stymied other elements of the agreement.

Detroit is a singular city, the largest in the state, bedeviled by extraordinary economic volatility and catastrophic population loss. But even in its greatest distress, it remained an iconic metropolis: Home of Motown, to the American auto industry, the arsenal of democracy. Moreover, Detroit had stuff — the perceived threat to the Detroit Institute of Arts and its priceless collection prompted an outpouring of financial generosity from philanthropic foundations and the state, the equivalent of $816 million to protect the museum's collection and shore up the city's two pension funds.

Wayne County has the airport, maybe.

It simply can't afford bankruptcy, or expect a replay of the unprecedented philanthropic effort that breathed new life into its largest city.

Nor can the State of Michigan afford the fallout from a second municipal bankruptcy. Detroit, and the state, seem to have weathered the storms some predicted in the municipal bond market just fine — but this is surely an option whose exercise is limited.

So, if the state and county sign a consent agreement, it has to work.

We trust that state officials, along with Evans and his team, the Wayne County Commission and the county's labor leaders (who won't be signatories to an agreement), were paying close attention when Detroit's consent deal collapsed. If the county is to avoid the same fate, its own consent agreement must outline achievable goals and enlist all the parties in achieving them. In some cases, this will be painful, like the reduced health-care benefits retirees approved last week.

But here's the thing about being broke: You don't have any good choices. For years, Detroit leaders warned that if city stakeholders didn't make hard choices, they'd be made by someone else. And that's what happened.

It can happen in Wayne County, too.