Regional transit is flash point as Big 4 leaders meet

Metro Detroit's Big Four political names -- Duggan, Evans, Hackel and Patterson -- were the stars Friday at Cobo Center for an event that put their sharp exchanges about mass transit in front of about 800 public officials and corporate leaders.

The annual luncheon has generally kept to a light tone, punctuated by banter and wisecracks. But not this year — not when the political bosses of counties north of Detroit got adamant in their opposition to mass transit.

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And when the moderator asked Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel whether racism played a role in Macomb voters’ opposition to mass transit in 2016, Hackel became indignant.

“You want to make a racial issue out of this? Macomb County has been all in for supporting the Detroit Zoo, for the DIA, for SMART,” he said, citing the county’s votes for taxes to support the zoo, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the region’s suburban bus system.

“People continue to divide this region. I will not allow that. I will forge through that,” Hackel said, to applause.

Siding with Hackel in putting road repairs ahead of more property taxes for transit was Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson.

“Hey, Oakland County has put $352 million into SMART since that got started,” far more than any other county, Patterson said.

“We’ve been very generous with transportation,” but Oakland residents don’t want to pay for a system that would bypass much of the county’s widespread population, he said.

Pushing back, at this event meant to celebrate regional efforts, were Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Wayne County Executive Warren Evans. Both were quick to concede that the mass-transit plan narrowly defeated by southeast Michigan voters in November 2016 was flawed.

A new plan, announced in March by Evans, is superior, and voters should be allowed to choose it this fall, Duggan said.

“The old plan was too focused on Gratiot, on Woodward” and other main roads, while the new one builds on existing routes throughout the service areas of SMART in the suburbs and DDOT in Detroit, he said.

Although it’s being called Evans’ plan, Evans said, “it only became my plan when these guys stepped back,” referring to Hackel and Patterson.

“I don’t want anybody to think I went down in the basement and came up with this,” Evans said, to a rare chuckle from the audience.

“We had consultants work on it — we had Kresge involved,” he said, meaning the Kresge Foundation in Troy, whose representatives sat at a table toward the back of Cobo’s big Riverside banquet hall.

“But what I’m hearing is we have a Hobson’s Choice — either roads or transit. I think we’ve got to do both.

“We are the worst city in the country for transit,” he said, to applause. (A Hobson’s Choice is a situation that seems to offer multiple choices but that actually offers only one.)

After Patterson, 79, left in a wheelchair while the others kept talking — he had a doctor’s appointment, he told the crowd — this year’s Big Four luncheon ended with the transit debate seemingly at an impasse. But Dan Lijana, a consultant on regional transit with the Kresge Foundation, said he was buoyed by the plan, announced Thursday, to hold a series of six two-hour public meetings on regional mass transit across southeast Michigan. The first is at 5:30 p.m. April 25 at Birmingham's Baldwin Public Library.

"We're going to find out at these public meetings" if residents of southeast Michigan want to see Evans' new plan on their fall ballots, Lijana said. (For the full meeting schedule, visit www.rtamichigan.org and view the right-hand column.)

The annual Big Four gathering at Cobo Center attracts an audience of leaders linked by regional interests, symbolized by their ties to 8 Mile Road. The luncheon is a major fundraiser for the nonprofit 8 Mile Blvd. Association, which promotes common interests along the highway that historically links southeast Michigan.

Friday's discussion was bound to veer toward transit, after Patterson spoke out in his recent State of the County speech against taxing county residents whose communities had opted out of paying property taxes to support SMART buses. Adding further drama, the Regional Transit Authority this week announced it would hold the six public meetings.

Despite a lack of consensus, Friday's event showed strong support for seeking regional solutions, said Tom Petzold, who owns the Belmont Shopping Center on 8 Mile at Dequindre in Detroit. Petzold is board chairman of the Eight Mile Boulevard Association.

“I like the fact that we had a full room and these are all people who care about the work that the organization is doing,” Petzold said, as the event ended with the remaining Big Three posing for photos.

Founded in 1993, the merchant-driven association unites the three counties of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb and 11 communities that share 27 miles of 8 Mile Road, from I-94 on the east to I-275 on the west. A strong supporter of the group has long been DTE Energy, said Carla Gribbs, a regional manager of the giant utility.

"DTE is particularly committed to regional efforts that will develop southeast Michigan's workforce, to ensure that we have employees trained to do the jobs of the future energy industry," Gribbs said.

Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com