Stephen Henderson

Detroit Free Press Editorial Page Editor

We’ve got a lot of walls in this community, and most of them are figurative ones erected by leaders who’ve tried to convince us that some people can get ahead by leaving others behind.

This was the very conceit behind the massive building of housing and infrastructure in Oakland and Macomb counties. Financed by federal dollars, including from places like Detroit, exclusive of blacks and others deemed unworthy, the growth of population and wealth in Detroit’s suburbs opened up a racial chasm that we’ve managed to fill with one of the nation’s most plentiful supplies of hatred and resentment.

We are better than that now.

In so many ways, on so many fronts, southeast Michigan has made tremendous strides away from that awful past, and toward a future where we think as much about each other as ourselves. We are far from where we should be, but further, I think, from where we started.

But — here come the walls again.

Mark Hackel and L. Brooks Patterson sounded all the echoes last week of past leaders who have sought to sow more division than unity.

Their rank and disingenuous last-minute opposition to the funding proposal for basic, until-now mythical, regional transit is a call to keep building walls in southeast Michigan. Their assertion that what they’re doing is meant to protect citizens in Macomb and Oakland counties, respectively, is a cynical and erroneous dog whistle, meant to evoke the bad old days of rancor and antagonism in the region.

I wish that wall reference were something I thought of myself. But it was Kelly Rossman-McKinney, CEO of the Truscott Rossman political consulting firm, who said it to me Friday morning on "Detroit Today," the radio show I host on WDET-101.9 FM.

“We cannot let them build a wall in this community,” she said.

Such powerful imagery. And such a strong connection to the history of division-making in the region.

And, for good measure, it's an appropriate parallel to the divisive message of Donald Trump, whose call to build a literal wall is only slightly more obnoxious than Hackel and Patterson's excited protestations about regional transit.

Questionable timing

Probably the most infuriating part of Hackel's and Patterson’s shenanigans is the timing.

Here are two guys who have gone along with, even if a bit grudgingly on Patterson’s part, the entire regional transit discussion and development. They supported the legislative creation of the Regional Transit Authority and have participated in all of the planning

Why didn’t we hear these objections before? Why didn’t they work through the process that all the other jurisdictions did to address their grievances? Why now, with a planned vote in November and a pretty urgent need to get the proposal out in front of the public for consideration, are Hackel and Patterson lodging fatal grievances against the plan?

Their 19-page list of gripes certainly suggests this is about something else.

Some folks told me last week it’s about the Great Lakes Water Authority, another fledgling attempt to manage an important part of the region cooperatively.

Macomb and Oakland still have deep-seated suspicions that they’re getting rooked in the deal, which gives them shared control over the water system Detroit built in exchange for yearly $50 million payments.

But even if those objections were legitimate, they have no business creeping into the debate over transit — mostly on principle but also because of the tragic disservice our patchwork transit system has visited upon the region for decades.

And let’s not ignore the stark racial tones that run through this dispute. Patterson, in particular, needs to tread carefully in that territory. His legacy stretches back to the bitter fight over school desegregation (he was on the wrong side) but also casts forward to days when he has been far more mindful of equality, if not perfect. I’ve written before about his complicated record, and how more of it has been about regional cooperation than most folks think. But those are nickel-and-dime efforts; this is a dollar-down rebuke of the region’s neediest citizens, at the precipice of hope for something better.

Hackel wants to be a leader in Macomb, and maybe beyond. But how can you do that if you won’t actually lead. He keeps falling back on the idea that Macomb residents won’t vote for something that doesn’t favor them in crass, individual terms — but why not confront that as the code we all know it is? If Hackel can’t muster the spine for that, what good is he in Macomb, or anywhere else?

Selfish objections

Hackel and Patterson’s specific problems with the RTA are also maddening.

Patterson has been troubled by the fact that the RTA plan doesn’t include — in the short term — services that reach every place in his county, including the furthest northwest communities that are among the wealthiest and least densely populated parts of Oakland County.

On Twitter, Patterson said: As county executive, I represent all @Oakgov communities, including the 40 left out of @RTAmichigan plan.

The inherent problem is the way he defines “left out.” It assumes transit is like garbage pickup or something, a service that is about individuals more than communities. Truth is, the RTA master plan would provide enormous benefits to everyone by making it easier to get around. Ultimately there’ll be connectors and other hyper-local transit tools to reach, literally, every community.

Meantime, the plan now gets transit going in a bigger sense — making it easier for people to get to work, education and entertainment without a car. You can’t do that now — and that visits most harshly on the poor, who are locked away from opportunity by our lousy, selfishly configured current public transit.

Patterson certainly understands that — he just doesn’t think it’s his problem, or his voters’, which is where he’s dead wrong. The region can thrive on more inclusive economic growth if poor people in the city and other jurisdictions can better get to the region’s job centers, which are mostly in the suburbs, and especially in Oakland County.

And it’s worth it to all of us to pay for that. The dividends pay back region-wide.

Maybe, to pressure Patterson, we ought to think of one of his pet projects, the imprudent widening of I-75 through Oakland County, in the same terms.

Why should the state — and indeed, the country, through federal funds — pay to widen a freeway whose creation destroyed communities and cohesiveness in Detroit?

He has argued that getting people through the county faster, with less congestion on the highway, makes it worth it. I think this is dead wrong, by the way. We ought to be diverting money from I-75 to public transit, which is what will really get people off the roads.

But isn’t it funny that Patterson can’t even see the same logic he’s applying to I-75 in the wisdom of public transit? Or is it that he just doesn’t want to see?

Thinking small

Hackel’s objections are more pedantic, and starkly illogical.

He doesn’t like the democratic structure of the RTA going forward, which will give Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw counties two votes each. He’d also like to have a veto — if even one of a county’s representatives objects, that person could thwart decision-making.

That has worked pretty well for Cobo, whose regional authority is structured that way.

But transit is different. Cobo can’t get moved around, and its benefits, by definition, are more easy to cast as regional.

Transit’s tougher, and more provincial, because of those old walls we’ve let ourselves erect to keep each other out, or behind.

Moreover, the dastardly irony of Hackel’s concerns is the built-in advantage that he and other suburban leadership already have over Detroit.

The city has just one vote on the RTA — the product of poor negotiating during the legislative debate. Of course, the city has more transit riders than any other area in the region, and is also home to the deepest poverty — folks who don’t have cars, want work, but can’t get to it.

Still Mayor Mike Duggan told me last week he’s willing to go with the less-than-ideal setup. Why? Because the only solution for Detroiters, the only real solution for the region, is a cooperative model. What we have now is not just an embarrassment — it’s an injustice to the people of the city and the region.

This is the best chance we’ve had for improvement in decades. We’ve worked for several years now to get to the point where we can even put a plan together, and put it before voters.

Duggan sees it. So do leaders in Wayne and Washtenaw.

Build a bridge not a wall

Time is short. For this to get onto the November ballot, something has to be approved by early August. If that doesn’t happen, we’re looking at 2018 before another opportunity comes up. And that would be near-criminal neglect. Think of the stranded and isolated lives, kept from opportunity by our lousy transit, that will unfold over those next two years.

We’re close to building a bridge between communities, closer than we’ve been in my lifetime here in Southeast Michigan.

Hackel and Patterson still want to build a wall.

Shame on us if we let them.