Patterson speech draws line in the sand between suburban counties and Detroit

The hope for mass transit isn’t dead in southeast Michigan — yet.

But this week brought simmering rancor and opposition back into the open, renewing the long-standing divide between city and suburb on the issue, and dimming hopes for green-lighting a regional system anytime soon.

Officials of both Oakland and Macomb counties took aim at transit plans they said were too big, too costly and too out of sync with most suburban lifestyles. Their comments drew defensive statements from the leaders of Detroit and Wayne County, and from transit boosters from regional think tanks such as the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG).

The fresh rancor over mass transit began with barbs fired Wednesday by Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, in a speech that drew cheers when Patterson said he’d oppose taxing more residents than just the fraction of those in Oakland County now served by SMART buses.

After touting Oakland County’s $1 billion in new commercial investment, its new animal shelter and educational advances, Patterson said it was unfair to tax any community in his county whose residents have voted against funding SMART bus service.

“I will not betray them,” he shouted to loud cheers.

Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel — who watched and applauded from the audience of hundreds at Patterson’s State of the County speech in Pontiac — echoed Patterson's tone Wednesday night. And on Thursday, Macomb County commissioners followed up by voting 8-4 at a committee meeting in Mt. Clemens to make roads, not transit, their top priority.

Macomb’s full board of 15 commissioners is sure to pass the resolution next week, said the resolution’s sponsor, Commissioner Leon Drolet, R-Macomb Township. Reached after the vote, Drolet derided southeast Michigan’s fledgling Regional Transit Authority and what he described as the planners who are out of touch with many of Detroit's suburbs.

“The Regional Transit Authority is a very high priority to the central planning, insider crowd. But to the average person living in Macomb County, it doesn’t mean a thing,” Drolet said.

Potholed roads

“What matters to us is not tearing our cars apart, driving out of the subdivision,” he said. Drolet said he owns a Jeep Cherokee with big tires, which he needs not for driving off-road but for bouncing over the potholes of Van Dyke, Mound and numerous rutted mile roads in Macomb County.

“Forget going off-road — going on-road is worse,” he quipped.

While Macomb’s commissioners were voting to make mass transit a low priority, a chorus of opposition rose south of 8 Mile. Leaders of Detroit, Wayne County and SEMCOG restated their support for funding mass transit across the region while firing back at Patterson. In a statement, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan implied that if anyone should feel betrayed, it’s Detroiters.

“For the last year, the staffs of the four counties and the city spent hundreds of hours working collaboratively” on a mass transit plan, Duggan said.

“Just three weeks ago, Warren Evans and I sat in Patterson’s office when he gave us his word he would work in good faith” to develop a countywide funding plan in time for the 2018 ballot, Duggan said.

“That’s why it was so surprising to hear him declare he would ‘never betray’ his Oakland County communities by pursuing such a plan. While I would have preferred the courtesy of Patterson just telling us honestly he couldn’t support regional transit, at least now we no longer have any illusions about his position on the issue,” Duggan said.

Firing back at Duggan

Counterpunching with Duggan, Patterson's staff sent a statement insisting Patterson hadn't backslid on transit.

"When the regional leaders met in Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson’s office to discuss regional transit, together they reviewed a map developed by Kresge Foundation-funded transit consultants. (It) shows a reduced taxing footprint for regional transit. It’s the same map Patterson utilized in his 2018 State of the County speech transit section."

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Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, who was in the audience to hear Patterson, said in a statement:

“I have a lot of respect for Brooks Patterson — that’s not going to change. We’ll undoubtedly continue to partner on some things, but he’s wrong on this. Regional systems work because everyone is in it as a region as a whole.

"No matter the footprint, you can’t cut out holes in the middle and work around them,” Evans said. He went on to say that Amazon “told us unequivocally” that a lack of transit, “or even a plan for transit,” had killed metro Detroit’s chances to land the company’s coveted new second headquarters.

“If my peers in Oakland and Macomb say they don’t want mass transit, that’s their decision. That should have been expressed long ago,” Evans said, adding that he and others would plow ahead for transit, with or without support from north of 8 Mile.

Shrink the footprint?

Patterson’s announcement was disappointing, said Carmine Palombo, top staffer at the Regional Transit Authority, which currently has no CEO.

“We had been working with all the counties, trying to find common ground (and) that’s not going to stop," Palombo said Thursday.

But Patterson's way — shrinking the taxing and operational footprint for mass transit — would also have downsides for those who remain in the system area, said Palombo, who is deputy director of SEMCOG. In order to keep a millage request as low as possible, the service level would likely have to drop.

Palombo also pointed to problems with allowing communities to opt-out of the system because it "has you running service into areas where you’re not picking up any revenue," an inefficiency that has long hampered SMART buses.

Although Evans implied that Wayne and Washtenaw counties could go it alone, Palombo was hesitant to endorse that. He called it at best "an interim step," and one that required "going back to the drawing board" to decide how a partial system would be funded and would operate.

Yet Andy LaBarre, chair of the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners, said neither Patterson nor Macomb County's leaders should be able to stop the region's long-awaited momentum for mass transit. Getting a proposal on ballots in November 2018 is still “technically and legally doable,” he said.

It simply takes a willingness to come back to the table, said LaBarre, who has been representing his county in the transit talks.

“(Patterson) can obviously speak for himself. I think we have a duty in terms of good policy to go forward with the RTA. The people of Southeast Michigan want transit. It’s not an if question, it’s a when. (Transit is) part of the future and Washtenaw is going to be part of that future,” LaBarre said.

Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com