opinion

Left behind: Will Oakland and Macomb miss the bus to region's future?

For most of his long political career, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson excelled at convincing his constituents in Michigan's most prosperous county that what was was good for business would be good for them.

He courted high-tech companies on four continents, wooing them with tax breaks and infrastructure tailored to their needs. He spoke incessantly of Oakland's determination to remain ahead of the curve, and he had a knack for grasping the significance of emerging technologies before most people had even heard of them.

Way back in 2005, before Starbucks stores began offering their customers free internet connections, Patterson boasted that his would be the first county in the nation to provide free wireless service to everyone anywhere within its boundaries.

OK — so maybe that that proved a teensy bit too ambitious. The point is, no one ever accused Patterson of thinking small.

Until now.

Disgruntled employers

The letter in which the CEOs who lead 23 of metro Detroit's largest employers urge the region's elected leaders to stop putzing around already and coalesce behind a public transit system worthy of their 5 million constituents — isn't addressed to any specific politician.

More: State of Wayne County speech: Evans plans to pitch new regional transit plan this week

More: Profiles in cowardice: Patterson, Hackel team up to kill regional transit

But it was obviously conceived to let Patterson and Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel know their opposition to a mass transit plan backed by leaders in Wayne, Washtenaw and Detroit is hurting Southeast Michigan's most significant employers, and jeopardizing the region's long-term health.

Organized by DTE Energy Chairman Gerry Anderson, the 23 CEOs want the Regional Transit Authority the state Legislature established in 2012 to put a new transit millage before voters in Wayne, Washtenaw, Oakland and Macomb counties this November.

The transit authority's executive board meets this Thursday, when it's expected to authorize at least five public hearings on an ambitious public transit millage plan proposed by Wayne County Executive Warren Evans. But Anderson says he and the 22 other signers are ready to throw their companies' political and financial resources behind any proposal the four counties' elected leaders can agree on by mid-August — the deadline for submitting an initiative for inclusion on this November's general election ballot.

Trouble is, there's no such proposal in sight.

Shrinking the footprint

Patterson says a 2016 transit millage that failed by just 1,109 of the nearly 600,000 votes cast in Oakland had little support outside the county's heavily populated southeast quadrant. He insists that he won't back another four-county plan unless it excludes voters in north and west Oakland from its "tax footprint" — that is, the area in which property owners can be assessed to support public transit.

But the law that established the RTA requires that any transit tax the authority proposes be borne by every property owner in all four counties — no exclusions allowed.

To even put the smaller-footprint plan Patterson proposes before voters, the RTA would need new enabling legislation from Lansing -- a Hail Mary everyone agrees isn't forthcoming in the months leading up to this November's legislative elections.

Meanwhile, it's unlikely that Macomb's Hackel will support any four-county plan. He says his constituents, who rejected the 2016 transit millage by a much larger margin than their Oakland neighbors, are in no mood to consider any transit millage until the cratered moonscape that serves as his county's highway system gets a makeover.

The RTA can put a millage proposal on the November ballot only if all five of its member municipalities —the four counties plus Detroit — support it. So unless Patterson and Hackel both reverse course in the next 90 days, voters won't see Evans' four-county plan this year.

The two-county option

Anderson's CEO group and Gov. Rick Snyder agree that postponing a new transit vote until the next general election in 2020 is unacceptable.

"Regional transit is just something that needs to get done," Snyder told business leaders gathered at a Detroit Regional Chamber in last month. "Find what you can agree upon and get going."

And Evans, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan,and Washtenaw County Commission Chair Andy LaBarre say they're exploring options to strike an agreement on a two-county millage proposal that could be put before their voters this November if the RTA fails reach a deal.

Like Snyder, whose remarks their letter emphasizes, the CEO group has so far stopped short of embracing the two-county fallback plan. And Anderson says it would be erroneous to interpret their initiative as an implicit warning that Oakland and Macomb may be left behind.

Kresge Foundation CEO Rip Rapson, another signatory, says he and his peers remain focused on a transit plan incorporating all four counties, because that is "so clearly the preferable option."

But if the RTA's members can't coalesce around such a proposal in time for this year's election, Rapson adds, "it would be irresponsible for us not to look at other alternatives."

Gerry Poisson, the long-time deputy Patterson has relied on to represent Oakland in transit negotiations with the RTA, concedes it's probably too late to put the shrunken footprint plan Oakland wants before voters this year. But he insists his county won't be bullied into a millage proposal that forces residents in Oakland's outlying municipalities to pay a new transit tax.

If Wayne and Washtenaw want to move ahead with a transit plan that focuses on linking Detroit with western Wayne County and Ann Arbor, Poisson adds, "we don't fear that as a way of being behind."

Centers and networks

But Poisson and his boss know metro Detroit's center of gravity is already shifting.

A decade ago, when Detroit was spiraling toward insolvency, Patterson County could credibly boast that his county was "the economic engine" of the four-county region. He located its epicenter "somewhere around 12 Mile Road and Telegraph," where three expressways converged.

Now Duggan and Quicken Loans chairman Dan Gilbert (who also signed the CEO letter) are reclaiming Detroit's centrality, and the success of Metro Airport assures that the corridor between their city and Ann Arbor will loom ever larger in the region's economic fortunes. A credible public transit system will only accelerate that shift.

But the more important point is that centers of gravity now matter less than the networks that link them. The formula Patterson mastered — Location, location, location — has been supplanted by a new mantra: Connections, connections, connections.

Patterson and Hackel may have correctly diagnosed the mood of their contituents. If I had to navigate Mound Road more than once every couple of weeks, I wouldn't be thinking about anything except my tires and shocks, either.

But it is the obligation of leaders to see beyond the potholes, and lay plans for a future in which constituents can still get to work or school if they blow a tire or break an axle.

That's the obligation to which Southeast Michigan's largest employers are calling its elected leaders today.

Brian Dickerson is the Free Press' editorial page editor. Contact him at bdickerson@freepress.com.