Half of Detroit Properties Have Not Paid Taxes; Update on Detroit Bankruptcy

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The hollowing out of Detroit is nearly complete. All that’s left is a bankrupt shell of a city with no services and scattered citizens that do not pay taxes.

The Detroit News reports Half of Detroit Property Owners Don’t Pay Taxes

Nearly half of the owners of Detroit’s 305,000 properties failed to pay their tax bills last year, exacerbating a punishing cycle of declining revenues and diminished services for a city in a financial crisis, according to a Detroit News analysis of government records.

The News reviewed more than 200,000 pages of tax documents and found that 47 percent of the city’s taxable parcels are delinquent on their 2011 bills. Some $ 246.5 million in taxes and fees went uncollected, about half of which was due Detroit and the rest to other entities, including Wayne County, Detroit Public Schools and the library.

Delinquency is so pervasive that 77 blocks had only one owner who paid taxes last year, The News found. Many of those who don’t pay question why they should in a city that struggles to light its streets or keep police on them.

“Why pay taxes?” asked Fred Phillips, who owes more than $ 2,600 on his home on an east-side block where five owners paid 2011 taxes. “Why should I send them taxes when they aren’t supplying services? It is sickening. … Every time I see the tax bill come, I think about the times we called and nobody came.”

Update on Detroit Bankruptcy

Detroit is financially and morally bankrupt yet the governor refuses to make that declaration. A Review team says Detroit faces financial crisis, has no plan to fix it so why won’t the governor act?

For the second time in a year, a state review team has found Detroit is in a financial emergency that requires Gov. Rick Snyder to intervene in City Hall.

But this time, if Snyder agrees that a financial emergency exists, the governor’s choices are more limited. He could appoint an emergency manager to keep Michigan’s largest city from plunging into bankruptcy, experts say, or he could continue state financial supervision through a new consent agreement, which seems a faint possibility.

State Treasurer Andy Dillon ruled out a bankruptcy filing at this time.

The six-member review team unanimously concluded in a report released Tuesday that the city failed to restructure its debt-laden bureaucracy under the financial consent agreement signed in April and that Detroit’s financial crisis requires Snyder’s intervention “because no satisfactory plan exists to resolve a serious financial problem.”

Chapter 9 bankruptcy is “always a possibility but I don’t think the city should go through (Chapter) 9 to cure its ailments,” he added.

The review team said the city’s charter adds “numerous restrictions” and hurdles for closing departments, canceling contracts and the type of wholesale restructuring financial experts say is necessary to make city government live within its means.

Restrictions? Who Cares?

In bankruptcy, restrictions go out the window. So do union contracts and pensions. Since all of that needs to go out the window, what’s holding the governor back?

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Mike “Mish” Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

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Half of Detroit Properties Have Not Paid Taxes; Update on Detroit Bankruptcy

Exclusive: Donors Trust, The Right"s Dark-Money ATM, Paid Out $30 Million in 2011

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Last week, I reported on an obscure yet powerful group called Donors Trust, a dark-money ATM funding the conservative movement with hundreds of millions of dollars in mostly anonymous money. Donors Trust bankrolls the Heartland Institute, a shrill flag-bearer for climate-change denialism; the American Legislative Exchange Council, the right-wing bill mill; and a slew of think tanks and advocacy shops promoting an anti-union, free-market agenda. As The Nation‘s Ari Berman recently reported, Donors Trust is also the sole funder of the Project on Fair Representation, a group trying to gut the Voting Rights Act.

When I published my Donors Trust story, though, the picture was incomplete. There’s a lag of a year or more between when Donors Trust, a nonprofit, raises and spends its millions and when it publicly discloses its activities. At the time I reported my story, the most recent IRS filing I could draw on covered only 2010. Over the weekend, however, I obtained a copy of Donors Trust’s 2011 filing—previously unavailable anywhere online until now.

Here’s what the latest filing shows us: Donors Trust is only getting bigger. In 2011, the group received more than $ 39 million in donations, an increase of $ 10 million from 2010, and handed out almost $ 30 million—both record sums. As in years past, recipients of Donors Trust cash include the biggest players in conservative politics today: the David Koch-chaired Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the Cato Institute, the FreedomWorks Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, and the influential State Policy Network.

Like all of its previous IRS filings, Donors Trust’s 2011 paperwork does not include a shred of information about the identity of Donors Trust’s bankrollers. That’s partly why the nonprofit is increasingly popular: At a time when conservative donors find themselves singled out by political candidates and the media, Donors Trust offers anonymity. When Donors Trust money lands at Heritage or Cato, it doesn’t include the name of the original source of the money; it simply says Donors Trust. Increasingly, as this latest filing shows, conservative donors are choosing to funnel their money through Donors Trust instead of giving it themselves, meaning more of the money fueling conservative politics is draped in secrecy. “We just have this great big unknown out there about where all the money is coming from,” Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University who studies money in the conservative movement, recently told me.

Here is Donors Trust’s full 990 form:

 

Here is a list of all of Donors Trust’s 2011 grants:

 

Politics | Mother Jones

Exclusive: Donors Trust, The Right"s Dark-Money ATM, Paid Out $30 Million in 2011