It was a pleasure watching Dave Bing glide up and down the hardcourt of Cobo Arena back in the early 1970s.
As mayor of Detroit, Bing is now playing the game of his life. The city is facing a shortfall of $45 million by the end of its fiscal year in June.
If Bing doesn’t get Detroit’s finances in shape, then Lansing will appoint an emergency manager. If I wanted to trot out a basketball analogy — and I do — this is the equivalent of Bing getting benched. And while sitting on the sidelines Bing would be forced to watch his substitute play the game for him.
At least Bing won’t have to watch his replacement win the game because this financial game is unwinnable. Detroit, at most, can only hope to survive.

The city of Detroit considered buying an electronic gunshot detection system that can pinpoint from which direction the shot was fired.
Suburbanites have an old-fashioned version of this.
If residents of Warren hear a shot, they boldly predict the shot came from the south.
And they’re usually right.
If people in Livonia hear a shot, they suppose it came from the east. A person living in Grosse Pointe guesses the gunshot came from the west or the southwest or maybe from their 50-inch TV set with surround sound.
A person south of Detroit may live in Windsor and guess that a car backfired because they’ve never heard gunshots before.
It’s not amazing that Detroit officials considered paying $2.6 million for the ShotSpotter system. What’s amazing is that they didn’t do it.
The Detroit City Council probably figured the system would blow up on New Year's Eve. That's when hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of Detroiters fire weapons into the air.

Turkia Mullin is good looking. There I said it. The ousted, short-term head of Detroit Metropolitan Airport is good looking. She is also highly qualified and an Army vet. When Wayne County Executive Bob Ficano gave Mullin a suspicious $200,000 severance pay then conventional wisdom told us that somehow Mullin's sex appeal was involved.
This, mind you, is conventional wisdom gained from watching too much television.
The much more likely scenario is that governments in big, unwieldy places toss money around like this all the time. We just don't always hear about it. For instance, here in Macomb County most people -- including me -- didn't know about the DROP pension program until it was too late. This overly generous program gave some county retirees a large chunk of money -- often $200,000 and up -- along with a regular pension. And you didn't have to be good looking to get it.

It was a pleasure watching Dave Bing glide up and down the hardcourt of Cobo Arena back in the early 1970s.
As mayor of Detroit, Bing is now playing the game of his life. The city is facing a shortfall of $45 million by the end of its fiscal year in June.
If Bing doesn’t get Detroit’s finances in shape, then Lansing will appoint an emergency manager. If I wanted to trot out a basketball analogy — and I do — this is the equivalent of Bing getting benched. And while sitting on the sidelines Bing would be forced to watch his substitute play the game for him.
At least Bing won’t have to watch his replacement win the game because this financial game is unwinnable. Detroit, at most, can only hope to survive.

The city of Detroit considered buying an electronic gunshot detection system that can pinpoint from which direction the shot was fired.
Suburbanites have an old-fashioned version of this.
If residents of Warren hear a shot, they boldly predict the shot came from the south.
And they’re usually right.
If people in Livonia hear a shot, they suppose it came from the east. A person living in Grosse Pointe guesses the gunshot came from the west or the southwest or maybe from their 50-inch TV set with surround sound.
A person south of Detroit may live in Windsor and guess that a car backfired because they’ve never heard gunshots before.
It’s not amazing that Detroit officials considered paying $2.6 million for the ShotSpotter system. What’s amazing is that they didn’t do it.
The Detroit City Council probably figured the system would blow up on New Year's Eve. That's when hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of Detroiters fire weapons into the air.

Turkia Mullin is good looking. There I said it. The ousted, short-term head of Detroit Metropolitan Airport is good looking. She is also highly qualified and an Army vet. When Wayne County Executive Bob Ficano gave Mullin a suspicious $200,000 severance pay then conventional wisdom told us that somehow Mullin's sex appeal was involved.
This, mind you, is conventional wisdom gained from watching too much television.
The much more likely scenario is that governments in big, unwieldy places toss money around like this all the time. We just don't always hear about it. For instance, here in Macomb County most people -- including me -- didn't know about the DROP pension program until it was too late. This overly generous program gave some county retirees a large chunk of money -- often $200,000 and up -- along with a regular pension. And you didn't have to be good looking to get it.