Newly elected Wayne County Executive Warren Evans delivered the news: a $70 million budget deficit on the county’s roughly $550 million budget.
Evans yesterday publicly discussed a report that’s been circulating privately for weeks. Done by Ernst & Young, a firm that’s been one of Detroit’s financial consultants, the report shows a “bad cash picture,” Evans said at a news conference.
Immediately the discussion turned to the potential options of emergency management and bankruptcy, such as in this Daniel Howes column in The Detroit News:
Public Act 436, the state’s emergency manager law, is more difficult to apply to counties with more than one constitutionally elected office with claims on public funds, say Evans and state officials who have studied the situation.
“The read I get from the governor is he has no particular desire to come in and manage Wayne County affairs,” Evans said. “I don’t want an emergency manager. I don’t want bankruptcy. If we can fix it short of that, that’s what we want to do.”
Here’s more media coverage:
Warren Evans addresses Wayne County’s $70 million budget deficit
Evans: Wayne County debt crisis worse than expected
Evans: Jail project may wait until deficit fixed
Wayne County must reduce pension, health care costs
Wayne County exec warns on state takeover, bankruptcy
Evans: Jail project may wait until deficit is fixed
