Governor Rick Snyder selected an emergency manager to put Detroit’s financial house in order.
The EM will have dictatorial authority and will displace all elected officials and have the power to break all contracts.
A report in the Detroit News says the new emergency manager has his own financial problems:
The paper discovered that:
“State records show Orr, who was appointed emergency manager on Thursday, has two outstanding liens on his $1-million home in Chevy Chase, Md., for $16,000 in unemployment taxes in 2010 and 2011. Two other liens of more than $16,000 in unemployment and income taxes were satisfied in 2010 and 2011, records show.”
Orr blamed his accountant.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As another blogger noted… he’s in good company: Geithner had some similar tax issues and blamed it on his accountant… maybe they have the same accountant! We’re intent on listing “failing schools”, maybe we should list “failing accountants”… I can think of two names to place on the list 😉
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Strictly speaking, this is an EFM — we repealed the EM law, not that Snydley Ricklash gives a RA …
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Has the constitutionality of the EFM law ever been challenged?
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This is a heated question. The EM law, like most such laws, contains a clause that repeals its predecessor, the EFM law. As a general rule, repealing a law does not repeal its repealing clause — a little thought and you can imagine the kind of chaos that would result if that sort of thing was allowed. So there is naturally an article in the Michigan Constitution that states as much. But the Governerd and his Minions insist that the Zombie Law of EFM is now risen from the dead to walk abroad on our once pleasant peninsulas, terrorizing the populace.
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I was thinking more about challenges to the law based on possible conflicts with (and preemption by) federal bankruptcy law. I would think a lot of creditors might have issues with a law that gives a state appointee sweeping powers to abrogate contracts without bankruptcy court supervision.
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Finally, a newspaper doing its job. More investigative reporting is needed across this country to save our schools, our democracy!
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Disturbing. There is a pattern here. I’m guessing he’s of the: “do as I say, not as I do school.” It’s pretty lame to blame the accountant. You usually get a few letters from the state and county here in MD before the lien is laid.
On a different note, why don’t these pols and appointees get their house in order before they are appointed? (The best to date was Tim Geithner not paying his self-employment taxes a few years ago.)
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According to our local radio station yesterday, supposedly he did not know he had the lein. When he found out, he sent a check to Maryland. They didn’t quote a source, but I take what the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press say with a grain of salt. Same as the Grand Rapids Press.
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ChrisJ, “he did not know he had the lein”? And it’s happened more than once? Please. One of the basics of being self-employed is that you pay both halves of withholding, yours and the employer’s, because you are both. This is a guy trying to game the tax system and not get caught. This supposed financial savior is a fraud, has no personal financial integrity. Your skepticism is a tad ill placed.
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Where is the accountability for his screw up? Does it affect his pay or does he get fired? If teachers can be fired for Facebook pictures… I’m just saying.
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Joanne, I was only stating what I had heard on the radio today. I ALWAYS take what the mainstream media says with a grain of salt whether it’s a liberal source or a conservative source or an independent source. I do my own digging and investigating because people have an agenda, they have an axe to grind, or a different take on things. If I didn’t have any skepticism, I would be worshiping the ground Obama walks on, I would believe everything that the gov’t. tells me, and we would all be singing kumbya without a care in the world. The UN would be history, the “war on women” would be gone, and all the illegal alphabet soup organizations in the gov’t would be disbanded. Life would be pink unicorns and fairy dust.
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We had a lien on our home in Chicago and DID NOT know it until we sold our home. The lien was for a parking ticket issued 10 years prior at a place we had never been to, Just sayin’
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Did you have four different liens on your home and you didn’t know it?
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