DETROIT – Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Gary Brown said Mayor Dave Bing's speech was articulate and outlined the city's financial problems well.
Bing laid out his demands Wednesday for city employee concessions, contractor concessions and layoffs. However, Brown said Bing is not calling for enough cuts and he is not doing it quickly enough.
"We were surprised in the number of layoffs that weren't talked about," Brown said, speaking on behalf of the City Council. "We believe that the mayor did not go deep enough into layoffs to be effective."
Brown said while Bing did a fine job of laying out problems and some solutions, he did not do good job of providing a timeline and plan for implementation.
"It is not enough," he said. "And we only get one shot at this. We get one shot. And the mayor has got to take advantage of the things he has control of."
The councilman said Bing has control over layoffs and that he should be focusing on those first before concessions from the unions.
"Certainly we will be asking the unions to come in with concessions on pension and healthcare ... But in the meantime, in order to stop burning cash, we need to make layoffs immediately, and more than (Bing) articulated today," Brown said.
Brown said a minimum of 1,500 layoffs need to be made and that number will be dependent on how many concessions will be negotiated.
"You're going to need more than 1,000 (layoffs)," he said.
He said Detroit doesn't have the tax base to support it's population and the only way to avoid a state takeover would be to make immediate layoffs.
"The unions have been very consistent: They are not going to give us any concessions until their contract is up in 2012. That's too late," Brown said.
He said concessions from the unions sooner would mitigate the number of layoffs that need to be made.
Bing also mentioned a corporate tax agreement that the city of Detroit had made with the state of Michigan back in 1998. The mayor said the state owes the city millions of dollars because it did not hold up its end on the income tax agreement.
This is something Brown said he was surprised to hear Bing address in his speech Wednesday.
"We were a little surprised with the corporate income tax that the mayor put on the table. A little surprised about the $200 million that he is trying to get out of Lansing," Brown said.
Gov. Rick Snyder released a statement after Bing's speech that did not directly address the money, but said he would be expecting a preliminary fiscal review from the mayor based on the financial hardships he addressed Wednesday.
Whether Detroit will need state intervention is still unclear. However, the City Council and Mayor Bing have both said emphatically that they do not want to lose control of the city.