City Council: Bing's Proposed Cuts Threaten Detroit Elections

Detroit voting location on the west side for the national presidential election that brought Barack Obama to the White House. People lined up by the hundreds to cast their ballots. (Photo: Abayomi Azikiwe)., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

City Council: Bing's proposed cuts threaten Detroit elections

1:16 PM, May 4, 2012
By Matt Helms
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

City Council members said today they don’t see how Detroit can legally run elections – or have its residents’ votes count – if cuts Mayor Dave Bing’s administration has proposed for the City Clerk’s office go through.

City Clerk Janice Winfrey and Elections Director Daniel Baxter issued dire warnings during budget hearings this morning. Bing’s staff wants to cut the department’s budget to $5 million for fiscal year 2012-13, while Winfrey said her department will need $8.5 million to meet its obligations under state law and Detroit’s city charter.

The slashed budget would leave the department unable to ensure it could properly maintain voting equipment, train and pay poll workers, notify voters of precinct changes, mail out absentee voter applications and other core election functions, Baxter said.

“Even opening the polls on Election Day will be a challenge because you won’t have the poll workers to open them,” Baxter told the council. “So you’ll have the total disenfranchisement of the Detroit electorate for the primary as well as the general election.”

Baxter and Winfrey said that the cuts could call into question the integrity of Detroit’s voting process and leave the city open to any number of legal challenges – from political parties, candidates and advocacy groups – over the validity of votes and election results.

Winfrey said the department’s budget needs to be higher this year because presidential election years lead to more voter registrations and higher turnout. She said the department’s budget was $14 million in 2008 and $11 million in 2004.

Detroit is under the gun, having reached a consent agreement with the state last month that avoided appointment of an emergency manager but gave the state broad financial oversight of a city awash in deficits and long-term debt.

Bing proposes shaving $250 million off the city’s $1.2-billion general fund budget by cutting the city’s workforce by more than 2,500, eliminating some departments and consolidating others, and privatizing the city’s lighting and transportation departments.

Mayoral spokeswoman Naomi Patton said concerns about the elections funding were overblown and that the city will provide enough money to run the presidential election.

Still, Councilman Kwame Kenyatta said the clerk’s budget will have to be reconsidered because the department’s functions, from daily contact to the public to running elections, “are core services.”

Councilwoman JoAnn Watson said the clerk’s office is “not just another city department.”

“It’s connected with the U.S. Constitution and the right to have access to the right to vote,” Watson said. “It cannot be a department that suffers from some scalpel or some budget axe across-the-board.”

Council President Pro Tem Gary Brown accused the Bing administration of slashing the city’s departments too deeply without considering the impact on how the city will function. He said Bing staff needs to consult more with administrators of core city departments about maintaining services, and without those negotiations, the council’s budget hearings are “kind of a waste of time.”

“It really appears that cuts were made across-the-board without very much regard for restructuring a department, or really understanding” how the budget might impair the city’s ability to meet legal obligations, Brown said.

Contact Matt Helms: mhelms@freepress.com, @matthelms or 313-222-1450.