The Way To A Detroit Councilwoman's Vote...

...is through her stomach.

The things some people will do over a meal. Threats of lay-offs for 1,300 City workers had little impact on her, but give her some soul food and...

• "Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick persuaded City Councilwoman Barbara-Rose Collins to change her vote to reconsider a plan vital to the sale of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel last night over soul food at Southern Fire.
  
  Collins said the mayor begged her to reconsider and she did, casting one of the five votes needed Tuesday to create an authority that could oversee the sale of the tunnel. She also persuaded Councilwoman Martha Reeves to switch her vote from Monday to favor of the authority.
  
  "He could sell ice to an Eskimo," Collins said of the mayor. "He can just hypnotize you when you talk to him."

Councilwoman Martha Reeves also changed her vote. The Mayor did not have to eat, or even sing, with her:

• "Reeves... said today she switched because Collins asked her to change her vote."

That's all it took to get her to change her mind and her vote. I wonder if Kwame had the Vandellas standing by if needed.

If this was not bad enough, here is what several Councillors claimed when the issue of supporting the final deal came up:

• "But Collins said the sale likely would not happen because she will not vote for it and believes the majority of council feels the same way
• Collins said she intends to vote against the actual tunnel sale because she dislikes the ability of the new authority’s ability to sell the tunnel, lost revenues from the tunnel and the lost of city control.
• "Reeves, Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. and Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel – who all voted yes today – said they were not necessarily going to vote yes on the final sale."

HUH....does this make sense? Is this how responsible Legislators act? If they have done their due diligence and voted yes today, then they understand what the deal is all about. Why wouldn't they vote yes on the final transaction. In my opinion, they are making a mockery of the legislative process and fools of themselves!

Until now, I had a great deal of respect for the manner in which Detroit Council was looking at this potential deal. They seemed to be asking the right questions. They seemed to be undertaking due diligence of the transaction. They seemed not to be intimidated by the Mayor’s threats of layoffs and put a contingency plan in place in case the deal fell through.

However, it seems that when push came to shove, Council effectively ignored every other vote that they had taken for reasons that seem unclear. The only answer that seems to be given is hypnosis by the Mayor and a request from one Councillor to another to screw her constituents and to vote for the first step of what the Mayor wants to do.

It is no wonder that voters have little respect for politicians and why politicians have such a poor reputation.

I don't want you to think that Councilwoman Collins is the only one for which I have lost respect. There are several others whose actions I don't understand as I stated above. Here are some comments made by other Councillors yet they voted in favour of what the Mayor wanted to do:

Sheila Cockrel

• In committee, she voted against the Tunnel deal:
  
  Cockrel countered to reporters in Detroit following Friday's meeting: "I don't think playing chicken with people's jobs or livelihood is a good thing for any set of politicians to do."
  
  
• She said trust issues around Kilpatrick following the text message scandal is one factor of why she is leery of the tunnel deal.
  
  
• She didn't think it was responsible for the administration to put this in the 2008-09 budget "when it wasn't ready. It's voodoo budgeting."
  
  
• "it was, in my opinion, malfeasance to put the deal in a budget when you knew you didn't have it done."
  
  
• "She also called the deal "reprehensible."
  
  
• "But Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel said she remains opposed to the sale because Windsor has not yet secured the $75 million from Ontario. She questioned the seriousness of the layoff threat.
  
  "I think there's a desperation that characterizes this administration right now."

Martha Reeves:

• "I'm representing the people who call me and the consensus of the people who are calling me, they're saying 'Absolutely not' to the selling of the tunnel," Reeves said.

Oh well, I am just a poor Windsor taxpayer who cannot understand high finance. Here are some more details about the transaction that the Free Press reported:

• "Under the deal, Detroit and Windsor would turn over their halves of the tunnel to separate authorities. Windsor would obtain a $75 million loan from the Ontario government and then route the $65 million to Detroit. The rest would go for insurance and transaction costs.
  
  The $700,000 in annual revenues Detroit receives from the tunnel would be used to repay the loan."

I thought that I had seen that the loan would be paid off within 40 to 50 years. The only way that this will happen at $700,000 per year is if Kwame comes over and hypnotizes Premier Dalton McGinty, Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan and Minister of Energy and Infrastructure George Smitherman too. Soul food anyone.