Detroit Mayor Bing Uses NBA Drive to Fight Withering of City
Dave Bing on the Court
Lane Stewart/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
Detroit Pistons guard Dave Bing (21) in action against the Chicago Bulls' Norm Van Lier in 1974.
Detroit Pistons guard Dave Bing (21) in action against the Chicago Bulls' Norm Van Lier in 1974. Photographer: Lane Stewart/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
May 18 (Bloomberg) -- Detroit Mayor Dave Bing talks with Bloomberg's Timothy Jones about his efforts to fend off a state takeover of the city and revitalize its economy. Bing, a Hall of Fame guard with the National Basketball Association's Detroit Pistons in the 1960s and '70s, also discusses prospects for a rebound in Detroit's population. Almost a quarter million people left the city in the past decade. They spoke on May 10. (Source: Bloomberg)
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing
Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg
Dave Bing, mayor of Detroit.
Dave Bing, mayor of Detroit. Photographer: Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg
Eleven stories above the city that shrinks beneath him, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing chops at the conference table with his right hand, extending his fingers to emphasize his point that Detroit can be saved, if only people would listen to him.
“People don’t like to hear the truth if it’s not what they want to hear,” Bing said in an interview this month, sounding like the auto-parts company CEO he once was. “They’re not receptive to change.”
More than four decades have passed since Bing, 67, a Hall of Fame guard with the National Basketball Association’s Detroit Pistons, heard the cheers of adoring fans. At 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds -- just 10 above his playing weight -- he still looks as though he could sink a jump shot. Now, Bing performs in a new game, trying to force ledger-book discipline on a city in danger of being taken over by the state of Michigan.
Bing shuns the politician’s inclination to please and instead preaches a vinegar gospel of economy, efficiency and sustainability. In his first elective office, he practices the political math of subtraction.
“If we don’t do the things that need to be done, the state will take over. I mean, that’s a fact,” Bing said, thumping the table. “If you don’t believe it, here are the consequences. It’s pretty simple for me.”
‘The Ruins’
Industrial cities built on the fortunes of steel and automobiles have seen their economies struggle as plants closed and imports eroded domestic production. Detroit, once dotted with plants belonging to Ford Motor Co. (F), General Motors Co. (GM), Chrysler Group LLC and their suppliers, is now marked by what Bing calls “the ruins” of industrial demise -- abandoned neighborhoods, empty factories, and boarded-up businesses.
What was the nation’s fifth-largest city when Bing was playing with the Pistons in the 1960s and 1970s has fallen to 18th. Almost a quarter million people left in the past decade, dropping the population to 713,777, behind Charlotte, North Carolina; Fort Worth, Texas; and Columbus, Ohio.
About 100,000 dwellings are vacant, according to the Citizens Research Council of Michigan. The median home sale price in March was $8,505. And that’s up from March 2010, when it was $7,725, according to Realcomp II Ltd., a multiple-listing service in suburban Farmington Hills.
Going Into Deficit
While the Big Three automakers are poised to return to the employment levels of 2008, Detroit, which had a population of nearly 2 million in 1950, is headed to a budget deficit of $1.5 billion by 2016, Bing said.
A state takeover is no idle threat. Michigan’s new governor, Republican Rick Snyder, pushed a bill through the Legislature in March giving the state powers to oversee the financial operations of cities, including the cancellation of union contracts. Michigan appointed an emergency financial manager to run Detroit public schools in 2009.
The city’s bonds are below investment grade, rated Ba3 by Moody’s Investors Service, the third-highest junk rating; BB by Standard & Poor’s, the second-highest; and BB+ by Fitch, the highest noninvestment-grade rating.
A November report from S&P said that police, fire, debt and pension and benefit obligations account for about 63 percent of expenditures and that “a severe loss of revenues without spending adjustments could pressure Detroit’s ability to make debt service payments.”
Warding Off Michigan
Bing’s formula to fend off the state: cut spending, turn over some services to private operators and squeeze living space from 139 square miles to 70. Detroit’s population is spread across an expanse the size of San Francisco, Boston and Buffalo combined. Bing wants to lure people from shrinking neighborhoods to more populous areas, offering better services as an incentive.
Among many residents on the east side, where the population in some neighborhoods fell by more than 50 percent in the past decade, the idea of relocation is anathema.
“People should live where they want to live,” said Charles Williams, a caterer who was barbecuing ribs and hotdogs along East Warren Avenue. “Nobody took him from his house and put him someplace else.”
Left unanswered is what would happen to the 70 square miles once it is cleared out. While there’s been talk of urban farming on the east side, Bing said he is not convinced the idea can pay off economically.
Rats Take Over
“I don’t see him doing a damn thing,” said Michelle Allen, sitting on the front porch of her east-side home, eating oxtail soup and staring at a battered garage across the street. Allen sees drug deals all around and rats “run amok.”
“And he’s talking about moving people? What did he do? He played basketball,” said Allen, 51.
Basketball paved the way for Bing to escape the poverty of Washington. The son of a bricklayer and a domestic worker, Bing became a basketball star at Syracuse University and was a first- round draft choice of the Pistons in 1966.
He played guard for the team for nine years and retired in 1978, finishing his career with the Boston Celtics.
After retiring from basketball, he became a bank teller, working three branches in Detroit. Using his connections with then-Pistons owner Bill Davidson, Bing got into the steel stamping business, eventually running The Bing Group, a privately held collection of small manufacturers and suppliers that made steel for the auto industry. Bing sold the company in 2010.
Stepping In
Running for mayor “never crossed my mind,” Bing said, until 2008, when then-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick resigned before being pleading guilty to corruption charges. He said he thought he had the skills “to make a difference.”
Bing won the race in May 2009 to complete the final months of Kilpatrick’s term in office and was re-elected for a four- year term the following November.
This is not a job that pays long-term dividends. Kilpatrick is in prison. The last businessman to run Detroit, Albert Cobo, in the 1950s, died in office.
“In his defense, he’s taken on probably the hardest job in America,” said Maggie DeSantis, president of the Warren/Conner Development Corp., an east-side neighborhood group. “There’s no precedent for a city this large emptying out so quickly.”
On a Journey
“But I’m not convinced that business skills are the right match for running a city the shape Detroit is in. What is needed is consensus-building skills, leadership skills,” she said.
While past mayors have talked of returning Detroit to industrial glory, Bing is measured in his assessment. A television ad for Chrysler aired during the Super Bowl described Detroit as a “town that’s been to hell and back.”
“I don’t think it’s back,” said Bing. “We’re on our way back.”
Bing has given the city’s 48 public employee unions until Sept. 1 to agree to pension and health-care concessions that would save the city an estimated $120 million annually. If they don’t agree, Bing said, the state will appoint an emergency manager.
That is the consistent message from Bing, who is at work by 7 a.m. and rarely home before 9 p.m., he says. He hasn’t played basketball in 25 years and said he doesn’t miss the cheers.
“This administration has the responsibility and the backbone to tell people the truth because I’m not worried about getting re-elected,” Bing said, gesturing between the memorabilia from another life and time -- a framed Detroit Pistons jersey and the ball he shot to score his 18,000th point.
To contact the reporter on this story: Timothy Jones in Chicago at tjones58@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page