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Ethical Issues In Detroit Case Study

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Factors in implementation of recommendations In order for Detroit to be a viable city in the 21st century, city public administrators are going to have to learn to work together with the private sector. There are many factors that come into play with this strategy, more so since the scandal brought on by Kwame Kilpatrick and his associates. No one knows this better than the Emergency Manager for Detroit, Kvyn Orr. From Orr’s experiences as Detroit’s financial manager, we can predict the challenges in the actual implementation of my recommendations. In 2013, Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder hired Kvyn Orr as Detroit’s Emergency Manager. Snyder tasked Orr with the responsibility to make Detroit a financially stable and desirable city for …show more content…

First, the city of Detroit is wrought with inequality. From coming from the Detroit Metro region, I can state that there are blatantly obvious areas of wealth and poverty. This disparity demonstrates the ethical issues that Detroit’s bankruptcy shed light on and that equality social justice needs to address. Glaser et al. (2011) states that, “Public leadership intent on advancing social equity must encourage individuals to focus less on their personal well-being and more on community well-being…”(p 21). Public administrators being more interested in their own wellbeing is exactly what drove Detroit into bankruptcy, as especially evident from Kwame Kilpatrick’s case explained earlier. Selfish behavior on previous city public administrators also effects how residents respond to inequality. “For many Americans, the sticking point in tackling inequality is not that they view inequality as good or necessary, but that they lack confidence in public officials’ willingness or ability to address it effectively” (Hacker, 2010, p 174). Lack of faith in city public officials contributes to how residents of Detroit respond to inequality of services and improvements to the city. However, this can be rectified through my recommendations, which would hopefully provide opportunities for city leadership to create, “Regulations sought to limit conflicts of interests, encourage transparency, and discourage reckless risk taking that placed the desire for private gain in conflict with the integrity and security of the financial system”(Hacker, 2010, p 194). In order for equality to be maintained in Detroit, public officials and business leaders will need to prove to the city’s residents that they have their best interests at heart by making city infrastructure and services improvements in areas that are long over due.

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This is evidenced when Murphy writes,”Mayor Clarkson, meanwhile, faced mounting problems. The mayor showed up to city hall every day to learn what new crisis had developed, meet visitors, and considered options. But there was little he could do. Every day more and more city officials failed to show up at work”(Murphy 37). Being almost by himself with the amount of problems, and the amount of responsibilities he had, it would've been hard to keep on going and trying to make things better in Philadelphia.

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Detroit, was founded on July 24th 1701, was the largest city of the Michigan State and known as the world 's automotive center. However, on 18th July 2013, the city Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy with $18.5 billion in debt which is the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States history. As it is defined by the United States Court (2014),” Chapter 9 is the Bankruptcy Code provides for reorganization of municipalities, which include cities and towns, as well as villages, counties, taxing districts, municipal utilities, and school districts.” Moreover, there were thousands of retirees and other creditors and abandoned buildings with crumbling infrastructure and services. Over 60% of the population moved out the city.

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Even with wealthy cities, there was still massive amounts of impoverishment. The poor had little opportunity to prosper, “The poverty which in the midst of abundance, pinches and embrutes men, and all the manifold evils which flow from it, spring from a denial of justice.” (39). The inequality between the wealthy and poor or white and colored is all because of xenophobia. Xenophobia is the fear of people from other countries and ethnic backgrounds.

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People think the hail mary may be the removal of NAFTA, creating autonomous cars, or winning the second location of Amazon headquarters. Detroit is caught up in Hail Marys and because of that it’s not making small but meaningful improvements to its society. Detroit is not taking it one step at a time, it’s waiting to take a gigantic leap that may never come. The sad thing is that those giant leaps usually never work.

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A system that is built upon discrimination will continue to discriminate until major interventions are devised and upheld throughout the community (Reskin, 2012). Badger (2016) explains that after recent peaceful protests in Baltimore, the mayor spoke out and blamed “thugs” for these “riots”. The protest aimed to explain citizen’s frustrations with the institutions oppressing them, and exemplify the significance of how interrelated disparities are in communities (Badger, 2012). The mayor failed to acknowledge that we have created slums and prolonged the poverty in these neighborhoods. She ignored that disparities are all connected, such that living in a poor neighborhood typically leads to a poor education, then to a very low level job, and that then inherently lowers their health outcomes (Massey and Denton, 1993).

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Furthermore, the line between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor that contributed to failures

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