By 2009, more than half of the deindustrializing and economically troubled state’s black voters were being governed by such appointed emergency managers, among them the residents of Detroit, Benton Harbor, and Flint. “It’s dictatorship, plain and simple,” one city commissioner said of the new system. To save money, Flint’s appointed city manager switched the source of the city water supply to the polluted Flint River. The Mackinac Center lobbyists, by the way, made sure that the law incorporated provisions to protect the appointed managers from lawsuits. Given the scale of the damage they had
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