changes to their municipal drinking water systems

Six of the 11 Michigan cities that have come under state emergency management since 1990 also saw changes to their municipal drinking water systems, the most common being rate increases, water shutoffs for nonpayment and the privatization of water services or infrastructure.

 ....

The researchers also measured community characteristics beyond financial health—including
reliance on state revenue sharing,
the proportion of Black residents and
median household income—

that may have increased the likelihood that cities were targeted for emergency management.

Hughes and her co-authors expected that at least one of the financial indicators used by the state, or a composite financial health score based on all the indicators, would be able to identify all 11 Michigan cities that have experienced takeover.

Surprisingly, that was not the case. The composite financial stress score captured just 45% of those cities. But a city's level of reliance on state revenue sharing captured 82% of the takeovers, while the percentage of Black residents and median household income correctly predicted 64% and 55% of the takeovers, respectively.

"These findings support previous work challenging the technocratic and rational basis of state municipal takeover laws and pointing to the inherent politics in municipal takeovers, specifically the bias and structural challenges facing Black and poor communities," the authors wrote.

The media-coverage portion of the two-pronged study showed that Michigan cities that have come under emergency management were more likely to have changes made to drinking water services than 10 similarly financially stressed Michigan cities that did not come under emergency management.

 

Six of the 11 Michigan cities subjected to emergency management saw changes to their drinking water systems that were implemented to save money or to reduce expenditures. In many cases, those decisions led to poor water quality, service unreliability and increases to water bills, according to the researchers. The 10 comparative cities did not experience any such changes.

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-municipal-takeover-michigan-rational-apolitical.html