While Kevyn Orr relinquished the role of emergency manager in December, after 21 months, he is widely seen as having created the start of a turnaround in the troubled city and paved the way for its successful emergence from bankruptcy, a move which happened on the day he gave up his post there.

Honesty

In an article in which she describes the current degree of cynicism about Washington politics and the ‘debilitating gridlock’ there, she praises the buzzing of ‘enthusiasm about what they planned to get done’ among leaders and former leaders of Detroit. She puts much of the success of Detroit’s recent history down to honesty among the leaders, and the willingness of Mr Orr and others to be open. She says: ‘When I asked the Detroit leaders why they had been able to push reforms through, they emphasised the issue of transparency; instead of endlessly ignoring problems — as governments tend to do — they had tried to describe them as honestly as possible to voters and themselves.’ 

Desperate need

She concludes that such transparency can encourage ‘people to act with the type of leadership that western society so desperately needs’. Source: Financial Times