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Mar 27, 2024 · Elissa Robinson. Detroit Free Press. 0:04. 0:45. While a simpler time in terms of technology, the 1980s in Detroit were much different than the life and times we know today. According to...
- Elissa Robinson
- Web Editor
Print archives The Detroit Public Library 's main branch has a complete archive of the Free Press available on microfilm, dating back to 1831. For more information on the archive and...
May 17, 2024 · This is the archive of all back issues of Detroit Free Press available online with PressReader. Read archived content using our web or mobile app experiences, choosing between the original print replica or mobile-optimized reading views.
- Postwar Boom, Then Ugly First Signs of Urban Decline
- Cause and Effect: People Leave, Taxes Go Up, More People Leave
- Coleman Young’s Legacy: Divisive — But Fiscally Sound
- Missed Chances to Rightsize Staff as Population Falls
- Costs For Health Care, Retiree Benefits Soar — City Fails to Act
- Bonuses to Workers, Retirees Add Up to More Budget Trouble
- Kilpatrick’s Award-Winning Deal Turns Into A Financial Disaster
- Bankruptcy Avoidable — Until Decadelong Borrowing Binge
- Finally: What Would Frank do?
Coming out of World War II, American industry was triumphant, and few centers of industry were riding higher than Detroit. The Arsenal of Democracy had built the planes and tanks that carried the war effort and was ready to return to producing cars and trucks for peacetime. The fruits of victory were everywhere. Detroit’s population was growing tow...
As the post-World War II manufacturing expansion leveled off and Detroit started to lose population and revenue, the city turned for the first time in 1962 to an income tax: 1% for residents, nonresidents and corporations. Only six years later, the rate for residents would double. In the early 1980s, a nasty national recession pummeled the auto ind...
When Coleman Young was elected mayor in 1973, Detroit had lived through one of the worst race riots in U.S. history and had lost about half a million people from its peak population years. Young has been alternately blamed for fanning the flames of racial tension, dealing out sweetheart deals to unions, expanding the city’s budget and setting Detro...
One running theme in the Free Press’ review is that city leaders failed, again and again, to come to grips with the looming crisis. Young downsized the bureaucracy, but not as much as he should have in view of the city’s declining population and revenue. And in 1994, when the Clinton-era financial boom took hold and the city’s finances appeared to ...
It has been obvious for at least a quarter-century that governments and industry were going to face massive legacy costs as more workers aged and retired. In fact, Detroit had about 18,000 retirees in the late 1980s, only about 3,000 fewer than today. But Archer said the red flags weren’t obvious in the 1980s and 1990s. “During the eight years I wa...
In 1994, Archer convened a meeting of his top officials the first week he took office to inspect the city’s books. Rago, Young’s budget director who stayed on during Archer’s first year, told the new mayor how the city’s pension system distributed excess earnings each year to retirees and active employees, instead of reinvesting it. The practice of...
On Dec. 6, 2005, Kwame Kilpatrick strode to the stage of a New York City ballroom to applause. Decked out in a black tuxedo, Kilpatrick accepted a gleaming trophy for engineering a complex $1.44-billion pension deal designed to eliminate the city’s unfunded pension liabilities. He cracked a joke on stage, and Wall Street chuckled. Photographs from ...
Despite the city’s huge tax burden, big spending and large bureaucracy, the Free Press analysis suggests that when Archer left office in 2001, the city still could have avoided disaster. Bankruptcy was not inevitable. But under the Kilpatrick and Bing administrations, the city started borrowing aggressively to cover its operating expenses, enabled ...
An echo of Detroit’s current distress can be found in memories of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Then, too, Detroit suffered overwhelming unemployment, chronic budget deficits, rampant crime. But the city government managed to avoid a financial collapse, led by charismatic Mayor Frank Murphy, later Michigan’s governor, U.S. attorney general and...
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An ornate old courtroom being used for storage in the early 1980s. Photo from the Detroit Free Press archives. The Old Wayne County Building. Photo from the Library of Congress. While the Old Wayne County Building hasn't changed in its last 100 years, the area around it is almost unrecognizable today. This photo is from 1955.
