Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Grubby Reality

I missed this before the weekend, but apparently a more "comprehensive" appraisal of the Detroit Institute's collection is underway as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.  Randy Kennedy has the story here.  (On the previous, less comprehensive appraisal, see here.)   In a series of tweets (which I'll string together here), Kristi Culpepper says:

"Everyone's getting worked up about [Judge] Rhodes asking for arguments about whether court can force city to sell non-core assets. It's a formality. Rhodes will rule that this is not the case for two reasons: (1) He tends to go against capital markets creditors no matter what. (2) The 10th Amendment of the US Constitution limits the court's power over the municipality in obvious ways. Namely, court is not permitted to interfere with the property or revenue of the municipality (i.e., force sale without govt's consent). The court cannot force the sale of the art or other 'non-core' assets anymore than it can force the city to raise taxes."