Michigan Governor declares financial emergency in Detroit

DETROIT (WXYZ) - Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has declared a financial emergency for the city of Detroit and says the process toward selecting an Emergency Manager could begin.

The governor has the authority to appoint an emergency financial manager for Detroit.

Snyder's town hall event includes dozens of invited guests at the Maccabees Building in Detroit's midtown.

City have officials have ten days to request a hearing before anything happens.

Meantime, the Detroit City Council is finalizing plans around a revised consent agreement.  At least one council member - Joann Watson - has discussed the option of a lawsuit challenging the takeover law that was repealed by voters in November.

State officials say the takeover authority reverted back to the previous law, Public Act 72.  And a new law was passed by the lame duck Legislature in Lansing that goes into effect on March 28.

This morning, a tweet posted from the account of Detroit Mayor Dave Bing read, "it's going to take more than Detroit to fix Detroit. We are all in this together."

Thursday, Snyder spoke by phone with Detroit Mayor Dave Bing. After the call, Bing spoke to reporters and said, "Everybody's got a pretty good idea of what the announcement is going to be."

Last week, Governor Snyder said he would take a week or so to make his final decision on what he would do with the city of Detroit. At that time he said he would either appoint an emergency financial manager or enter into a new consent agreement with the city.

Those remarks came after a financial review team found that a financial emergency existed in the city of Detroit. The review team also recommended to Snyder that he appoint an emergency financial manager to run the city.

Detroit has been operating under a consent agreement with the state since last year. That consent agreement prevented the city from being taken over by an emergency manager, who would have been appointed under a state law that was in place at that time.

Voters overturned that law in November 2012 and the state reverted to an older law that allowed for the appointment of an emergency financial manager.