Our presenter on November 11th was Chad Livengood, Senior Editor at Crain’s Detroit Business.
Mr. Livengood has been with Crain’s for four years and writes about big business and public policy. He told two very different stories that focused on inequities in both arenas.
In February, he interviewed Dan Gilbert, who, before his May 2019 stroke, was at the top of his game business-wise and politically, building a high rise at the Hudson’s location and helping to revise Michigan’s auto insurance law. The stroke brought him back to earth and the top of the line treatment he received gave him a new outlook about the healthcare industry and those who work in it. Mr. Livengood then told about his brother who was electrocuted in a freak accident, at age 20, while working for a family landscape company in 2004. There was no worker’s compensation so he was passed around in the healthcare system, always requiring around the clock care, which he receives from those making $12.50/hour. Mr. Livengood, who appreciates Dan Gilbert’s influence and all of the money he is willing to spend in, and for, Detroit, hopes he will do the same for the healthcare industry.
Mr. Livengood then talked about the poor state of Michigan roads and the funding to fix them. The funding is based on a 1951 law that was passed before freeways were built and suburban sprawl existed. It uses a formula that provides much more money per person to those in rural areas than urban areas and allocates money to roads like Mound the same as to two-lane rural roads. He wonders why voters put up with it and believes we may have built a state that we can’t afford.