DETROIT — Massive financial assistance was just about to arrive when corruption scandals rocked Detroit City Hall.
Bribery and pay-to-play schemes landed public officials in prison, gave the city a black eye and cast a shadow of suspicion on the politicians who promised to deliver results in the public interest.
The same storyline playing out in St. Louis in 2023 happened a decade ago in Detroit.
Instead of massive cash infusions from the federal government and a settlement with an NFL team, Detroit had a massive financial burden lifted when it entered the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.
Before the Motor City could spark its comeback, it had to clean house.
“One thing I would say is don't put off reform, don't put off the tough decisions,” veteran journalist John Gallagher said.
After decades of covering City Hall for the Detroit Free Press, Gallagher sat down at an independent coffee shop and recalled the embarrassing era when the Motor City finally started to turn things around.
“Detroit's comeback is a mosaic,” he said. “There's about 100 things that have to happen.”
The first thing that had to happen was for city leaders to come to grips with the stark reality of corruption choking the city.
"We failed. We did not police ourselves,” former Detroit bankruptcy judge Ray Reynolds Graves told NBC News at the time.
“We as voters have failed to discipline our elected public officials. We were very glad to ride the gravy train as long as everybody could borrow more money and keep this thing going. Now we have to face the fact that those were all bad decisions."
Reynolds Graves guided the city through its bankruptcy proceedings in the same year federal prosecutors brought the former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to justice.
Kilpatrick hadn’t just saddled the city’s ledger sheet with more than $2 billion in debt, he was also sentenced to 28 years in prison for stealing $500,000 from a civic fund to spend on himself.
Trust in government was at an all-time low.
“People gave up. That's part of the problem,” turnaround consultant Larry Gardner told NBC News in 2013.
"Folks had really lost faith in city government,” Deputy Mayor Todd Bettison recalled.
Bettison was a city cop for nearly three decades before Mayor Mike Duggan tapped him to take over as deputy mayor.
Now, “there's definitely hope,” Bettison said. “When folks have hope, they're going to protect what's theirs.”
During a wide-ranging interview, Bettison said the city’s strategy to restore a sense of trust in government was quite simple.
“We're working to deliver what they want,” he said. “And when you deliver on promises? Promises kept?
“It was fast, but you have to show them something,” he said. “You have to do something big. If the lights are out, you got to get the lights turned on.”
To be sure, bringing a shrinking city back from the brink of bankruptcy and out from under the cloud of corruption wasn’t just as simple as flipping a light switch; but it did take effort and relentless focus on improving small, seemingly insignificant problems that had piled up or gone ignored for decades.
“Starting with the biggest problems, the essential things, and as you work through that, you can fix it,” Bettison said. “You will build competence, you will build momentum, and you can completely turn it around just like we did.”
When we first arrived in Detroit, we found Mayor Duggan standing at the bottom of a public amphitheater fielding questions from hundreds of voters, one by one.
"I appreciate his style of being able to handle the crowd," nonprofit director John Cromer said. “He allows the citizens to vent and he responds to those vents and he does it on a factual basis."
The city had recently re-written its charter documents to require the mayor to answer directly to the public for at least one hour eight times a year. While some politicians might view such a painstaking exercise as a distraction from their duties, Duggan handled each problem as another opportunity to show voters that government can have a customer service department, too.
"I picked the right time to become mayor, there's no doubt about that,” Duggan remarked.
Duggan readily admits he didn’t bring the city back on his own. He had help from the bankruptcy court, Congress, several presidents, and from the philanthropic community who pitched in to help boost Detroit’s burgeoning revival.
But that in itself showed some political skill. Forging alliances wasn’t easy at the outset.
“The leadership has to align in some ways,” Gallagher said. “At first there was almost no one to align with. I mean, city government in Detroit was so broken.”
"It's the job of the mayor to bring the city back,” Duggan said.
Before big businesses and donors bought into his pitch, they had to see effort from him. So elected officials shouldered the initial load and started racking up wins wherever they could find them.
"We talked about, 'Here's when you can expect your streetlights on. Here's when you can expect your police response time to be cut,’” Duggan said.
When we asked Duggan’s deputy mayor to describe the secret to the city’s resurgence, he didn’t refer to Census Bureau statistics, jobs report data or wage growth. Instead, he pointed to the number of vacant homes the city had demolished and underscored the importance of repairing broken streetlights.
"When a place is dark and dimly lit, it's a problem for crime,” Police Chief James White said.
The addition of regular street lighting was just the start. Duggan persuaded hundreds of business owners to purchase high-quality surveillance cameras, wire their video feeds directly into police headquarters, and advertise their presence with bright, flashing green lights, which send subconscious signals to potential customers and criminals all over the city.
With each flashing set of green lights that go up across the city, one more business displays that its owner buys into Duggan’s safety plan, and the sense of hope and collaboration starts to spread.
“When you promise it and you deliver it, before very long, people stop talking about the past and start talking about the future,” Duggan said. “And I'm sure you saw here: right now everyone in Detroit is talking about the future."
Crime is down. Jobs and wages are up. And people like Big Keith the Barber are moving back home.
"It's definitely getting better,” Keith said.
Billionaires are buying in, too.
Philanthropist Dan Gilbert recently pitched in half a billion dollars to boost development in the city's neighborhoods.
Henry Ford's great-grandson invested a billion dollars in restoring Michigan Central Station.
"If you have an idea, people are going to buy in,” Michigan Central Innovation District CEO Josh Sirefman said. “There’s a common goal.”
There’s also a sense that the city’s collective goals benefit everyone, not just the wealthy and well-connected.
"What Ford is doing is really great,” Big Keith said. “It's going to bring a lot more diversity to Detroit."
Duggan's office aggressively advertises expanded opportunities for former felons seeking expungement, small businesses seeking grant funds, unemployed workers seeking jobs or homeowners seeking equity. In each category of Detroit's comeback, specialists at city government help first-time job-seekers, business owners, homeowners, or returning citizens speed through red tape and overcome hurdles inherent in the system.
"That's where wealth comes from,” Keith said. “Sticking together."
“We built on our strengths,” Duggan said, “and that’s what every city has to do: build on your strengths.”