密歇根新闻广播 底特律有争议的排水率面临法律挑战

 

On July 1, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department completed its phase-in of a newdrainage rate for residential² properties.

The department expects to collect $153 million from the rate in 2019, roughly $30 million more than it will collect from water rates.

Known by opponents as the "rain tax," the drainage rate's rollout has been fiercely challenged by residents, business owners, and operators of faith-based institutions. They say the charge is unreasonably³ expensive and opaquely⁴ calculated. Some are even suing the city, claiming the charge is actually an unconstitutional tax in violation⁵ of Michigan's Headlee Amendment⁶.

But what is drainage, anyway?

Drainage refers to any surface water, like rain or snowmelt, that enters Detroit's combined sewer¹ system, where it mixes with raw sewage. Per the Clean Water Act, that combination of water and sewage must be treated before it is discharged into the Detroit and Rouge⁷ rivers. In cases of extreme wet weather, the city must hold the combined sewage in retention⁸ basins to prevent overflows⁹ of untreated waste into the rivers.

The city's new drainage rate charges residents based on the amount of hard surfaces they have on their property, like driveways, roofs, or parking lots. The logic¹⁰: Any water that isn’t soaked into the ground ends up in the combined sewer system.

Palencia Mobley, deputy director and chief engineer of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, said the new rate was designed to create a uniform system.

"The new rate actually is fair because every single customer is being charged based on their specific parcel’s impervious¹¹ area," she said.

But for Sylvia Ordu?o, there is nothing fair about water rates in Detroit. Ordu?o isan organizer for the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, which advocates for an income-based water affordability¹² plan in Detroit. In the last four years, the water department has disconnected more than 100,000 residential accounts that are behind on their bills. The threshold for cutoff:60 days behind or 150 days overdue¹³.

At a public hearing in June hosted by the Board of Water Commissioners¹⁴, DWSD security officials and Detroit police restrained Ordu?o after the board attempted to cut publiccomments short. The public refused to stand down, however, and the board re-opened the public comment microphone. Ordu?o then spoke¹⁵ to the persistent¹⁶ issue of unaffordable rates in a city where two-thirds of the population is low-income.

"And now you're telling me that on top of the water bills we're already paying, because I happened to have gotten a house with a long driveway, that now I'm going tohave to pay additional drainage charges? You have no right to ask us to pay any more."

But as an enterprise fund, the only way the water department can cover its costs isby charging its ratepayers. That puts a huge burden on Detroit's now shrunken population, which must shoulder the cost of billions of dollars' worth of legacy¹⁷ debt and thepresent and future improvements for Detroit's aging and outsized infrastructure¹⁸.

The formation of the Great Lakes Water Authority as part of Detroit's 2014 bankruptcyproceedings complicates¹⁹ matters further. Now, instead of paying into their own city's coffers, a large portion of Detroiters' money goes to the regional body that acts as the wholesale²⁰ provider of water and sewerage services. The authority also controls $3.8 billion of Detroit's legacy debt.

Given the financial pressures the water department finds itself in, critics suspect that a fixed²¹ drainage rate was simply devised to fill a revenue gap.

It "really had nothing to do to correlate with drainage," said Peter Hammer, director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University, "but was really just a crass²² calculation to say, how are we going to maintain our head above water?"

And this is where the ongoing²³ legal challenge comes into play.

Opponents of the rate, like Russ Bellant, a former water plant operator, argue that the calculation is not only crass, it's an unconstitutional tax.

"The drainage fee meets all three definitions of a tax, and if it met just one ofthem, it would be a tax," Bellant said. "But it's a tax, a tax, and a tax."

According to a 1999 Michigan Supreme²⁴ Court decision, Bolt v. Lansing, a fee is distinguishable from a tax based on three criteria²⁵: One, a fee serves a regulatory purpose, not a revenue-raising purpose; two, a fee must be proportional to the service it provides; and three, a customer must be able to decline or control their use of the service.

Like Bellant, plaintiffs in the case Detroit Alliance Against the Rain Tax v. City of Detroit argue that the drainage rate functions as a tax under all three criteria. That would put it in violation of Michigan's Headlee Amendment, which requires a public vote for any new tax or tax increase.

Both Lansing and Jackson's drainage rates have been overturned on similar arguments.

The case currently sits on the docket of the Michigan Court of Appeals. Neither attorney would comment for this story.

This story comes from Outlier Media.

1 sewer   

n.排水沟，下水道

参考例句：

• They are tearing up the street to repair a sewer. 他们正挖开马路修下水道。
• The boy kicked a stone into the sewer. 那个男孩把一石子踢进了下水道。

2 residential   

adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的

参考例句：

• The mayor inspected the residential section of the city.市长视察了该市的住宅区。
• The residential blocks were integrated with the rest of the college.住宿区与学院其他部分结合在了一起。

3 unreasonably   

adv. 不合理地

参考例句：

• He was also petty, unreasonably querulous, and mean. 他还是个气量狭窄，无事生非，平庸刻薄的人。
• Food in that restaurant is unreasonably priced. 那家饭店价格不公道。

4 opaquely   

adv.不透明地，无光泽地

参考例句：

• He referred opaquely to her recent past. 他含混不清地说到了她的近况。 来自互联网
• A string which opaquely encodes various aspects about a machine's operating system, hardware, and kernel attributes. 字符串，对机器的操作系统，硬件，和内核属性进行隐意编码。 来自互联网

5 violation   

n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯

参考例句：

• He roared that was a violation of the rules.他大声说，那是违反规则的。
• He was fined 200 dollars for violation of traffic regulation.他因违反交通规则被罚款200美元。

6 amendment   

n.改正，修正，改善，修正案

参考例句：

• The amendment was rejected by 207 voters to 143.这项修正案以207票对143票被否决。
• The Opposition has tabled an amendment to the bill.反对党已经就该议案提交了一项修正条款。

7 rouge   

n.胭脂，口红唇膏；v.(在…上)擦口红

参考例句：

• Women put rouge on their cheeks to make their faces pretty.女人往面颊上涂胭脂，使脸更漂亮。
• She didn't need any powder or lip rouge to make her pretty.她天生漂亮，不需要任何脂粉唇膏打扮自己。

8 retention   

n.保留，保持，保持力，记忆力

参考例句：

• They advocate the retention of our nuclear power plants.他们主张保留我们的核电厂。
• His retention of energy at this hour is really surprising.人们惊叹他在这个时候还能保持如此旺盛的精力。

9 overflows   

v.溢出，淹没( overflow的第三人称单数 )；充满；挤满了人；扩展出界，过度延伸

参考例句：

• He always fills his glass till it overflows. 他总是把杯子斟得很满。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A distributary overflows its banks. 分流水溢出河岸。 来自辞典例句

10 logic   

n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性

参考例句：

• What sort of logic is that?这是什么逻辑？
• I don't follow the logic of your argument.我不明白你的论点逻辑性何在。

11 impervious   

adj.不能渗透的，不能穿过的，不易伤害的

参考例句：

• He was completely impervious to criticism.他对批评毫不在乎。
• This material is impervious to gases and liquids.气体和液体都透不过这种物质。

12 affordability   

可购性

参考例句：

• Performance-Based Logistics Affordability: Can We Afford Categorical Conversion to Performance-Based Acquisition? 基于性能的后期的可承受性：能否担负得起向基于性能的采办的无条件的转变？
• There would be no crisis of affordability, as't for food or clothing. 就想食物与服装一样，因为供给没有危机。

13 overdue   

adj.过期的，到期未付的；早该有的，迟到的

参考例句：

• The plane is overdue and has been delayed by the bad weather.飞机晚点了，被坏天气耽搁了。
• The landlady is angry because the rent is overdue.女房东生气了，因为房租过期未付。

14 commissioners   

n.专员( commissioner的名词复数 )；长官；委员；政府部门的长官

参考例句：

• The Commissioners of Inland Revenue control British national taxes. 国家税收委员管理英国全国的税收。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The SEC has five commissioners who are appointed by the president. 证券交易委员会有５名委员，是由总统任命的。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件

15 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

16 persistent   

adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的

参考例句：

• Albert had a persistent headache that lasted for three days.艾伯特连续头痛了三天。
• She felt embarrassed by his persistent attentions.他不时地向她大献殷勤，使她很难为情。

17 legacy   

n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西

参考例句：

• They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
• He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。

18 infrastructure   

n.下部构造，下部组织，基础结构，基础设施

参考例句：

• We should step up the development of infrastructure for research.加强科学基础设施建设。
• We should strengthen cultural infrastructure and boost various types of popular culture.加强文化基础设施建设，发展各类群众文化。

19 complicates   

使复杂化( complicate的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• What complicates the issue is the burden of history. 历史的重负使问题复杂化了。
• Russia as a great and ambitious power gravely complicates the situation. 俄国作为一个强大而有野心的国家，使得局势异常复杂。

20 wholesale   

n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售

参考例句：

• The retail dealer buys at wholesale and sells at retail.零售商批发购进货物，以零售价卖出。
• Such shoes usually wholesale for much less.这种鞋批发出售通常要便宜得多。

21 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

22 crass   

adj.愚钝的，粗糙的；彻底的

参考例句：

• The government has behaved with crass insensitivity.该政府行事愚蠢而且麻木不仁。
• I didn't want any part of this silly reception,It was all so crass.我完全不想参加这个无聊的欢迎会，它实在太糟糕了。

23 ongoing   

adj.进行中的，前进的

参考例句：

• The problem is ongoing.这个问题尚未解决。
• The issues raised in the report relate directly to Age Concern's ongoing work in this area.报告中提出的问题与“关心老人”组织在这方面正在做的工作有直接的关系。

24 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

25 criteria   

n.标准

参考例句：

• The main criterion is value for money.主要的标准是钱要用得划算。
• There are strict criteria for inclusion in the competition.参赛的标准很严格。