and i was comfortable in my corporate attorney life, my family and i. my managing partner steve and my wife said, look, this could be a call to action. it is important. it is outside your comfort zone, but we have people making the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of their country. this is temporary. and you will still be in an air-conditioned office in the summer and heated in the winter. sometimes you have to give back. after some reflection, it seemed like the right thing to do. brian: you are based in washington and a graduate of michigan law school. did that have anything to do with why they asked you? kevyn: i think it did. i was an undergraduate at the law school at university of michigan. from 1976 to 1983, i lived in michigan. the 1980's were pretty good years. the class of 1982 was rick snyder. 1983 was me. mike duggan, we all came up in that era. having a connection to the city and understanding what it was in its heyday, as well as having participated in other cases, the chrysler case, perhaps, made me seem like a more logical selection than someone else. brian: wxyz tv in detroit covered you a lot. we are going back to one of the first times in march of 2013, to get a sense of what they were saying before you took the job. [video clip] >> an historic day, but not the sort of history a city and its people want to make. detroit has been declared in financial emergency. cash deficit of $100 million plus dollars coming up june 30. $15 billion in long-term debt. $1.5 billion of that due in the next five years. the governor has taken the next step in getting the finances under control. -- 7 action news reporter jim kurtzner was in the room when he made the announcement. he joins me now. relating to kevyn orr, do we know when his first day will be? >> they have to do all the paperwork. his start date is march 25. brian: what did you feel like at that point? kevyn: it is interesting. at that point, i had underestimated the amount of attention the case would get. i had participated in other high-profile matters in federal government. i was responsible for supervising the whitewater investigation. three years earlier, we completed the chrysler case. another significant matter. i had been involved in pretty significant things. i thought this is another job with a little bit of attention early on. i did not really appreciate the local scene. that report, mayor kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years. in prison. so, the city had gone through a long period of trauma about the state of affairs. the city did not look like an american city should. there was a long history of reviews. governor rick snyder spent two years reviewing the status of detroit and pushing out reports, including 22 pages of finding of facts on march 2013. that was when i began to get an inkling of how significant this might have been and how the due diligence and academic work had played into the body politic as expressed by the press corps. i began to realize it might be more significant than i thought it would be. brian: what was the first thing you noticed was really a mess when you got there? kevyn: the city was operating. mayor bing had restored a sense of dignity and confidence and asked workers to give back 10%, particularly public safety workers. we had 9000 active city workers with 6000 on the civil side. 4000 in public safety. 2700 as police, 1100 as firemen. 400 as firefighters and emt's. two-thirds of the budget is public safety. we met with the public safety unions for several reasons. some of our initial metrics, 56 minutes response times for police, are now down to 12. they were not good metrics for any city, let alone detroit. our initial view was, we have to focus on the basics. let's get government running as it should, deal with public safety. focus on service delivery to citizens. the other stuff that had happened in the past, we were not going to spend time looking at that. my term was 18 months. the clock started ticking from day one. my team and i had to get focused and move quickly. brian: you left jones day law firm to do this. kevyn: resigned from the firm, totally separated from the firm, and worked exclusively as emergency manager for detroit. brian: you're back to the firm now? kevyn: back to the firm now, yes. brian: here is a stumble -- in the eyes of some people. august 2013. back to wxyz. [video clip] >> these are comments the emergency manager made that he may be regretting for the next year and a half he will be the emergency manager in detroit. look at what he says in the "wall street journal," published this weekend. "detroit was dumb, lazy, happy, and rich." he goes on to say that anyone with an eighth-grade education can get 30 years of a good job and pension and health care, but you do not have to worry about what is going to come. that is clearly a reference to detroit going through bankruptcy. some 20,000 city workers facing cuts in their pension and health care. brian: why did you make those comments? do you stand by them? kevyn: i do stand by them, but let me give you some context. my public affairs director and i, we were having an interview with the "wall street journal." we were talking about the city in the 1920's and 1930's. we said, the city was rich and buying art. the city was dumb, lazy, happy, and rich. senator cory booker used those very phrases three times the week after that. had no idea that anyone was ever going to make that connection to the contemporary city at that time. dumb, lazy, rich. we were not rich. clearly, i was not talking about the city. eighth grade education, that was a reference to both my grandmothers having an eighth-grade education. it did not dawn on me that had any connection to what we were doing at that time. but let me tell you, the city exploded, commentators, that is, for about a week and a half. insulting us, and --." finally, i went and said, look, you can scour my professional behavior and background for the past 30 years. even in the most heated time, you have never heard me use that kind of language about anyone, let alone a city i am obligated to represent and stand by. i appreciate people have taken umbrage with it because they thought i was referring to the city at that time. that was not my intent, but i will apologize for it. i do not insult people and have never done that. even people i have been in heated events with would not say that is my character. but we need to work behind the offguard comments. there is a difference between the wall street journal and working city, that kind of stuff. we need to move behind that. i had a little over a year at that time to get done with all this. i am happy to say that when i did that, cool heads prevailed. a lot of commentators said, we understand what he meant. brian: rachel maddow talked about the difficulty that happened in the state at the time of getting an emergency manager. let's watch what she said. [video clip] >> michiganders voted to repeal the radical emergency management law. but the republican still held majority in legislature and passed a replacement bill to the one that just got repealed, but only in a way that could not be repealed the way the old law was. 13 weeks after that, republicans in michigan are going for it, going for the big one. rick snyder announced he would use the takeover law that got repealed and reinstated. yeah, he would use the takeover law to overrule the voting rights of the population of the largest city in michigan. with the takeover, this will put roughly half the black population of michigan under direct control of governor rick snyder. if you are an african-american and live in michigan, the chances are one in two you will be allowed to vote for elected officials. brian: your reaction? kevyn: yes, the law was repealed. but it was public act 4. i came in under 72. then 436 took effect. on the 28th, i think it was. that was a process under the michigan constitution entitled to be taken up. elections have consequences. one of them is a joint republicans in the house, republicans in the senate. and a republican governor. they did what was constitutionally permissible. the second layer is there was a lot of chatter about voting rights, suspension of voting rights. it is not true. we had two elections, one for mike duggan, on a write in ballot, and governor snyder was reelected with more votes out of detroit in the first time around. voting rights were preserved. number three, if you had come to the city at that time and looked around, certainly, most reasonable people would have come away feeling a receivership, which is what i was, was an appropriate mechanism to address 60 years of neglect. there were homes with 20-year-old trees growing through the roof. some of the police cars did not have bumpers on them. our ambulances would be out of the city at 7:30, i had a meeting with an emt union president in the fall of 2013. in city hall that day, a woman had a seizure downstairs but there were no ambulances available. he had to stop and help with the seizure because they were being run into the ground. any reasonable person would have said a receivership, which has been going on for a couple hundred years, this has been worthy. brian: i read that 600 municipalities in the country have gone through bankruptcy, but this is by far the largest ever bankruptcy? kevyn: a different order of magnitude. the start was $15 billion in debt. we discovered it was $18 billion in long-term debt. the ironic thing about this is, of the $10 billion secured, we agreed to pay the secured debt. schemered the priority as un der law. but for the $8 billion that was unsecured, $5.7 billion of that was retiree health-care obligations, obligations to retirees where the city had not saved a dime coming out of the general fund budget year after year. 72% of the city's budget until 2023 would be dedicated to legacy service debt cost and health care. 720 out of a billion dollar general fund budget would be dealing with backwards facing opposition. the city would have to contract. $3.5 billion was unfunded pension obligations. the certificates of participation, that was engineered in 2005, 2006, supposedly as a solution to underfunding. what it did was set the city back with almost $2 billion in debt. $5 billion was unsecured pension obligations. it was quite severe in terms of debt service. i remember doing the math. i came up with a figure. if you took all of the city's discretionary income for any fourth of july celebration, city parks, concerts, and dedicated it to pay off unsecured debt, it would be 60 years. you clearly could not do it. we recognized the sentiments expressed, that it was unfair. i received invective. one of the statements in court was that governor snyder was the plantation master and i was his uncle tom overseer. but we tried to work through it and focus on the problems at hand. over time, people saw the effort as an honest broker. some of the noise started dying down. brian: coleman young was the mayor of the city, first black mayor of detroit, for five terms. what impact did he have on the city? when he left office, what kind of shape was the city in? kevyn: there are studies. the free press did a study. coleman young was a good mayor. he left the city in good financial condition. there was concern he had focused on building the city downtown, sometimes perceived at the expense of neighborhoods. but he came on board, took on police practices perceived to be oppressive. he took on the fire department which, for a long time, had a lack of diversity in hiring practices. coleman young was a pretty good mayor. when you look back on it, these were some tumultuous times. likewise, dennis archer was a good mayor. the irony is they left the city in fair condition. it is the years 2000 to 2010, particular 2006 to 2009, that the mischief started. that exacerbated the demographic trend lines of people leaving the city. 250,000 between 2000 and 2010. the city went from 1.2 million to 800,000. that continued to decline demographically. when you have the mischief and defalcation of mayor kilpatrick, that exacerbated it. as one city councilperson told me, the white middle class began leaving with the great busing crisis of the 1980's, 1990's, 2000's. the black middle-class left in the millennium. and that sort of drove the city down a little bit. brian: is it true that 40% of the street lights did not work when you got there? kevyn: that is absolutely true. when we first came in in march, we recognized that much of the work going on with the city, the detroit review commissions, which were supervised by the governor's office and had already developed a wealth of knowledge about the status of the city. we pulled that together in the june 14, 2013 proposal for creditors. down. street lights were $600 million in deferred pension payments at an 8% interest rate. $18 billion in debt. if you look at the document, it is a compendium of the ills affecting the city. we did that so people would get a true snapshot of what the city was like. no one has taken issue with what we said. brian: what is the difference between detroit being $18 billion in debt and the united states having a debt of $18 trillion? kevyn: you look at gdp over debt service. $16 trillion. estimated to be $18 trillion. and, that is not a bad thing. a lot of money, certainly, in our lifetime. the gdp used to be in the single-digits. but is it manageable? yes. think of it this way. if detroit had taken $1.5 billion in 2005, 2006, when the stock market went down 6700, and just invested in a dow jones industrial index, the stock market is now trading three times what it was. they would not only have tripled their money, they could have paid the pension in full. and gotten back to the practice of giving pensioners a 13th check at the end of the year. it could have fixed itself if there had been sober management going forward, just like any organization in the united states. if you have strong and focused leadership, you can resolve the problems. but it takes a lot of effort. brian: in september of 2013, we were talking about coleman young, here is coleman young ii talking about you. [video clip] mr. young: the people in lansing think they got you beat. they are sitting there, licking their chops. they do not know who we are. they do not know what detroit is. they do not know that detroit is the home of rosa parks, the woman who sat down so a movement could stand up. detroit is where martin luther king first gave his "i have a dream" speech. right here in this city. detroit is the place where the first radio broadcast, the first road was built. we put the world on wheels. we made a soundtrack for a generation with motown in the city. right here in this city. this is the city of detroit. where the battle of the overpass took place. where the five dollar workday took place. where we led slaves north to liberation. right here in the city of detroit. after all that, you think we are going to be beat by some governor, by a man who thinks we dumb and lazy? no no no, mr. kevyn orr, the people of detroit are not dumb and lazy. they are overworked and underpaid. brian: do you remember that? kevyn: i do remember that. quite voluble. brian: what was he doing there? what difference does it make that rosa parks was there, that martin luther king gave a speech there? kevyn: everything he said is true. rosa parks moved to the city of detroit after receiving death threats in the south. she was chosen by the naacp over some other candidates because she had the right traits and had the right presentation. i honor and respect my forefathers, including my grandparents and my father, who struggled so i could be here today. so i just want to be sure everyone understands -- i am aware of the long trajectory of history. from 1640, when john bunche was an indentured servant that was sentenced for running away to a lifetime of servitude, while his two other runaways, two white men, one was a dutchman and one was scotch-irish, got an additional four terms. all three of them got 30 lashes, but he was sentenced to life in virginia. they think he is related to ralph bunche, the first black winner of the nobel peace prize. i'm well aware of my history and legacy. i understand the volubility of congressman young. and some of the emotions that occurred, being afraid there would be a takeover. but i would like to think that after they have seen the result, they appear to be quite well. the city is above projections. we have pointed out that some of that anxiety that was expressed, the invective directed personally, perhaps in reflection, was not well taken. brian: how did a white man get elected mayor of detroit with an 82% black population? kevyn: people sat down. i know both mayor duggan and his opponent, and i think of them as friends. i went to law school with mayor duggan. mayor duggan originally moved to city to run for mayor. he got his papers in a day late. his opponents moved to get him disqualified from the ballot, and he was. the thought at that point was that he was really not going to run. that would have meant, in a city that typically votes democratic, his opponent would win. cooler heads prevailed, and they asked him to have a write-in. but during the write-in campaign, some say -- there's no proof, but some say some members of the opposition went out and got a gentleman by the name of mike dugeon. d-u-g-e-o-n. mike was a young guy, in his 30's. had not been involved in politics before, but the cynical expectation was that a majority of voters in detroit would not recognize the difference between mike duggan and mike dugeon. but they did. they wrote in mike duggan, the white guy. and his opponents decided they would try to get him disqualified on the ballot count because it was a write-in ballot. they sent it to the state. state did a recount and found out mike duggan won more votes than the original count. that's why i was saying there was democracy in the city and voting rights at a high level. a write-in campaign for the first white mayor in 35 years. this is a testament to the people of detroit. they put aside race and thought, despite what some people thought, who is the best guy with the best track record? mike was ceo of dmc, detroit medical center and built up. who has the best record and probability for running the city? we think it is that guy. we don't really care what his race is. that is who they voted for. brian: when was the election? kevyn: in the fall of 2014. brian: big event in detroit -- not sure how old you were at the time -- 1967 -- clarence lusane talked about his involvement in this. let's watch this. fill in the blanks. [video clip] >> i remember vividly the 1967 riot, in part, began a few blocks from my house. my mother, father, and my sisters and i had been in canada. it started on a saturday night. we had spent all day in canada. people cross the bridge and go fishing. when we got back, there was a full-blown riot going on. i was probably 12 or so. nobody was inside. at one point, my mother and sister and i walked out to the main intersection. there were hundreds and hundreds of people. after being there for a while, a car drove up. two white men got out and fired at the corner. and lifted their shotguns fired. everyone on the corner was hit. probably about 20 people. everyone was hit except for me. my mother and sister were shot. brian: 43 people killed, over 400 injured. what impact did that have on the condition you found detroit in? kevyn: the issue of racial division, some would say, is pioneered in detroit. if you look at government policy. and the board of realtors, the concept of redlining, was pioneered in detroit. if a black person bought a house in a previously white neighborhood, there was a red line drawn around the neighborhood. the bank would no longer offer conforming loans for the community. there was a study that shows the greatest transfers of wealth from the federal government has been with home mortgages to disproportionately white homeowners. the american board of realtors, if you sold a home and represented a black buyer, this issue was chronicled in the origin of urban crisis, which goes into stark detail about how none of this is by happenstance. it was quite virulent. in the 1930's, a pharmacist who bought a house had to defend his household at gunpoint from white neighbors. that has been going on for a long time in the community. i was well aware of the legacy, the neighborhoods. 8 mile, the dividing line, is a stark contrast. literally, 30 feet of asphalt, same side, same area construction, totally different vision. a lot of that over time had been designed to be that way. a buffer. the way it expressed itself to me was, number one, having lived through the 1960's. riots, 1969 -- having lived through watergate, a very tumultuous era, i did not want that to be the face of the city of detroit. there were detractors in the city trying to drive that narrative, saying we need to burn it down, riot. the year after ferguson, there were people saying "we are going to ferguson these mf's." i knew that the news media were looking for that narrative. i sat down with each city council member and said, i recognize this was a difficult time. one of the first things i did was dedicate authority back to the city council. so there is oversight in governance. thegate back, much to some. i think you should be running the city -- i don't think we should be working in partnership. i am here to take care of all sins before i got here -- i don't care what you say about me -- that is fine. but let's not destroy the city that we love. let's not give the press that narrative. let's conduct ourselves in a dignified and honorable way even though we may disagree so at the end of this process, we can always look back and say, we behaved in a way that was admirable and we did not devolve into the behavior we have seen in some other communities. i am proud to say -- i am proud of the officials and residents of the city. we did not have another 1967 riot. we did not set the city back politically but also we could not drive that kind of reinvestment, the positive attitude we are now seeing in the city if that had been part of the narrative. brian: when you went there first, how many empty dwellings were there? kevyn: 20% of our housing. 72 out of 320 were vacant or blighted -- 72,000, sorry. the real problem is that 60% of fireman calls for health and safety are related to blighted or vacant -- other structures. so we are running our firemen that are totally unnecessary in uninhabited dwellings. it is all three of those things. they are not on the tax roll, they are not providing value in terms of the increasing value, and operationally, they are running operations to them by requiring a disproportionate level of emergency service. look had to try to get a at blight. brian: in 2009, talking about foreign media, al jazeera at the time -- let's watch what they were showing their audience about detroit. [video clip] >> the u.s. recession has hit detroit so badly that houses have been left to rot as residents default on mortgages. forced from their home. >> once that house goes vacant, aluminum disappears, copper disappears. the siding is all gone. the gutters are gone. it might be smaller. there are thousands and thousands of these. >> a local agent explains that banks will not pay to fix houses so they are being shoved back into a dead market at astonishingly low prices. >> on this particular block, over 50-60% of houses are in foreclosure. this particular house at $50. we are certain to see a lot of houses fall below $1000. brian: who owns all of those houses? are they empty? kevyn: we did several things. we created an authority, houses that have been taken back in foreclosures -- we put those into the authority. 40,000 for the city alone. some are owned by private owners. but those are defunct. secondly, the leadership of detroit blight task force -- we chronicalized with technology each house in the city of detroit and graded it by its condition. 320,000 plus, they have put into a catalog of housing status so we can begin to make determinations about which should be blighted -- which should be demolished or rehabilitated. mayor duggan's team came in and created -- or on the west side of detroit to go in section by section, the city is huge, you can fit the city the size of boston, manhattan, and san francisco into the city's borders -- is going to buy and trying to rehabilitate those homes and areas to get buyers back in. fourth, on the website of detroit, they can go in and bid on homes under several conditions. you have to have it inhabited in six months. certainly, in 2009, that was a representation but two things have happened since then. on tuesday, it was reported that home sales are up by 3.9%. home prices and to try and are up double-digits, almost 30%. we are getting our hands on mediating the blighted structures which is one of the components of our plan is that we get to blight, lighting, public safety, and financial integrity. those things are on the way. i am happy to report that we are achieving above -- the city is achieving beyond the goals we set. brian: do you have any relationship to them now? kevyn: i do not. i'm a private citizen. i am registered to bid on private houses on the website. brian: why would you do that? kevyn: i think it is a great opportunity. i have been fortunate to work in a few other cities and when i left michigan law school, i went to miami. miami was a flame. you remember trouble in paradise, paradise lost, drug dealers, and race riots. each summer, areas would burn. my friends and said, why are you going to miami? i said, because it is opportunity. some areas that were blighted now -- south beach -- retirement homes -- i left there and came here to washington dc in 1991. mr. pullen built the stadium and look at what that has done. they are going off the charts. detroit has that same field. the value proposition is high and the trend lines that we were looking for are better than we expected. i think it is a great opportunity. that is my own view. that is what i see. brian: life started for you in fort lauderdale? what were your dad and mom doing? kevyn: they were both teachers. the irony of this discussion is my dad was in the army. my older brother -- they came back to fort lauderdale in 1958 and they were turned away because it was still segregated. so i was born into segregation with a midwife. my brother was born in an integrated hospital in germany and i was born in a segregated clinic in fort lauderdale. he was a school administrator and she was interim school superintendent. my granddaddy was a minister. -- my daddy, my grandady, and my great grandaddy, all ame ministers. lawyer.len, just a [chuckles] brian: why did you not go that route? kevyn: i thought that i would at one point. i used to go to sunday school and i thought i would become a seminarian. i started getting into law as a young black kid driving around fort lauderdale, the county was divided by race and class by two railroad tracks. the white folks who are rich lived on the beach and then there was the railroad and in the working-class white folks and then there was another track, and that is where black folks lived. i have friends of all stripes and colors and i visit my friends on the beach and got to the point that the cops would just follow me. i could tell they were doing triangulations and parallels. just hassling for no reason. by the end of high school, i said i wanted to be a civil rights attorney. i wanted to stop this and defend this. so i decided, i am not going to going to the seminary, i want to practice law. i got into law school. the rest is history. brian: and you did -- you have done a lot of jobs. detail the jobs you have had even with the government. kevyn: i started out in private practice in florida. i left what i thought would be a two-year legal absence and went into the fdic. this is in 1991. then the savings and loan crisis hit. i went to rtc later that year. that is the residence trust corporation, trying to resolve savings and loans. brian: what attracted you to that? kevyn: there was the first persian gulf war. i wanted to serve my country. i wasn't militarily inclined but i wanted to do federal service because i had some nascent political aspirations. i am just going to go for two years -- i remember telling gene stearns i am just going to go for two years. he said, if you go to washington, you will never come back. you will get potomac fever. i got involved in representations there and one of the people i worked with at rtc and asked me to go to rotc. in 2001, i joined my law firm. so, three federal agencies, three law firms. doctor.our wife is a where did you meet her? kevyn: i met her through a mutual friend. i married up. seemed a little out of my league but i kept trying. i wasged to convince her worth a shot. brian: children? kevyn: two young children, love them to death. brian: how old are they? kevyn: seven and nine. brian: let's go back to another -- i don't know if you call it onto the road, november, 2014. [video clip] while they were arguing to come pensions and health care, they were getting themselves raises, costing taxpayers more. as he reviewed more than 10,000 pages of invoices, we could not help but notice those filed by jones day -- handpicked byirm the governor. >> these attorneys and professionals are on their honor. >> it is not an open checkbook. >> take the hourly rate of $8.25 per hour. it increased 9%. another partner, her rate rocketed 12%. hour to $675. >> did you get a pay raise? >> no pay raise. kevyn: i had to be a little quiet at that time because i was emergency manager. i'm going to be a little bit louder about this and defend the law firm on three levels. one, the level of work that the law firm had to do and i said this before during the representation considering areas such as bankruptcy trial, project finance, labor, health care, there were 28 different work streams -- as the judge said, perhaps on an exceptional level of the city should be thankful so it was an incredible representation and an incredible lot of work. certainly every representation i have been and somebody has said, look at this, because it drives the white-collar vs. working-class narrative -- the silk stocking law firm is feasting on this -- that is not true for the reality is that this law firm -- and i was not with it but i will defend it -- this law firm. over 20% was adjusted down to that. the rate increases that jim pointed out -- that happens every year. it is a combination of not just inflation that based upon the attorney's experience as they go to the practice area. certainly though, coming from a family -- both my grandmother's workmates, my mother grew up in a single-parent household, my paternal grandfather had to be run out of the house by my uncle because he was beating my mother with a razor strap so badly. i can understand how someone of a more average background looks at these numbers and be concerned and not really understand. for instance i don't even really tell my own mother what my compensation is because it is certainly well from where she came to to where i am from. while i have had the transit of success and i hope i am judged by the content of my character as martin luther king jr. said and i have had some success in that regard and certainly significant relative to where she started so i am sympathetic to that. the given the work that we did in the firm, the level of the project, the time that it was taken to deal with 60 years of neglect and decay for the law firm, i would say that there was value given for the payments that were made. brian: i have stumbled through this question. you are doing pretty well. kevyn: i hope so. brian: have you noticed a change in the way people look at you? do people looking you differently? do they get past the race? kevyn: no. it depends upon the time of day. if i am driving home dressed like this, i will get a different approach from cops than i did when i was a teenager. if i am driving on the weekends. my wife and i when our son was six months so moved into chevy chase, maryland which is perceived to be a nice community. washington, d.c. we pulled out of our subdivision that night with our six month old baby and lights flared in cops pulled us over. i said, i think you pulled us over because our left blank light is out. here are the bulbs, i haven't had time to replace them. my wife, the doctor, me, the lawyer, with our son, for the next hour and 15 minutes, they sat there with the spotlight shining in the back -- montgomery county police -- shining back on my young baby while we had the light -- running tags, trying to find something -- trying to find something, i suspect, on what we were doing, for no reason. after 40 minutes i said, i'm going to talk to this guy. she said, don't go, they will kill you. you won't come back. so we had a process that and that environment coming out of our new house in a nice subdivision with a light shining on my six-month-old son for no reason. it is a very troubling thing and i do think that we are at a crossroads in this nation. there is a disconnect between people. some people say cannot be that bad but then you look at the fact at the number of interactions in ferguson -- the real story in ferguson wasn't just oppressive policing, he was an integrated economic model through the administrative judge in the city council to drive tax saturation on the citizens so they could increase their budget to let an operation to drive more saturation. when good cops in ferguson said we do not like doing this, they were told, shut up, write more tickets. so you see the disconnect between the people who pay your salary and the people who are oppressing those and there is no believe in the legitimacy of that process because it from their perspective the average inner-city citizen -- that is not a legitimate process for a juxtapose that, though, to the folks in baltimore and out -- freddie gray was killed during a month after, 31 people died. two months after, 45 young black men were killed her there appears to be aggressive policing. this is all very sensitive stuff that we need to spend some time cycling through but it has a real impact. people die. no matter who you are, no matter where you are, as obama said, if he had a son, his son was by trayvon.look like i have a nine-year-old son. in three or four years, he is going to be trayvon. i am concerned for his life. they are just going to see another little black kid. not the son of a successful lawyer. brian: i know you talked about this in detroit. what do you tell your children about this? kevyn: i haven't told them anything yet because they still live in this cocoon of northwest washington dc but i will have to have a conversation with my son. i have to tell him how to speak cop, use proper diction, not to have them change their behavior but to let them know that if something happens to him, something will happen to them. i'm an attorney, i will come after them with everything i possibly can, if you harm my child. he is a citizen, treat him with respect. but i have to teach him not to give a precedent. it can escalate. just as we saw down in texas and she was stopped and she ends up dead. i have to teach him another thing. many of the kids -- we are fortunate here that we are very diverse. we have people of all collars married, we to birthday parties, play dates, pools, it is very lovely. somewhere, about 12 or 13-year-old, kids and start going to the mall, going to movies, maybe not the parents, but somewhere, uncle bob will call and say why is that little boy over here again and maybe he doesn't take you to junior prom or maybe you don't date -- subtle messages start to come in. what happens is the friends they have known all their life start falling off. had a conversation like this. his daughter married a diverse individual and he brought him in and recounted this to mean. he said, i want you to understand what is going to happen. here i am, an african-american, he is a white american, but both of us have to cycle through this that are going to be people who are not happy to see you and you need to be repaired for that. the final thing i have to teach and is the meaning of the n-word. whether it is said just like that kid who was it yale, who where he was supposed to be as somebody throws it out. so i talk about this with the other african-american professionals in our community who are very well accomplished, highly educated. are we protecting our children too much? are they in the cocoon too much? do we need to expose them get go we want to inoculate them but not infect them. how do we do that? that is the challenge that even the sort of white-collar african-american professionals have. brian: go back to the detroit story, and in the end, you got people that forgive $7 billion worth of debt? how? kevyn: you can do anything with four things. you need leadership. certainly, governor snyder provided leadership and mayor duggan cooperated. you need talent, transparency, cooperation. we sat down at the party table with the financial and labour sides and said, we cannot pay you. it is just math. math is not going to change. let's talk about what we can do. there was helped from the foundation community, some mediators came up with the grand bargain where the foundations in state aid and legislators voted to provide us with $820 million dedicated to helping pension funding so that we preserve the detroit institute of arts and that was really a breakthrough heard a lot of cooperation, a lot of tough negotiations, the people working together. brian: this city was still able to float the bond to build the red wings hockey rink? kevyn: that was state assistance. the city had the public lighting authority, we had the issue for -- $1.5oit water billion refunded and we had a private placement regarding the exit financing in bankruptcy. so the capital markets are remarkably -- for the most part -- remarkably logical and when they see an enterprise that is pay as a goes, we've got where i think the lighting was at about 3.75, i thought it would have gone lower. we were able to have some success with our debt. we can pay as we go forward. our surplus lines are good. it wasn't easy. brian: how much attention did obama give you personally and this issue when you are going through it? kevyn: the president's office and the president's cabinet were front and center. shaun donovan, tony fox, eric holder, his attorneys -- the federal government was -- in fact, we convened in 2013 with over 60 participants -- gene sperling brought us all together and said, this is what we can do to assist you. that so continues. the white house has a detroit task force that just went over with the mayor -- mayor duggan -- to japan, and if they came back with $30 million in commitment from private sector factories to rebuild the city and many more to come. it was very helpful having federal partners helping us. we knew at the end of the day we were going to have to fix it ourselves. brian: in the middle of all of this, the mayor of detroit goes to prison. he is going to be there for 28 years. how much do you blame him for what happened? kevyn: have tried to stay away from blame. certainly, the level of defalcation -- a 119 page indictment -- and i think they were able to account for $75 million that was taken. some of the estimates i have seen go up as high as $200 million taken during the kill patrick administration. brian: how much do you blame the mayor in prison for what happened? kevyn: have tried to stay away from blame. certainly, the level of defalcation -- a 119 page indictment -- and i think they were able to account for $75 million that was taken. some of the estimates i have seen go up as high as $200 million taking during the kill patrick administration. be a number of stories and recollections about that era. there will be a number of stories and recollections about that era. what i have tried to say is that existed, it was not helpful -- it was exactly the wrong time -- but that was pre-k -- before kevyn -- and i have to move beyond it, that was my job and i'm happy to say that we got that done successfully. brian: when did you decide to go back to law? kevyn: i took some time off for six months, spent some time with the family, looked at other opportunities which were very flattering. almost came close to a couple others but there was never going to be another law firm. i love my law firm. it has been embracing to me. i now have a washington dc office. i wanted to look at some other areas in terms of consulting and banking that just seemed right the right fit -- for me, it is an exceptional institution, it is an international institution. i have a great deal of affection for it. brian: your offices are just one block from here, in the shadow of the capital. what kind of a power center does that make it? kevyn: i don't know, i am careful to shy away -- to talk about power in washington dc -- there are so many people that have been something somewhere. we still have ask senate majority leaders, minority leader still prior to sing. -- still prior to sing. practicing. we like to think of ourselves as a full-service international law firm that does pretty well. we've had some notable successes over the past couple years. all that entitles us to is to keep producing outcomes for the benefit of our clients but we are well aware -- we are doing ok. we are very fortunate. brian: all right guest has been kevyn orr, who was the emergency manager of detroit, michigan. and now the city is out of bankruptcy or thank you, very much. kevyn: thank you. >> for transcripts or to give us your comments, visit us at q&a.org. programs are also available as c-span podcasts. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> if you liked tonight's q and a, here are some others you might enjoy. former police commissioner talking about community relations and the practices by his department. and columnist colbert king on his experience covering it the district of columbia. george echoed talking about his new book. you can find these and other programs on c-span.org. tonight, on the communicators, kevin ashton on the creative process and how that process takes work. the wright brothers fly first? why did they succeed where everybody else failed? they understood the problem they were trying to solve much better the in anybody else. at the end of the day, being creative is not about having ideas in the shower or lightning bolts of inspiration, it is about solving problems one step at a time. understanding the problem with a piece of paper is a problem of balance was the reason it the brothers were flying. >> tonight on the communicators on c-span-two. >> washington journal is next with your calls. later tonight, a look at africa in the lord's resistance army and its leader. then, a discussion on the iran nuclear agreement and its potential effect on the middle east. coming up on this morning's washington journal, a look at the 2016 presidential race and the media coverage around it. media representative from matters and later, a talk about funding for a band expansion in rural areas. host: good morning. welcome to the washington journal. we will begin the program with your thoughts on political correctness and running for the white house. donald trump said the country does not have time for it. the presidential candidate was on the floor of sunday talk shows depending his comments on women saying they attacked him and refusing to back down from his comments on megyn kelly. .e want to get your take do you need to be politically correct when running for president? republicans, (202) 748-8001