There are a million reasons why Detroit, that shining star, fell to the ground, but only one person charged with rescuing it–and he’s not an elected official. Bankruptcy lawyer Kevyn D. Orr must put the Motor City on the road to solvency in under a rear, all the while brushing away charges that he’s a puppet, even a traitor to his race. From Monica Davey and Bill Vlasic in the New York Times:

“The assignment is enormous, a peculiar mix of duties, some stated and others not, for a man who by all accounts had been leading a comfortable life as a bankruptcy lawyer. His new job? Urban planner, numbers cruncher, city spokesman, negotiator, politician, good cop, bad cop.

The job could not be more politically fraught. Mr. Orr’s harshest critics call him a ‘dictator’ (his authority trumps that of the city’s elected leaders), an ‘Uncle Tom’ (he is black and was sent to run this mostly black city by a white governor) and a ‘pension killer’ (he has said the city can no longer afford the pensions it promised retirees). But Mr. Orr, who was a partner at the law firm Jones Day until his wife and a mentor helped talk him into taking the Detroit job, seems unfazed by the storm around him. He is full of smiles and quips, coolly pressing on.

‘If we don’t do something to address the unfunded liability that we have, the 700,000 residents — some of them schoolchildren, some of them sort of skinny, dorky kids like I was, who got beaten up every day at the bus stop by the toughs, who have to walk home in the dark — don’t they deserve better services?’ said Mr. Orr, who grew up in Florida and visited Detroit as a youth.”