Flint, Detroit and East Lansing - one of these is not like the other.
Yet, a Brookings Institution study released this week identifies those cities, Saginaw, Muskegon and Kalamazoo as six of 80 industrial cities that are economically weak.
The news that East Lansing is as financially troubled as these cities was alarming to City Manager Ted Staton.
"There's a famous quote by Benjamin Disraeli, 'There are lies, damn lies and statistics,'" he said. "Nothing characterizes this report better than that quote."
The study evaluated cities based on factors like per capita income and poverty and unemployment rate. However, it failed look at East Lansing's unique attributes, he said.
"We have a unique set of demographic statistics because we're a university community," Staton said. "To use statistics like per capita income makes no sense."
East Lansing's domination by a student population likely caused it to fare worse in categories that work well for larger cities, like per capita income, because students do not typically have a lot of money, said John Austin, a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution in the Metropolitan Policy Program.
"It is, in a true sense, an anomaly," he said. "It doesn't fit the profile of the other older industrial cities that are by these numbers not performing well."
Austin also is the vice president of the Michigan State Board of Education.
The city's classification as an "older industrial city" is particularly strange because East Lansing currently does not have any land zoned as industrial, Staton said.
Median family income would be a more accurate way of measuring the economic well-being of East Lansing residents, Staton said.
East Lansing's per capita income is $16,333 and its median family income is $61,985, according to 2000 census data, which was used in the study.
The city also has a bond rating of AA+, which is the second-highest available in the state. This rating puts East Lansing in the same groups as communities like Rochester Hills and East Grand Rapids, Staton said.
A bond rating is a detailed analysis of a municipality's finances. A higher bond rating allows for governments to borrow money more easily and at lower interest rates.
Troy, Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills are the only cities in Michigan with a bond rating of AAA - the only rating higher than East Lansing's AA+.
"There are a lot of communities that look to us and say 'Look at their financial well-being,'" Staton said. "I'm not saying the streets are paved with gold in East Lansing, but this analysis is just crazy."
