Detroit thread. Post Kwame, Monica, and $1 houses here.

[Neil]

Actually the question in my mind is who does something so blatantly wrong for a measly 6k?

For starters, it's a relatively small amount of money, and is thus easy for the people bribing her to part with.  It's also easy to conceal.  And let's remember, she's selling her vote on every single vote that is brought before council.  Assuming that 6k is the going value (although I would imagine that many issues would be less, and some might be worth more), that will add up in a hurry.

[Savonarola]

More Motor-City Accounting:

Library money paying city bills
Official: Cash supposed to go to benefits
By ZACHARY GORCHOW and CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS • June 20, 2009

The City of Detroit has been spending property tax money intended for Detroit Public Library employees' benefits on city operations instead, a library official said Friday.

Revelations about the city's use of library money came on the same day the Free Press reported that the city had been spending tax money it collects on behalf of the Detroit Public Schools to cover the city's payroll and other obligations.

The city would later reimburse DPS.

The library is a separate municipal corporation from the city with a dedicated millage that provides most of its $48-million annual budget.

On Friday, Library Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch said library staff learned this week that the city spent $6.2 million in property tax money that was supposed to go to the library, dating back to July 1.

The money was to cover employee benefits and contributions to the library workers' pension fund.

The city still owes the library the money.

"It's horrible, and it's illegal," Kinloch said. "There's a piggy bank that our money is supposed to be in, and the city is basically going into our piggy bank to pay their bills."

Joseph Harris, the chief financial officer during Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr.'s tenure, said he was unaware the practice of spending others' tax dollars dated back to July.

Financial experts say that the practice is a sign a municipality is in serious financial trouble.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Dave Bing did not respond to requests for comment Thursday and Friday about how close the city is to running out of cash. Nor is it known how, or if, the city plans on repaying the library.

Several council members did not return messages, including Council President Cockrel.

The city's use of other entities' money also is attracting attention in the Legislature.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, finds the situation "very troubling," said spokesman Matt Marsden.

He said Bishop and other senators would closely review the matter.

A spokesman for House Speaker Andy Dillon, D-Redford Township, did not return messages.

State law empowers either house of the Legislature to ask the treasurer for a preliminary review.

"It absolutely puts it on our radar screen," Marsden said. "Ongoing fiscal mismanagement in the City of Detroit affects the whole state, not just the City of Detroit."

It's a reasonable use of Library funds; instead of buying books they're cooking books.  It's practically the same thing.

[garbon]

For starters, it's a relatively small amount of money, and is thus easy for the people bribing her to part with.  It's also easy to conceal.  And let's remember, she's selling her vote on every single vote that is brought before council.  Assuming that 6k is the going value (although I would imagine that many issues would be less, and some might be worth more), that will add up in a hurry.

Oh, I wasn't aware that she sells every single one of her votes.

[Savonarola]

It's sad to see a city abandon its traditions 

Council weighs ban on 'pay-to-play'
Proposed ordinance would prohibit political donations from firms wanting no-bid contracts
Darren A. Nichols / The Detroit News
Detroit -- After a dizzying year of scandal and corruption allegations, the City Council is taking steps some members say will end the "pay-to-play" culture at City Hall.

An ordinance drafted by Councilwoman JoAnn Watson would prohibit political contributions from companies seeking no-bid contracts of more than $25,000. It's modeled after a similar law in New Jersey.

"Under the circumstances of what everyone is going through right now, every protection for the city (and) our citizens is necessary," said Alberta Tinsley-Talabi, who called for the ordinance to be reviewed by the Ethics Board.

The proposal comes amid an ongoing FBI investigation into allegations that Synagro Technologies Inc. officials bribed city officials, wined and dined them and used private jets to secure a $1.2 billion sludge-hauling contract in 2007.

But while many applaud the sentiments behind the ordinance, some officials question its legality and effectiveness.

"It is a good idea, but the problem is you have to be careful in not going too far," said Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor. "You have to be careful not to go too far or you'll have it declared unconstitutional, and it doesn't do anyone any good. This is one of those processes that isn't measured in days or months. It's always a slow process."

Detroit's culture of pay-to-play practices in City Hall has been under the spotlight since a federal investigation was revealed last year. Since then:

• Alabama banker Donald V. Watkins claimed then-city treasurer Jeff Beasley pressured him to donate $100,000 to then-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's legal fund in exchange for a $15 million pension investment in his now-failed airline.

• Two officials with ties to Synagro -- local partner Rayford Jackson and James Rosendall, a former vice president based in Grand Rapids -- pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribery. The City Council approved the sludge deal 5-4 after at least one member switched her vote. A handful of council members have been contacted by the FBI, but none has been charged.

• A strip club owner has accused Sam Riddle, a onetime aide to Councilwoman Monica Conyers, of seeking $25,000 to allow the establishment to open. Riddle denies the accusations. Conyers also faces claims of taking jewelry valued at $40,000 from a jewelry store whose owner wanted the city to ease restrictions that he said would make his business more difficult. Conyers has declined to comment.

• Ex-Cobo Center directors Lou Pavledes and Glenn Blanton pleaded guilty to felonies and admitted accepting bribes from contractor Karl Kado.

The proposed ordinance calls for limits on political contributions or in-kind donations to political candidates a year before a pending contract. It would keep third parties, family members and political action committees from making contributions.

Companies or contractors who break the ordinance would face a four-year ban from seeking a no-bid contract.

Officials with the city's law department requested three weeks to review the ordinance. They expressed concern that the ordinance is not expansive enough because it only deals with no-bid contracts, and cited potential conflicts with state campaign finance laws.

"Upon review, it would appear it does not have enough expansiveness that would be desired in order to really address the contracts that are coming in. It would not address the vast majority of the contracts that are approved by Detroit," said Tonja Long of the city's law department.

Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel said more should be done to come up with a law that creates a framework to root out corruption.

"We shouldn't rush to judgment and just pass anything," said Cockrel, who also wants city lobbyists to be registered so officials know the people who are doing city business. "We need to take the time and do the due diligence and come up with a structure that maximizes transparency, accountability and deals with the perception of pay to play."

While it is a nice sentiment; not a single one of the issues that I highlighted deals with political contribution to award no-bid contracts.  Bribery and coercion are already illegal.  Additional laws are not going to make the city government seem ethical.

[Savonarola]

The school system is haunted

Audit reveals 257 ghosts on DPS payroll
FREE PRESS STAFF • June 24, 2009

A payroll audit this month at Detroit Public Schools turned up 257 names that will be subject to an investigation into illegal ghost employees, officials said Tuesday.

All of the district's estimated 13,880 workers had to pick up paychecks or direct-deposit slips in person by June 12 as a first step in determining if anyone who is not on the payroll is collecting pay.

There were 37 unclaimed paychecks and 220 unclaimed direct-deposit slips totaling about $208,000, said Odell Bailey, DPS's auditor general. He added that the recipients are not on approved leave.

Robert Bobb, DPS's state-appointed emergency financial manager, also said an audit has begun to determine if employees have unapproved health care dependents that are running up costs.

DPS is to hold a public meeting at 7 p.m. Monday at Frederick Douglass Academy, 2001 W. Warren, to reveal next year's draft budget.

[Caliga]

FYI, my company employs something like 58,000 health care workers, most of whom work offsite in client homes/group homes, and we do that paycheck pickup in-person thing at most sites 3-4 times a year.  Every single time it's done, people get busted.

[Savonarola]

FYI, my company employs something like 58,000 health care workers, most of whom work offsite in client homes/group homes, and we do that paycheck pickup in-person thing at most sites 3-4 times a year.  Every single time it's done, people get busted.

Just out of curiosity, how do they start collecting paychecks if they've never worked there?  At the DPS I assume these people have friends in the payroll department; is it the same sort of thing where you work?

[Caliga]

I don't get involved in these investigations myself (not even close to my bailiwick), but from what I've heard the usual scenario is this:

* Healthcare worker is hired and works at job for a while.

* Healthcare worker befriends their local payroll person.

* Healthcare worker gets fired.

* Local payroll person takes pity on healthcare worker.

* Local payroll person continues to schedule visits for healthcare worker at that client (even if another worker has been reassigned to the case), which triggers continued paychecks.

* Nobody does any QC on the visits to notice the discrepancy; nobody does any QC on the billing to notice double billing or continued billing when services have been cancelled, as the case may be.

* If internal auditors catch first, employees get fired and insurance companies refunded.

* If insurance companies catch first, our company gets sued; employees still get fired.

[Savonarola]

As council president, Conyers hired aunt
Hiring again brings up issue of nepotism in city employment
Christine MacDonald and David Josar / The Detroit News
Detroit --While City Council president this year, Monica Conyers hired her aunt in the council's administrative offices, which manages payroll, travel and purchases for the council members.

Politicians hiring family is not new, but Sunceria Garrett's job adds to the list of Conyers' relatives who are or have recently drawn City Hall paychecks. Conyers has employed her eldest son periodically. Her brother got a position in the city's Buildings and Safety Engineering Department. And her niece works for the mayor's office.

Another staffer who has worked in Conyers' office for at least two years, Kimberly Hutchinson, lives at the same address as Conyers' mom, according to Secretary of State records.

Conyers' spokeswoman Denise Tolliver wouldn't directly answer questions about Hutchinson or Garrett, who according to Wayne County probate records is the sister of Conyers' mother. But Tolliver released this statement: "All hired staff is duly qualified to hold their positions they have by means of their education and experience."

The News couldn't reach Garrett or Hutchinson on Thursday for comment.

Conyers is under scrutiny in a broad federal investigation of City Hall. Sources have identified Conyers as the "Council Member A" referenced in federal court documents as having received bribes in connection with a $1.2 billion sewage sludge contract council awarded in 2007 and an earlier agreement for a composting facility in southwestern Detroit.

Coit Ford, a public policy assistant to council President Kenneth Cockrel Jr., on Wednesday would only confirm that Garrett, 50, was on staff, but wouldn't provide her salary or hire date. City records show that last year Hutchinson's base salary was $52,000. The council president handles the $2.2 million budget for council administration, including the hiring and firing of administrative staff.

The city has no ban on elected officials hiring relatives, and officials have debated adding an anti-nepotism provision to the ethics ordinance.

Former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick employed several relatives including uncles and cousins. Council President Kenneth Cockrel Jr. who, following Kilpatrick's resignation, served as mayor until May, hired his wife's half-uncle, John Clark, as his chief of staff. He was let go after Clark was caught on electronic surveillance accepting a payment or payments in relation to the sewage contract. He hasn't been charged.

Conyers served as council president while Cockrel was interim mayor. She's since returned to her old post as council president pro-tem.

Councilman Kwame Kenyatta said he'd back a ban on hiring relatives. He said he hasn't hired any while on council. But his wife, Monifa, was appointed by Wayne County commissioners to complete his term on the panel after he was elected to council. That's something of a tradition for the post that pays about $68,000 a year. A few years earlier, Cockrel's wife, Kim, was appointed to his seat when he joined the council.

"The use of the office for personal and family gain, that in itself is something we should guard against," Kenyatta said.

Garrett was Conyers' treasurer during her council run in 2005 and Hutchinson also worked on the campaign, records show.

In April, The Detroit News reported that Conyers -- whose maiden name is Esters -- gave the resumes of her brother, Reginald Esters, and other former convicts to Amru Meah, the head of Buildings & Safety Engineering at the time.

Esters was eventually fired by Meah for attendance issues. In April he was sentenced to five years in prison for brandishing a shotgun at several people last summer in the city.

Conyers' son, John Conyers III, worked for her on and off starting in July 2006, at one point for about $15 an hour.

Ellen Conyers has worked in the mayor's Office of Neighborhood Commercial Development since at least October 2006. Tolliver told the Detroit Free Press in April that Conyers had nothing to do with getting her niece the $63,000 a year job.

Frankly, I don't see what the big deal is; Monica's relatives can't possibly be doing worse at their city job than she is.



The sharks smell blood and they're starting to gather.  There is nothing even remotely surprising about hiring relatives of city council in Detroit.  Likewise this isn't a scandal of great magnitude; compared to Kwame, Monica has gotten very few relatives hired.   Even so, I expect stories like this throughout the summer.  Monica is finished; everyone knows it.  The News and Freep will try to keep her in the paper until the inevitable "Monica Indicted" headline comes up and then it will be all Monica all the time; just like it was Kwame last summer.

[Savonarola]

I love travels with Charlie.  This week's column has all the thrills of going to the gas station:

Candidate wants Detroit to pump way to safety
Charlie LeDuff

T. Pharaoh Muhammad believes he has conjured a real, practical, low-cost idea to make Detroit safer.

Require all gas stations within the city limits to have at least one full-service pump.

"It may not seem like much," says Muhammad, 39, a former production manager at the Warren Truck Assembly plant who took a buyout last November.

"But if you live in this city as I do, then you know that people are afraid," says Muhammad, who recently moved in with his mother on Edison Street.

Muhammad, a fresh and affable face in the Detroit political scene, believes he can get the law passed. All he needs is the voting public to pluck him from the obscurity of 167 candidates vying for the nine city council seats that are up for election this November.

Call him the Preacher of the Pump. The Teacher at the Tank. Just don't call him Jerome. He left the name -- Timothy Jerome Grant -- behind 17 years ago when he joined the Nation of Islam after hearing the Supreme Minister Louis Farrakhan preach at Cobo Center. His work at Mosque No.1 has put him in touch with the real people of the city, he says.

"They are afraid to do the most simple things, like sit on their porches or get out of their cars to pump gasoline. The problems here are so big that this is something that we can get done that goes a long way toward improving the quality of life in the city, a quality we had here once upon at time."

And to prove the need for a full-service attendant, Muhammad invited a reporter out to a gas station on the west side of town at the corner of Boston and Linwood. This area is heavy with racial symbolism. The riots of 1967 ignited just a few blocks from here. The Black Jesus at the Sacred Heart seminary is just a block away. The original home of Henry Ford just a few blocks more.

But those were other times altogether.

"These days people worry about getting carjacked or worse," Muhammad says.

And on cue, the police are called as two women go berserk on the snack cakes and trash can. The manager on the other side of the bulletproof glass responds with racial epithets. Frail, google-eyed women wander aimlessly. Three different men aflame in alcohol approach motorists looking for a hand-out. Muhammad mediates in all cases, as though one man can save a corner.

A woman, Angela Robinson, smiles as the dapper Muhammad fills her tank. She said she would be willing to pay a dime more for a gallon of gas in order to feel safe. "I wouldn't have stopped this time of night if my brother wasn't with me. I usually try to come in the day."

Muhammad wants to make clear that he in no way is slighting the city. In fact, he holds a certain proprietary outlook about Detroit. It is a black city, the country's largest black city, and it should be run by blacks.

"The good, the bad, the funk, I love it here and I love the people," he says. But the buffoonery of the political class, the graft in the school district, the spiraling crime only serves to hobble its development while confirming the worst stereotypes held by those outside the city limits.

"They've failed," Muhammad says, obliquely referring to former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was sent to jail for perjury, and the current crop of City Council people. Individual members have, among other things, gotten themselves entangled in a federal bribery probe, neglected to pay proper federal taxes and city taxes and defaulted on a mortgage leading to yet one more abandoned house in the city.

Muhammad was raised on the east side of the city by a single mother. He graduated from Edwin Denby High School in 1988 and received a bachelor of fine and communication arts from Wayne State University in 2001. He was a factory worker of 15 years, a father of two daughters and an active member of the Nation of Islam.

"Look, I'm no saint," Muhammad says, pumping yet another tank while two men bicker violently in the shadows.

"I'm just saying is it too much to ask for a lady to be able to feel comfortable in the lights of a gas station? We have to stop accepting less and expect more."

Do you get to pick your own name when you join NOI?  I'd like to be T. Pharaoh Savonarola.

[Berkut]

I love his statement that Detroit should be run by black people, while he bitches about the failure of the people in charge...who are all black.

[Savonarola]

Monica Conyers to plead guilty today in Synagro scandal
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
Detroit -- After months of protesting her innocence, Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers is expected to enter a guilty plea this morning in connection with the Detroit sludge hauling bribery scandal, according to records filed with the U.S. District Court, Eastern District.

A hearing is set for 10 a.m. in front of U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn.

Federal prosecutors have been in plea talks in recent days with City Council pro tem Monica Conyers and her former aide, Sam Riddle.

According to the paperwork filed, Conyers will be pleading guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit bribery: "Beginning at a date unknown and continuing until in or about Dec. 2007 ... Monica N. Conyers did knowingly and voluntarily conspire and agree with an aide and others to corruptly solicit and demand for the benefit of herself and others, and agreed to accept, things of value from persons while an agent of the city of Detroit ... with the intent that Conyers would be influence and rewarded with connection with any business, transaction or series of transactions of a value of $5,000 or more with the city of Detroit. ...

"Defendant Conyers and her co-conspirators executed the conspiracy by agreeing Conyers and her aide would receive money and other things of value by creating the perception in the payors' minds that Conyers would be influenced in taking actions beneficial to the persons giving the things of value using her authority as a member of the Detroit City Council."

Two examples from the indictment:

• On Nov. 20, 2007, at 3:15 p.m., Conyers met with "an individual sent by (Detroit businessman) Rayford W. Jackson" in the Butzel Family Center parking lot and received "an envelope containing cash."

• On Dec. 4, 2007, at 2:30 p.m., "an individual sent by Rayford Jackson" met Conyers and her aide in a McDonald's parking lot in Detroit at which time she received "an envelope containing cash."

Steve Fishman, Conyers' attorney, could not be reached for comment.

James R. Rosendall Jr., a former official with Synagro Technologies Inc., and Jackson earlier pleaded guilty to bribery charges in connection with $1.2 billion contract the Detroit City Council awarded in 2007.

I didn't expect her to plead guilty.  That takes all the fun out of it.   

[Neil]

So, are they going to execute her?

[Savonarola]

So, are they going to execute her?

Only if they can try her in Ohio as well; the death penalty was abolished in Michigan in 1846.

[charliebear]

 

Whew, seriously now.  What would be an appropriate punishment for Monica?