21 posts tagged “detroit” (page 2)
Worthy to announce her decision at news conference
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said today that she will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. Monday to reveal her decision about whether to charge Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in the text message scandal.
Worthy's probe stems from a Free Press report in January that revealed that text messages between Kilpatrick and then-chief of staff Christine Beatty showed the pair lied at a police whistle-blower trial last summer when they testified they were not romantically involved. The trial, and subsequent settlement of two police lawsuits, cost taxpayers more than $9 million.
A Free Press report recently revealed that other text messages raised questions about whether a friend of Kilpatrick and Beatty received favoritism in the awarding of city contracts.
Commission suspends rules to pass resolution
By Charles Crumm
Journal Register News Service
Royal Oak Daily Tribune
Friday, March 7, 2008
Oakland County commissioners suspended their rules Thursday to hastily pass a resolution urging state lawmakers to pass legislation to create an authority to manage the Detroit Zoo.
A hearing on the legislation introduced by state Sen. Gilda Jacobs, D-Huntington Woods, was also held Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee with the expectation that the committee will vote on it next week.
The zoo, located in Royal Oak in Oakland County, and the Belle Isle Nature Center in Detroit are operated by the Detroit Zoological Institute. Detroit owns the land and buildings.
An authority is being established because subsidies from Detroit are being phased out. An authority would be able to seek a regional millage to operate the facilities while Detroit would retain ownership.
"Oakland, Macomb and Wayne would each set up a zoo authority and the purpose of the authority is to levy a tax," Jacobs said. "This would be voted on in each of the counties.
"We want to keep the zoo's doors open," she said. "We also want to eliminate the concern of going back to the Legislature every year for money to bail out the zoo and get a dedicated revenue stream."
Included in this year's proposed state budget is $8 million in transition money for the facilities until the authorities could be established, she said.
Under the legislation, an authority could levy a one-tenth of a mill property tax to fund zoo operations.
A mill is $1 for each $1,000 of taxable property value. A one-tenth of a mill tax would cost the owner of a home with a taxable value of $100,000 about $10 a year.
The legislation would also require local county commissions to adopt articles of incorporation to establish an authority.
Jacobs said a one-tenth of a mill tax would generate about $12 million a year.
County commissioners threw their support behind the legislation by an 18-4 vote with three members absent.
"I support this cultural jewel as a must," said Commissioner Mike Rogers, R-Farmington Hills.
Commissioners voting against the idea said they weren't necessarily opposing the legislation but hadn't had time to read the resolution they were voting on.
"I suspect as this moves forward, I will be supportive as well," said Commissioner Eileen Kowall, R-White Lake Township. [Ed. Note: "I didn't bother reading it, so I'd better be against it!"]
Yea!/Yay!
Too bad this lot didn't think of doing this before Detroit's witling mayor shut the Belle Isle Zoo and Aquarium! No good in any form has come of that.
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and company really must believe Detroiters are stupid. Kilpatrick is convinced, arrogantly so, that he didn't commit a crime. He's a lawyer, and he doesn't know what perjury is? Kilpatrick and Sharon McPhail say nothing new came out in the released settlement documents. The City Council signing an agreement that was later discarded and replaced by two new documents isn't new?
Reading the Mike Stefani deposition confirmed my belief that Detroit is being run by attitude instead of expertise. The constant interruptions and objections by the city lawyers were comical to read, but I couldn't enjoy it, because my city is looking more and more foolish as details of each new revelation are presented.
Michelle Leon
Detroit [Ed. Note: Of course kwame thinks Detroiters are stupid: he's obviously unbelievably stupid himself.]
Above it all
Mayor Kilpatrick will not willingly leave office; he thinks that he is above it all. He doesn't really have any place to go. I am quite sure that he is working on a back-up plan just in case the City Council chooses to remove him from office. I sure hope that the city does it right; it cannot afford to be the laughingstock of the country.
Robert Maier
Washington
Take responsibility
Mayor Kilpatrick is emotionally and psychologically incapable of accepting responsibility for his past or present behaviors and has surrounded himself with people willing to compromise their integrity for misplaced loyalty and a paycheck.
While he theoretically could gain new insights about himself, it is unlikely that this will happen any time soon. He might consider relocating to a country where a state-controlled press will promote and protect the delusions of the leaders regardless of the truth.
Mary Therese Lemanek
Allen Park
Rising economic damage
Your Thursday editorial ("The painful truth about mayor's lies: High court underscores how much Kilpatrick abused the public trust") left out a very important consequence of the mayor's dishonesty. This story is making headlines around our nation, at a time when Michigan is struggling to find employers and qualified, talented employees. Don't pretend for a minute that these stories do not influence the opinions of many outside of Michigan.
The economic impact of this stupidity is far greater than the $8.4-million check from the city. Opinions have been drawn in boardrooms, the classrooms, and the national legislature. How likely are you to move to Michigan, invest in Michigan, or even visit Michigan when hooligans run the town?
If this group of legal "experts" is not punished and fully sanctioned, our losses over time will be hundredfold the face value of that check.
Christopher Bliss
Warren
Lawyer questions
Not to take the focus off the mayor in this sordid affair, but it is clear there is a lot about the legal system that I do not understand. Mike Stefani, attorney for the ex-cops and an officer of the court, uncovers evidence that a crime may have been committed but agrees to conceal it in exchange for $1 million in legal fees, paid for by the good citizens of Detroit.
I guess my mother was right when she encouraged me to go to medical school.
Kenneth J. Levin
West Bloomfield
Corporate questions
A huge thank you to the Free Press and its investigators for uncovering this scandal. Tom Walsh's Feb. 27 column clued us in to more unsavory dealings in which CEOs helped get the mayor get re-elected ("DTE chief: Mayor credibility hurt"). This makes me feel quite suspicious, to wonder what they may have been promised. Was Freman Hendrix not willing to play ball with them? It must make these people feel warm and fuzzy to know they helped put an apparent confirmed liar in office. Should there be more investigations?
Claire Wilkins
Royal Oak
A barrel of bad apples
Lies upon lies flaunted as truth while deception mires the whole in a morass of corruption beginning at the top and continuing to the bottom. It isn't a case of one bad apple; the whole barrel is rotten.
Paul A. Heller
Washington
It has happened before
The great city of Detroit shouldn't be embarrassed by what the mayor's scandal is uncovering. This is about corruption, not about Detroit. This is about greedy lawyers and misrepresentation. This type of thing has been documented over and over through history. Getting to the bottom of these crimes has in the past shown to be difficult but worth the struggle.
Patrice Lehman
Newport
Criminal Law 101
What part of "criminal conspiracy" doesn't Sharon McPhail understand? She should be ordered to take her bar exams, again.
K. Pat Schuesler
Dearborn
Money needed elsewhere
I read about the tragic death of a handicapped person in a fire because of the lack of resources the beleaguered Detroit Fire Department has to cope with ("Broken rigs, broken hearts in deadly blaze: Detroit fire shows how budget cuts, safety can collide," Feb. 27). Although in a city government as inept as this one seems to be it is not surprising to find such tolerated mismanagement, I can't help but wonder how much of the money that Detroit used to pay for the mayor's hanky-panky could have been used to protect the lives of its citizens.
Pete Laitinen
Canton
The pursuit of truth
Every person living in Detroit and surrounding suburbs owes the Free Press and its staff a heartfelt thank-you. Because of your hard work, diligence and perseverance, the real truth involving the text-message scandal of the mayor has finally come out. The great length the mayor went to keep the court documents under wraps only proves that we would have never learned the truth had the Free Press given up the fight.
Janet Johnson
Novi
Law reinvented
I hope that the legal wrangling in the text-messaging scandal isn't really over, as I so enjoy waking up each morning to read about the latest legal theory dreamt up by city lawyers John Johnson Jr., Valerie Colbert-Osamuede, and Ellen Ha, as well as Mayor Kilpatrick's general counsel, Sharon McPhail.
Before these folks went to work, who knew that the state Freedom of Information Act was meant to help conceal information from the public? Or that it was possible to go to court to prevent the release of documents that purportedly didn't exist and aren't secret anyway? Or that it was possible to serve the best interest of your client -- the City of Detroit -- by withholding information from it?
Given the facts, the charitable interpretation is that these people are incredibly devious and dishonest. The only other explanation would be that they're too incompetent to grasp the most basic principles of law.
Adrian Cho
Grosse Pointe Woods
By ZACHARY GORCHOW
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
March 5, 2008
A proposed recall effort against Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick was given the green light today.
The Wayne County Election Commission ruled that one of the six petitions submitted by Douglas Johnson was sufficiently clear under the law that requires it to be clear enough for Kilpatrick and the public to understand it.
Alan Canady, the lawyer representing Kilpatrick in the meeting, said afterward Kilpatrick would appeal the ruling to the Wayne County Circuit Court.
The commission rejected Johnson's other five petitions for lack of clarity.
If the commission's ruling stands, pro-recall forces can begin collecting signatures to put the issue on the ballot. They must collect 57,328 signatures of registered city voters in 90 days to put the issue before voters.
The language found to be sufficiently clear by the commission states:
"In 2007, Kilpatrick was a defendant in a lawsuit brought by 2 law enforcement officers under the Whistleblowers Protection Act for being fired for investigating his personal actions and/or misconduct in office. After only 3 hours of deliberation, on September 11, 2007, a jury found Kilpatrick responsible for the inappropriate firings and awarded the officers $6.5 million in damages as well as running up over $500,000 in legal expenses that became the financial burden of not only Detroit taxpayers, but those who live outside of Detroit, but work within its city limits. However, on October 18th, 2007, Kilpatrick decided not to appeal the jury’s verdict and offered a $8,000,000.00 settlement to the 2 officers along with an additional $400,000.00 to a 3rd officer to avoid another lawsuit being filed asserting the same allegations contained in the forementioned lawsuit that was subsequently approved by the Detroit City Council based on misinformation provided to them by Kilpatrick."
In a prepared statement, Kilpatrick press secretary Denise Tolliver dismissed Johnson as "a transplant who after recently moving to Detroit has determined he should decide who our leadership should be instead of voters at the ballot box."
Johnson moved from Sterling Heights to Detroit in October. Although he's registered to vote at a house in the city that he said he is renovating, Johnson said he is not staying there and has declined to say where he is living.
Tolliver also criticized the election commission's decision.
"We would also like to express our disappointment with the conduct of the commission whose primary duty is to protect the integrity of the process and uphold voting rights and in this case failed on both counts," she said. "Mayor Kilpatrick will continue to focus on his agenda for the NEXT Detroit and let others focus on getting their 15 minutes of fame."
By JEWEL GOPWANI
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
March 5, 2008
American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. and the UAW agreed to resume contract talks at noon on Thursday, the company said in a statement this morning.
This would be the first time that the two sides have scheduled formal talks since 3,600 UAW-represented American Axle workers went on strike Feb. 26 protesting the company's proposed reductions for wages and benefits.
American Axle has said it needs concessions to compete with its rivals, which include in-house axle operations at automakers.
Well, those "concessions" should not involve halving your workers' pay and benefits!
By DAVID ASHENFELTER
March 2, 2008
The La Shish restaurant chain, which helped popularize Middle Eastern cuisine in metro Detroit, went out of business Saturday night -- the victim of bad publicity involving its fugitive owner, Talal Chahine, whom federal prosecutors linked to terrorism.
“It’s a real tragedy,” the chain’s lawyer, Robert Forrest of Detroit, said Sunday.
He said the closure affects 11 metro Detroit restaurants, the chain’s headquarters and its food preparation facility in Dearborn, as well as its 305 employees, who were informed of the decision Sunday morning.
Chahine, a former Ford Motor Co. engineer, opened his first restaurant in 1989 in east Dearborn.
Forrest, the chain’s tax lawyer, said Michigan’s declining economy and a refusal by state treasury officials to approve the sale of the chain and use the proceeds to pay back taxes, also contributed to the chain’s demise.
He said the chain’s real estate, equipment and furnishings will be sold to pay its state and federal tax debts.
Another metro Detroit lawyer blamed the closings on the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit for refusing to approve the sale unless Chahine returned to the United States to face charges. The lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of antagonizing federal prosecutors, said the refusal caused 305 people to needlessly lose their jobs — and the state and federal governments to be stuck with a tax loss approaching $12 million.
U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy declined to comment, as did the Michigan Department of Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service IRS Criminal Investigation division.
Murphy’s staff previously had said that the government wouldn’t negotiate with Chahine while he was a fugitive.
Hungry customers disappointed
“Now what am I going to eat?” customer Linda Nowinski, 56, of Livonia said Sunday after pulling up to a La Shish drive-through window in Westland. She said she and coworkers regularly ate at the restaurant.
“There are lots of Middle Eastern restaurants in metro Detroit, but La Shish’s name was the most recognizable,” Free Press restaurant critic Sylvia Rector said.
Rector said Chahine “played a huge role in popularizing Middle Eastern cuisine in metro Detroit.”
“Their food was terrific,” Rector added, saying it helped Chahine create a reputation and open more stores. But she said other Middle Eastern restaurants will fill the void.
The chain’s undoing began in April 2005 when federal agents raided Chahine’s homes and headquarters looking for evidence that he had created a dual set of computerized books to evade $6.9 million in federal income taxes.
In May 2006, he was indicted with his wife, Elfat El Aouar, on tax evasion charges. By then, Chahine had fled to Lebanon, with $20 million he had skimmed from the business, authorities allege. He pledged to return to face charges but hasn’t.
He later was indicted on other charges, including allegations that he vouched for the fraudulent marriage a of a Lebanese immigrant, Nada Prouty, who became a U.S. citizen, got key jobs with the FBI and CIA, and allegedly leaked information from an investigation of Hezbollah to Chahine. The U.S. State Department has designated Hezbollah as a Lebanese terrorist group.
Chahine's wife, El Aouar, was sentenced last week to 90 days in prison for immigration fraud -- obtaining U.S. citizenship through a fraudulent marriage. El Aouar, a former roommate of Prouty, later married Chahine. That sentence will be served simultaneously with an 18-month sentence for tax fraud. Her citizenship also was revoked.
The bad publicity caused two of Chahine’s franchise owners in West Bloomfield and Ann Arbor to pull out of the chain in 2006 and rename their restaurants to stay afloat.
Charges of terrorist ties harmful
Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News in Dearborn, said federal prosecutors drove La Shish out of business by accusing Chahine of supporting Hizballah, which the U.S. government has labeled as a Lebanese terrorist group.
“It broke down the trust between the customers and the merchant,” he said, adding that customers didn’t want to support someone who might be sending money to terrorists. He said the government has made similar reckless claims that have hurt Islamic charities.
Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the shuttering of the chain “is a great loss,” but said the case shows what happens when a businessman breaks the law.
“La Shish became an icon, nobody can deny it,” he said, adding that customers will miss it, and employees will be forced to find other work in difficult economic times.
“But you have to go by the law,” he added, referring to the tax evasion charges. “Good business and quality food aren’t going to save you from facing legal proceedings” if you do something wrong, he said.
What a shame!!
3/01/2008
DETROIT (AP) - Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's troubles over a
text-messaging sex scandal may have prompted a national organization to
move its annual convention to New Orleans.
The Detroit Free Press is reporting Friday that the National Conference of Black Mayors chose another site for its convention in April after speaking with Kilpatrick's office.
The convention had been expected to bring about 2,500 mayors and staff members to Detroit.
Executive director Vanessa Williams tells the newspaper that Kilpatrick's office wanted her organization to move to a different site.
Kilpatrick spokesman James Canning says city officials were unable to work out logistics to ensure the convention would live up to standards set by past major events visiting Detroit.
Right - it has nowt to do with the low standards set by our mayor.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
The conduct of lawyers who represented the city of Detroit and Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in the text message scandal came under intense scrutiny Thursday as a result of records ordered released by the Michigan Supreme Court.
Experts said city lawyers may be subject to discipline under the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct. For example, city lawyers may have had an undisclosed conflict of interest -- acting in Kilpatrick's best interests rather than the interests of the city as a whole in helping to craft settlements calling for $8.4 million in city payments to three former police officers who filed whistle-blower lawsuits.
City lawyers knew -- but did not tell Detroit City Council -- that part of the settlement involved promises to keep secret embarrassing and potentially incriminating text messages exchanged in 2002 and 2003 between Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, the records show.
"It's a violation of the basic components of the attorney-client relationship," said Southfield attorney Robert Cleary, who has extensive experience representing management in labor negotiations. "You're obligated to disclose that there is a conflict and you're obligated to get direction on what to do."
On Thursday, the Detroit City Council was mulling an amendment to the city charter that would make the city's chief lawyer -- the corporation counsel -- an independent officeholder similar to the auditor general. Under the present set-up, Corporation Counsel John E. Johnson is appointed by, and can be fired by, the mayor.
Johnson could not be reached for comment Thursday.
His role in the secret agreements was among the new elements to emerge with the newly released documents.
According to the sworn testimony of the lawyer for the police officers, Michael Stefani, a negotiations impasse broke when Stefani showed one of the mayor's lawyers, Samuel McCargo, a motion Stefani planned to file in court that would use excerpts from the text messages to bolster allegations that Kilpatrick and Beatty committed perjury at the whistle-blower trial.
McCargo contacted the mayor, who dispatched Johnson to the Detroit law offices where negotiations were taking place. A settlement was then reached that linked the secrecy of the SkyTel messages to Detroit City Council's approval of $8.4 million for the officers. Johnson did not sign that agreement, but other city lawyers did.
It's unclear whether McCargo, a private attorney hired by the city to represent the mayor, knew the contents of the text messages from reading Stefani's motion. Experts say McCargo, who has not returned phone calls, had an apparent obligation to tell the trial judge Kilpatrick may have testified falsely. It's also clear city law department attorneys knew the deal involved keeping the text messages secret, though it is not clear the law department attorneys knew the contents of the text messages.
"We need to know which lawyers knew what, when and where," Detroit Councilman Kwame Kenyatta said.
Council President Kenneth Cockrel Jr. said he wants to know whether the city law department's actions constituted misconduct or even broke the law.
"It's of paramount importance," Cockrel said. "If sanctions are in order, that is definitely something we need to take a look at."
The city has 81 attorneys in the law department. At least two, Johnson and Valerie Colbert-Osamuede, were involved in the whistle-blower case. At least two others, Dennis Mazurek and Ellen Ha, were involved in the city fight to keep settlement records secret.
Mon Feb 4, 2008
By Ben Klayman and Nick Carey
DETROIT (Reuters) - Chrysler has closed four assembly plants and may be forced to shutter the rest of its global assembly operations within a short time due to a dispute with supplier Plastech Engineered Products Inc, which filed for bankruptcy court protection on Friday.
The dispute has so far not affected Plastech's other customers, including General Motors, Ford and Toyota.
Chrysler, which terminated all its contracts with Plastech on Friday due to the supplier's "ongoing financial struggles," said in documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Michigan that it may be forced to quickly close 12 assembly plants around the world because the supplier is no longer shipping parts to the Chrysler plants.
The U.S. automaker's plants operate on a "just-in-time" basis, where parts are shipped as needed so any disruption would be immediately felt.
"Even a short term interruption ... will inevitably lead to the shutdown of more production lines at Chrysler," the automaker said in its objection filed on Saturday.
The closed Chrysler plants are in Rockford, Illinois; Newark, Delaware; Sterling Heights, Michigan, and Toledo, Ohio. The automaker also said its Toledo supplier park has eliminated a work shift.
The Plastech parts are also used in various Chrysler engine plants and international facilities where vehicle kits are shipped for final assembly, according to court documents.
Chrysler has asked the court for "immediate relief" to allow it to take its tooling equipment from the Plastech plants so it can be shipped to another supplier.
Plastech, a privately held minority-owned supplier based in Dearborn, Michigan, provides Chrysler with hundreds of parts, including door panels, floor consoles and engine covers, that are used in the assembly of almost all of Chrysler's vehicles -- almost 2.3 million per year.
Plastech, which was founded in 1988, has 35 facilities and 7,700 employees in the United States and Canada.
Chrysler and "various other customers" of Plastech provided the struggling supplier with $46 million so it could continue to supply parts, according to court documents. Chrysler said it kicked in $6.9 million of the total.
That group included GM and Ford, both of which said on Monday they were still receiving parts from Plastech and production had not been affected.
"We're working with Plastech to make sure that we have continuity of parts and components to keep our factories operating," Ford spokesman Todd Nissen said. "We've not had any production disruptions and don't expect any."
Plastech makes a number of different parts for Ford, its largest customer, including plastic interior and exterior parts for such vehicles as the Ford F-150 pickup truck and the Ford Edge crossover vehicle. Plastech makes various parts for GM, including door handles and bumpers.
Other customers include Toyota and Johnson Controls. Toyota said it had not been affected and Johnson Controls was not immediately available for comment.
Along with that initial payment from the customers, Chrysler said Plastech agreed all tooling would belong to the respective customers and they would have the right to take possession of the equipment at any time without payment, according to court documents.
However, Plastech came back to Chrysler and said it needed more money so Chrysler and the other customers entered into a second agreement on January 22, under which Chrysler accelerated $10.7 million in payments to Plastech under existing contracts, according to court documents. In total, the customer group gave Plastech $40 million in accelerated payments.
Chrysler decided to take possession of the tooling, getting a Wayne County Circuit Court to give it a temporary restraining order that allowed the automaker to send "a team of trucks" on Friday to the supplier's plants, according to court documents. However, Plastech filed for bankruptcy to prevent that.
Plastech was "clearly using the automatic stay as a sword ... assumingly in hopes of extracting additional financial accommodations," Chrysler said in court documents.
Chrysler said Plastech had caused "tremendous jeopardy" by stopping production of parts for the automaker and refusing to release the tooling equipment so Chrysler can have other suppliers build the parts, according to court documents.
Plastech said its liquidity had been reduced due to the downturn in the domestic auto market and rising commodity costs, according to court documents.
It had already hired Conway, MacKenzie & Dunleavy as financial advisers and Lazard Freres & Co LLC as investment bankers to explore options, including the sale of some or all of its business, according to court documents.
