Myth #2: Duggan Got Detroit City Government's Image, Finances, and Administration Back in Order
First and foremost, let's start with the Duggan $600M Overtaxation Scandal. Yes I am putting his name on it even though it did not start under his watch, because it was proven that he and his Chief Financial Officer knew about it the entire time, they knowingly continued the over-assessment of Detroit taxpayers during his first two terms as mayor, and when he had the chance to grab the bull by the horns, Duggan passed the buck. It was not stopped until the Detroit News blew it wide open with an exposé in January of 2020:
Not only did the total over-assessment likely exceed much more than half a billion dollars, it was found that the "miscalculation" was purposely applied to poorer neighborhoods, while affluent areas of the city were left unaffected. In other words it was actually used as a tool of regentrification, before it was uncovered to the public and city officials suddenly started acting shocked that it had been going on.
And when Duggan's administration was loudly challenged to remedy this issue by a veritable army of activists and residents, he was silent. He breathed a sigh of relief when the Covid19 crisis buried the overtaxation scandal in the news a few weeks later, and made in-person public meetings no longer possible. The fact that there has been no real effort to put a plan in motion to compensate for the over-assessments of properties makes it essentially a theft—figured at about $3,700 per household—not to mention there hasn't really been a clear answer as to where the money went, other than "it's already been spent." Now that sounds like a gangster answer to me...
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Speaking of gangster—remember the governmental transparency thing that Kwame was so bad at? Well Duggan found a way to be even worse...
In September of 2020 the Golden Padlock Award, "which recognizes the most secretive U.S. agency or individual," was bestowed upon Duggan and the city for their extraordinary lack of transparency in governmental affairs, for record levels of document shredding related to investigations, their high number of closed-door meetings, and for stymying public information requests. Duggan also has a thing for leaving public hearings right before the public comment period begins, claiming that he has "another meeting" to go to...
"He never wants to hear the residents speak, he always has something else to do," DeMeeko Williams was quoted as saying. A mayor who can't face-to-face with his constituents is not a mayor. And as the great Judge Damon Keith famously said, "Democracies die behind closed doors."
Duggan's sleaze even goes back to the municipal bankruptcy days before he was actually mayor—which raises serious questions about his motives all along. In emails to State Treasurer Andy Dillon prior to the "bankruptcy," it was found that Duggan had recommended Detroit be placed under state emergency management!
When asked during his 2013 campaign about the emails revealing he was advising Gov. Rick Snyder's aide and Andy Dillon on potential hires for Detroit emergency manager, Duggan blew it off, saying it was "no big deal." The activist Robert Davis, who obtained the emails through a FOIA lawsuit, pointed out how outrageous it was that state officials "would ask only one candidate for mayor about who to hire to run the city," raising further questions about whether the fix was in for Detroit...
"Duggan, who is considered a turnaround expert, says it makes sense they asked for his advice insisting they asked for a lot of opinions including preachers and other politicians."
...see, now did you catch that?
That's the kind of journalism that pisses me off; the media will repeat mindless tropes such as "who is considered a turnaround expert" simply because it has been said before by other media sources. Was it originally said by a credible person? Did they fact check the claim at all? No, and it certainly benefits one candidate for office over another. And that equates to a campaign contribution—which is supposed to be regulated by law, at least when it involves money changing hands, but this certainly was a nice little favor. This is why people like Duggan end up with inexplicably clean reputations, even though their closet is overflowing with slime. Even though this article contains seriously negative information about Duggan that definitely could hurt his campaign, and it looks like Local 4 is calling him on the carpet for a scandal, in the same breath they are also bolstering his reputation—essentially doing damage control for Duggan's campaign, on the fly... Is Local 4 on his payroll? If so, where is the impartial journalistic institution that is supposed to be looking out for the interests of we the People, the taxpayers, the voters?
Anyway, Duggan continued to weave his denial:
"What the email shows is that I was lobbying very hard for them to stop the emergency manager. And when I was there they told me they had just met with Sheriff Napoleon and we'd been up to meet with him as well. So, I assume they were meeting with multiple people during this process," said Duggan. It is clear however that the emails explicitly show that the powers that be in Lansing supported Duggan for mayor, and didn't make a move without running it by him first. "They were all advised to run their recommendations through no other than Mr. Duggan, as the emails clearly state," said Davis. It should not be overlooked that Duggan has had plenty of friends in state politics for decades.
Later, in 2016, Mike Duggan made a laughably false claim during his State of the City address, that he was "more against emergency managers than anyone I’ve met," Duggan insisted. Not only does that sound suspiciously like something Donald Trump would say, but it's an overt attempt at trying to further cover up his role in the constitutionally questionable state financial takeover of Detroit.
A Motor City Muckraker investigation in August 2013 found that Duggan had a "cozy" relationship with State Treasurer Andy Dillon, and Governor Snyder's aide Richard Baird, "both of whom were integral in appointing an emergency manager to Detroit," and Baird even donated $5,000 to Duggan’s mayoral campaign!
This seems awfully strange, Muckraker points out, considering that Duggan ran for mayor with the pledge to "push the emergency manager out on the first day I am in office and return Detroit to its elected officials." But as usual, after Duggan got elected 2013 that promise was never heard of again, and as we all remember he was quite friendly with Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr. "Duggan even secretly worked with Orr to abolish state-mandated Citizens District Councils just before Orr relinquished his powers in September 2014"...
When Motor City Muckraker requested emails between Duggan and Orr, the city claimed it would cost over $12,000.
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| Duggan, Governor Snyder, and EM Kevyn Orr |
I remember a lot of suburbanites clamoring for "the white mayor" Mike Duggan, as a perceived solution to the corruption and graft that existed under the Kwame Kilpatrick regime, as if white politicians are somehow more trustworthy than black politicians. Under Duggan however, city spending has been just as bloated as ever...
For a city that was just bankrupt, Duggan sure spent a lot on his appointees. He had 140 of them, and they cost taxpayers $20 million per year. Mayor Bing on the other hand only had 12 appointees making $100,000 or more per year. Meanwhile, unemployment and poverty continue to soar in the city, many Detroit Police officers make the same wages as restaurant workers, and many firemen hold a second job.
Also, have you noticed that Duggan never seems to talk about schools or education...? It's like he only knows how to brag about development deals, as if a mayor's sole job is to make sure that businesses are happy and thriving in town. And he mesmerizes the press into gobbling it up, with the chant, "jobs jobs jobs"...! Except unemployment is still at epic levels in the city, so, what's going on man? Crime is up, and the quality of education in the city continues to suffer. But hey, we have stadiums for the suburbanites! Speaking of that, when is Dan Gilbert or the Ilitch family going to pay back all that tax money Duggan helped them borrow from Detroit Public Schools coffers?
Also, have you noticed that Duggan never seems to talk about schools or education...? It's like he only knows how to brag about development deals, as if a mayor's sole job is to make sure that businesses are happy and thriving in town. And he mesmerizes the press into gobbling it up, with the chant, "jobs jobs jobs"...! Except unemployment is still at epic levels in the city, so, what's going on man? Crime is up, and the quality of education in the city continues to suffer. But hey, we have stadiums for the suburbanites! Speaking of that, when is Dan Gilbert or the Ilitch family going to pay back all that tax money Duggan helped them borrow from Detroit Public Schools coffers?
Then there's Duggan's still-ongoing "Make Your Date" and "Motor City Match" scandals, and his various Land Bank demolition scandals (which I cover in detail under Myth #5).
https://www.freep.com/in-depth/news/local/michigan/detroit/2019/04/04/mike-duggan-sonia-hassan-detroit/3367208002/
A Free Press investigation showed the city redirected $358,000 in federal grants for reducing infant mortality into a nonprofit (purportedly established to reduce preterm birth) called “Make Your Date,” and ordered a city-led fundraising effort for the program. Duggan then handpicked Sonia Hassan to head the nonprofit—a woman who has been identified as his mistress...
A Free Press investigation showed the city redirected $358,000 in federal grants for reducing infant mortality into a nonprofit (purportedly established to reduce preterm birth) called “Make Your Date,” and ordered a city-led fundraising effort for the program. Duggan then handpicked Sonia Hassan to head the nonprofit—a woman who has been identified as his mistress...
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| Dr. Hassan and Mayor Duggan |
The Make Your Date nonprofit launched in 2014, but it was never operational because Wayne State University took over the work that it was established to do. Make Your Date raised more than $1.5 million since its inception, according to Wayne State. But where did the money actually go? Essentially our mayor diverted money meant for reducing infant mortality to his mistress's puppet nonprofit, when Detroit is among the cities with the highest infant mortality rate in the nation.
https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2019/10/21/3-top-duggan-officials-schemed-to-erase-emails-to-hide-citys-ties-to-a-nonprofit-ig-finds
Three Duggan staffers were ordered by his chief of staff to delete emails regarding the Make Your Date scandal. It was also discovered that Duggan and his administration continued to conduct city business on private email accounts. Duggan routinely used his private email account when dealing with the city's controversial demolition program, which had come under federal investigation. After claiming that he did not know Dr. Hassan in 2019, Duggan married her in 2021:
https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2019/10/21/3-top-duggan-officials-schemed-to-erase-emails-to-hide-citys-ties-to-a-nonprofit-ig-finds
Three Duggan staffers were ordered by his chief of staff to delete emails regarding the Make Your Date scandal. It was also discovered that Duggan and his administration continued to conduct city business on private email accounts. Duggan routinely used his private email account when dealing with the city's controversial demolition program, which had come under federal investigation. After claiming that he did not know Dr. Hassan in 2019, Duggan married her in 2021:
That's amore, no? Or is it because spouses cannot be compelled to testify against each other in a court of law?
The Detroit Inspector General also laid out the findings of its 18-month investigation on Mayor Mike Duggan's Motor City Match program in a report released in January of 2021:
The program was designed to support entrepreneurs in Detroit, but it was riddled with "excessive spending, a lack of oversight, weak controls for issuing payments," and to top it off, "nearly 77% of the businesses the program assisted failed." The ex-employee Kennedy Shannon originally blew the whistle on the program, because practices for the federal grant-funded program didn't comply with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rules. Shannon was fired from her city job after revealing this, and has since filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the city. According to the Detroit News, $21 million had been allocated to the program since 2015, "but consultants were getting the bulk of the money," not businesses. Because it was funded by federal grants, the investigation has been turned over to the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
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Then there was the time in November 2019 where it was revealed that the Duggan administration had cut a deal with local slumlord Michael Kelly, to forgive the $1 million dollars in back taxes that he owed the city, as well as 800 blight tickets for his dilapidated properties, in exchange for a tiny piece of land near the planned new Fiat-Chrysler plant. I swear, people...you just can't make this sh*t up, but here we are:
Between back taxes and fines, Mr. Kelly owed the city $2 MILLION...how is that even allowed? And how do you get 800 blight tickets? Well, in Duggan's Detroit, it's business as usual: favors for the wealthy and well-connected, while the rest of us get austerity, foreclosure, and red tape. If you're an impoverished elderly Detroiter who can't afford to fix your house, you get a ticket and a deadline. But if you're a wealthy white businessman we can work out a deal with you, even if you owe millions and your tenants are living in crumbling structures with no heat:
This one stank so bad, that even Council President Brenda Jones—who is usually as docile as a puppy napping in Duggan's lap—felt like she had to call out the mayor! She cried, "To dismiss tickets of properties for people who are living like that, forgiven for an FCA deal, to me, it’s not a good deal for the city." She also stated that the deal was "rushed through" and council wasn’t given enough detail about Kelly’s "checkered past" and what he stood to gain. Jones stated that she "may have voted against the deal had she known then what she knows now." (Easy, Brenda! Don't overdo it now.)
Of course the deal was rushed. That's exactly how you know when someone's trying to ram something nasty through without being noticed. How long have y'all been in politics? Ain't no deal that damn urgent that you can't take due diligence to analyze it before voting on it—and that goes for national politics too. We ain't stupid. And neither is Duggan.
Mr. Kelly was also the target of a class-action lawsuit for using predatory contracts to put renters in dilapidated homes, but because he owned half an acre of land in a spot that the city needed as a bargaining chip in the new Fiat-Chrysler plant deal, he was let off the hook. Now if it was some poor people living on that land, Duggan would have probably been trying to use imminent domain to force them out of the way.
But the Duggan administration didn't just give Kelly this deal once—they had already done something similar for him in October 2018 as well. Kelly and his various business tentacles were released from 18 pending lawsuits over unpaid property taxes and a series of blight tickets were once again dismissed in exchange for 38 properties he gave to the Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority, and 23 properties to the Eastern Market Corporation. I'm not seeing where there is any kind of incentive not to be a slumlord, when this behavior is being rewarded in Duggan's Detroit. Makes you wonder if Kelly also donated to Duggan's campaign chest.
Which brings us to the good ol' secret slush fund story. Here you can watch Duggan repeatedly dodging questions regarding how the Detroit Progress Fund moneys were being spent, and why he wouldn't disclose his reasons for keeping it secret:
That was in August 2019...and here are a couple newspaper stories from the same time:
He refused to disclose how a non-profit set up “to promote the City of Detroit’s turnaround” spent $750,000 since 2014. I seem to remember a promise Duggan made while running for mayor in 2013, pledging, “I will have no part in a secret fund when I’m elected.” WXYZ quoted him on that as well.
Yes, his decision is technically in compliance with IRS regulations, but that doesn't protect him from having to be honest and transparent with the people who pay his salary—us. According to its own records, Detroit Progress Fund was created to “assist the Office of the Mayor on expenditures necessary to conduct the business for the City but for which there are no funds available in the City budget.” The Detroit Progress Fund does disclose its donors, but expenses have remained a secret. In June of 2016 Motor City Muckraker published the list of its donors, including the amounts donated:
You may note that the number one donor listed is Blue Cross Blue Shield, and you may also recall they are the company that owns Governor Whitmer as well. What a coincidence!
The Detroit Progress Fund is overseen by five board members, but neither Duggan nor the fund's spokesman would say who selected the board members. All of them have ties to Duggan or his campaign however, so we can assume therefore that the moneys donated to Duggan's fund were made in exchange for a promise of political favors.
According to WXYZ, Duggan is not the first local politician to come under fire for having a secret non-profit 501(c)(4) like this...
- Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick insisted his Kilpatrick Civic Fund was in complete compliance, saying in 2001: “We’ve done all the paperwork, followed every rule, every regulation from the IRS.” But we later learned that the Civic Fund was used to pay for things like Kilpatrick’s lavish family vacations, golf clubs and even yoga lessons.
- Ex-Governor Rick Snyder said his NERD Fund was acting above board, saying in 2012 that “there’s nothing that exciting about it. We’re just following the rules and moving ahead.” But the fund was ultimately closed after reporters learned it was paying Snyder’s top aide, Rich Baird, a salary of $100,000 from donors who were unknown.
- Former Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano ran into trouble with his non-profit, the Wayne County Business Development Corporation, when it was revealed by 7 Action News to have paid his economic development czar a secret $75,000 annual bonus, paid in part by county contractors.
Did you notice a common thread? They also defended their secrecy by hiding behind that same convenient IRS regulation.
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| Kwame Kilpatrick and Mike Duggan |
In February 2021, with his reelection campaign starting up again, it would seem Duggan was trying to get out in front of the scrutiny this time...
“The fund will be transparent in terms of who is donating to it and how much, as well as where the money is being spent,” his spokesman said. He did not say how or when the fund would make those disclosures, however. Duggan is one of the very few city-level politicians in America who have Super-PACs...that is something that is usually reserved for people who run statewide or national campaigns. So why does Duggan need such a large secret fund?
In August 2021 the big news is the FBI probe into towing company bribery and several of Duggan's allies on City Council getting raided, indicted, and convicted. In reality, he is the head of the syndicate when it comes to towing. For the full story on Duggan's involvement in the towing mafia, see my other post: Duggan and the Tow-Truck Mafia
And on top of everything else, for a guy who has been branded with such a supposedly clean-cut image to replace the criminal image of Mayor Kilpatrick, what's this all about...?
While running for his first term in 2013, local media learned that Duggan had received ten speeding tickets in the last five years and had a "long history as a traffic scofflaw." The most recent tickets were on January 18, 2013 in Highland Park (40mph in a 30mph zone) and then April 8 in Royal Oak (50 in a 45). The rest of the tickets were from communities across Metro Detroit and the state, including Detroit, Farmington, Redford Township, Dearborn Heights, Oak Park, Howell, St. Johns, and Beulah.
We might assume he has gotten his act together since 2013 (I haven't checked), but let's be real...nobody gets a ticket for speeding 10 over the limit...in Highland Park. Especially when you're a big-name politician. If Duggan actually got cited, that means he was doing something WAY worse than 10-over. Everybody knows that when you get pulled over (which is actually difficult in some cities—like Highland Park), the cop always reduces what he cites on the ticket to 5 or 10-over, when in reality you got caught because you were going much faster. No one has ever been pulled over for doing just 5 over the limit.
