Morounopoly

Posted on May 1, 2016 by admin

Originally published here on February 1, 2012

By Joel Thurtell

The answer:

MOROUNOPOLY.

The question:

How do you spell Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority?

According to Gongwer News Service, Gov. Rick Snyder might use the port authority to bypass the Legislature in his quest to build a new international bridge between Detroit and Windsor.

Gongwer reported in Volume #51, Report #1, Article #3, Tuesday, January 3, 2012:

Exactly what option the (Snyder) administration might pursue is unclear at this point. The options said by one source to have been under closest review are, in no particular order, an intergovernmental agreement between Canada and public entities in Michigan, using the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority or turning the project over to the federal government.

The chief obstacle in the Legislature has been all the pressure Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun has put on state reps and senators using that ever-so-persuasive policy argument, his check book.

So, when the governor thinks of working around the Legislature, he needs to remember that what he’s REALLY trying to sidestep is not lawmakers, but the BILLIONAIRE, Manuel “Matty” Moroun.

That being the case, using the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority would NOT be a good way to avoid the heavy hand of Matty.

The Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority and Matty Moroun are pretty much the same thing.

Oh, I know, the port authority has a grandiose title, making it sound governmental. And it was established under some 1978 state law allowing local governments to establish port authorities to promote transportation.

All the same, Matty owns the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority.

How can that possibly be?

Doesn’t the governor appoint one of the authority’s board members?

Aren’t the other four members appointed two each by the Detroit City Council and Wayne County Board of Commissioners?

Those are good questions, given the fact that a fair number of elected and appointed officials have been complicit in handing over control of this potentially lucrative and powerful body to the billionaire, Matty Moroun.

There is much to question in the contract between Matty and the port authority, because the governing document setting up Matty’s Ambassador Port Company as “master concessionaire” for the port authority is shrouded in secrecy.

“CONFIDENTIAL” — that warning is typed on the header of each page of the “Master Concession Agreement by and between the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority and the Ambassador Port Company.”

We the citizens were not supposed to know about this cushy deal made in 2005 when Kwame Kilpatrick was King of Detroit and hardly anyone knew who owned the Ambassador Bridge.

According to the Research and Analysis Division of the Detroit City Council, the Master Concession Agreement may violate the Michigan Open Meetings Act.

Despite its labeling, the contract can’t be confidential, because the open meetings law requires that “all decisions of a public body be made at a meeting open to the public” and “all deliberations of a public body constituting a quorum of its members shall take place at a meeting open to the public.”

According to a March 17, 2006 report of the council’s research agency, it is unclear whether the 2005 contract was adopted in an open meeting.

If it was adopted openly, then it can’t be confidential. If it was adopted secretly, then its legal standing could be challenged.

Why would Matty and his public official cronies want to hide this document?

Because it gives the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority to Matty!

The pretext for this legalized piracy was a roughly $2 million debt the port authority owed.

Kind-hearted Matty stepped in to pay off the debt.

Then Matty worked a deal to repay himself — for a price.

His price was control over the operations and revenues of the port authority for 25 years, renewable three times for up to a century.

That’s right — for 100 years Matty agreed to pay the port authority a paltry 2.5 percent of gross revenues.

Well, not exactly 2.5 percent.

You see, there are deductions for interest costs.

The Master Concession Agreement is 30 pages long.

Lots and lots of words.

Remember, the port authority is supposedly a public body.

Not only is it subject to the Michigan Open Meetings and Freedom of Information laws.

But it is required under the state Constitution to be run for the benefit of the public.

Which is to say, for the good of you and me, taxpayers and citizens of Michigan and the United States.

The port authority was not meant to be given away to a pirate like Matty whose every intention — you can read it in the contract’s wording — is to milk the bejesus out of the port and line his billionaire’s pockets.

What happens to the remaining 97.5 percent of the port’s gross revenues? Matty has control of that, too.

So, Matty could actually reap more than 100 percent of port revenues. That’s because whenever he needs to invest in the port, he gets to charge the cost of construction or equipment or whatever to the port authority — that is you and me! — plus 6 percent interest.

Matty — excuse me, the port authority — uses the Nicholson Dock and Port Company to move freight, so-called “stevedoring” work. Matty gets to charge Nicholson “a percentage” of Nicholson’s revenues.

Whatever Matty wants, he gets.

Translated to the Master Concession Agreement lingo, “The Authority shall not unreasonably withhold the Authority’s consent to any Budget, Master Plan, Price Schedule, Operating Procedures or other proposals or requests of the Concessionaire.”

If Matty orders the authority to do something and it declines, it better be ready to defend its reasoning.

Nobody else can make such a request. Not you. Not me. That makes Matty the port authority’s one and only head.

As I said, Matty and the port are the same thing.

The port authority has 30 days to respond to Matty’s requests. If the authority fails to respond within 30 days, according to the contract, Matty gets his way.

The Authority can’t “pledge, sell, assign, let, lien, option” port authority property — public property! — without Matty’s permission.

The port authority gave up its right to sue Matty for breach of fiduciary trust.

Yes! Can you believe that?

In other words, Matty gets to screw them and they get to smile.

Public officials actually agreed to this language:

The Authority understands and acknowledges that master Concessionaire or its affiliates owns real property in and around the Premises that Master Concessionaire is interested in incorporating into the operations of the Facility and has agreed to perform the Facilities Work in part for the purpose of maximizing the value of such other properties and the profits to current and future business operating thereon. Preference shown to such other properties owned by master Concessionaire or its affiliates over the Facility shall not constitute a breach of any duty of Master Concessionaire hereunder or a breach of the Facility Operation Standard. The Authority, hereby waives any claim for breach of fiduciary duty or other cause of action in connection with any actions taken by Master Concessionaire or any Facility Operator whereby other property owned or controlled by them receives disproportionate benefits to the Facility. (Emphasis added)

The “emphasis added” was done by the author of the “confidential” contract, by the way, not by JOTR.

So what does the public get from this deal?

Not taxes: The contract exempts Matty from paying real estate taxes.

Matty’s whole purpose is “maximizing the value” of his own property, and if that happens to hurt the public, hey! It may have happened in secret, but we know this much — we got screwed.

Matty has the exclusive right to run a port in Wayne County.

Want to start a harbor at Detroit?

Fine, as long as you don’t mind Matty’s thumb on your business.

What if you wanted to spend a few hundred billion on a modern railroad tunnel under the Detroit River?

Great idea, as long as you don’t mind handing Matty the keys.

If the port authority wants to sell property to an outsider, first it has to offer the same deal to Matty.

Not surprisingly, the city council’s researchers had a few problems with this contract.

Homeowners, think about this: What would your mortgage-holder say if you failed to buy insurance on your house?

Matty’s got that base covered: “If insurance is not maintained by Master Concessionaire or the Facility Operator, such failure shall not constitute an independent cause of action and shall not result in liability of Master Concessionaire to the Authority or any other party for uninsured damages that may occur.”

If one of Matty’s trucks is full of dynamite and blows up, the port — that is, the public — can clean up the mess.

If Matty decides to assign his rights to run the port to someone else, the authority “can not unreasonably deny the Concessionaire’s request to assign its rights under the Agreement.”

Back in December, Gov. Snyder signed Public Act 258 of 2011 allowing a “public” agency like Matty Moroun — excuse me, I mean the port authority — to team up with a local government such as the city of Detroit or Wayne County to do pretty much any economic development project. In such a partnership, Matty would have the power to levy taxes, condemn property — eminent domain — as well as issue bonds. Matty, who runs ads excoriating government, could BE government, thanks to this new law and the Master Concession Agreement.

According to the city’s researchers, “The entire flavor of this Master Concession Agreement gives ‘preference’ to one business entity for the benefit of paying off the $2 million bonds. It also appears to render the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority nearly constructively powerless to independently exercise its legal rights, duties and privileges.”

The contract “could relinquish control over the Authority’s options to finance current and future debts,” according to the researchers, who concluded:

“The Concessionaire could build a bridge, then bill the Authority.”

Hear that, guv??

Matty can build that new international bridge.

He doesn’t need you!

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Here it is: Matty’s Master Concession Agreement

Posted on April 4, 2016 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

A friend asked me to send him a copy of the nefarious Master Concession Agreement that sold control of the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority to billionaire Manuel “Matty” Moroun for a pittance.

He wrote that he believed that the agreement was not subject to the Michigan Freedom of Information Act because every one of its 34 pages is marked CONFIDENTIAL

“I was wondering whether you have a copy of the agreement and if so would you be willing to send it to me in a pdf?  Of course, we would not say where we got it.”

Oh, please, please, tell the world I gave it to you!

Sure, the MCA is marked “CONFIDENTIAL” on every page. That is typical Matty Moroun bluff.

Like those fake “Homeland Security” signs he hung on the fence he installed around the section of Riverside Park that he stole from the city of Detroit.

The MCA is a public document subject to the Michigan FOIA.

Anyone can request it from the Port Authority.

But why bother?

You have it right here, again:

Master Concession Agreement

 

 

 

 

Posted in Bad government, Me & Matty | Leave a comment

Flint’s man-made water crisis: where are the watchdogs?

Posted on January 16, 2016 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

What a disaster the Flint water crisis has become. There was no need for tens of thousands of people to lose their publicly-provided source of clean drinking and bathing water. But government stupidity, folly, dishonesty made it so.

There was a time in Michigan history when it was easier for citizens to focus attention on toxic emergencies in spite of bumbling and deaf state agencies and a lackadaisical governor.

There was a time in Michigan history when environmental commissions overseen by citizen boards of directors provided an alternative route to enforcement for those of us with information about pollution.

I’m thinking of the Michigan Water Resources Commission, the Michigan Toxic Substance Control Commission, and most of all, the Michigan Environmental Review Board.

These commissions, and in particular the environmental review panel, also known as MERB, could be counted on to raise a stink if a citizen brought a legitimate complaint about government agencies’ refusal to take action on an environmental crisis.

I learned about the effectiveness of these agencies when I was a reporter with the South Bend Tribune. Late in 1982, I discovered while reading minutes of the Cass County Health Department, that three residential wells downstream from the city of Dowagiac’s municipal landfill were contaminated with unacceptable levels of the cancer-causing solvent, trichloroethylene. I soon learned that the industrial waste likely came from a Dowagiac factory.

As I reported, I found that officials of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources were unwilling to come clean on what they knew. I filed a Freedom of Information Act request and when a district DNR official let me read a stack of documents relating to Dowagiac industrial pollution, I learned why the officials were being disingenuous.

Contamination in household wells had been known to state officials since 1957. For years, DNR officials were fully aware of heavy metal contamination in household wells.

DNR people didn’t bother telling state or county health officials then, and when they learned of household well contamination by TCE in October of 1982, they failed to inform health officials at either the state or county level. State health officials learned of contamination when a union official complained that drinking water at the Sundstrand Heat Transfer plant was unsafe to drink.

Sound a little like Flint, where a Virginia researcher and a local pediatrician were the ones who first warned of lead in city mains? Those whistleblowers were scoffed at by state officials.

As I prepared a story for the March 13, 1983 South Bend Tribune, I called Michigan State University zoology Professor William Cooper, chairman of MERB. (Prof. Cooper, a former chairman of the MSU Zoology Department, died on November 7, 2011.)

Cooper called the Dowagiac pollution “an extreme situation.”

“You’ve got a hell of a problem,” Cooper told me. He put Dowagiac on the next week’s MERB meeting agenda. Soon, a state senator was involved. Next, Attorney General Frank Kelley sued Sundstrand. A judge ordered a clean-up. Then, a dozen or so homeowners with dangerously contaminated wells won a civil lawsuit against Sundstrand.

I had been writing about the pollution, but it took MERB and the bullhorn of Bill Cooper to raise state awareness.

Where is MERB when the people of Michigan and Flint need it?

What happened to this watchdog agency as well as the Toxic Substance Control Commission and the Water Resources Commission?

They were killed off by governors James Blanchard and John Engler.

In 2006, before I retired as a reporter with the Detroit Free Press, I spoke with Bill Cooper about the stifling of those watchdog agencies.

The environmental panels were created under Republican Governor William Milliken in the 1970s, Cooper told me. “One thing Milliken wanted was a public forum where citizens had standing without hiring a lawyer. That was the whole sense of the Environmental Review Board.’

“There is nothing in the state of Michigan that comes close to that now.”

Too bad for Flint and the entire state of Michigan that two governors were more interested in making government business-friendly than ensuring the safety of residents.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

 

 

Posted in Adventures in history, Bad government, Joel's J School, Lakes and streams, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Calling Schuette’s shots

Posted on December 3, 2015 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

I complimented Free Press reporter Joe Guillen for dogging the billionaire Matty Moroun and his brazen takeover of the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority. I was glad to see the Free Press report Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s refusal to render an opinion on the legality of the port authority’s giveaway contract with Matty.

But there was more to the story.

In the October 7, 2015 MetroTimes, Detroit journalist Jack Lessenberry came close to predicting that Schuette would decline to look into Matty’s deal. Schuette, Lessenberry pointed out, is notorious for ignoring cases he should look into while hyping issues that are none of his business, like President Obama’s deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program.

Lessenberry had his doubts whether Schuette would look into the port authority deal.

Follow the money, he said.

Wrote Lessenberry:

Rich Robinson, who runs the non-partisan, nonprofit Michigan Campaign Finance network, checked the records and reported that the Moroun family has given Schuette’s campaign fund at least $21,000 since he started running for attorney general five years ago. Matty also gave him $3,400 back in 2002, when Schuette wasn’t running for anything.

As Lessenberry also pointed out in his column that nearly four years ago, on February 1, 2012, I posted an article, MOROUNOPOLY, that explained in detail the lengths to which port authority officials went in genuflecting to the billionaire.

Public trust?

The port authority was a gift to Matty.

When mainstream media didn’t follow, I re-posted the article.

Again, silence.

In the meantime, Matty’s been sending checks to the attorney general.

Now the AG refuses to look into Matty.

That is not surprising.

What surprises me is that four years ago, the mainstream media didn’t think it was a story.

Even now, pieces of it still don’t appear in mainstream papers.

Thank you, Jack Lessenberry.

Matty’s donations to pols like Schuette are part of the story.

 

 

 

Posted in Bad government, Joel's J School, Me & Matty, People, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Good job, Free Press — keep the heat on Matty!

Posted on December 2, 2015 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

The Detroit Free Press reports that Michigan Attorney General William Schuette, without explanation, has declined to review the deal that gave billionaire Manuel “Matty” Moroun control of the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority.

That is disgusting.

Kudos to Free Press reporter Joe Guillen for following this story.

And more kudos to Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority vice-chairman Jonathon Kinloch for trying to persuade Schuette to look into the deal.

Guillen reports, “The contract with the Ambassador Port Co, which could last another 90 years, has been a burden on the port, both financially and otherwise, as the Free Press reported in August.”

The Free Press reported on this in August! Yet the Master Concession Agreement was approved in 2005.

The story has been around for 10 years.

It was seven years old when I wrote about it on February 1, 2012: Morounopoly.

Possibly the story in 2012 lacked a hook or peg.

Somebody outside the newsroom expressing outrage.

Now, an official — port authority vice-chairman Kinloch — is asking questions.

And so is the Free Press.

Good work, Joe!

 

 

 

Posted in Bad government, Joel's J School, Me & Matty, People | Leave a comment

Free Press memory hole

Posted on November 13, 2015 by admin

A memory hole is any mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened. The concept was first popularized by George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eight-Four, where the Party’s Ministry of Truth systematically re-created all potential historical documents, in effect, re-writing all of history to match the often-changing state propaganda. These changes were complete and undetectable.

–Wikipedia

By Joel Thurtell

“Complete and undetectable.”
That is probably what Detroit Free Press scribes thought they had accomplished when they changed the paper’s website to more accurately distort the facts contained in their October 1, 2015 article about massasauga rattlesnakes.
On October 2, 2015, I emailed a proposed letter that I hoped the Free Press would publish to correct important mistakes published in their article. I never heard from anyone at the Free Press.
But today, November 13, 2015, I called up the problem article and discovered that without notice, it had been corrected. Sort of.
The statement by a naturalist who claimed that no human had died of a massasauga bite in the last century has been scrubbed from the post. The article now reports that a child was injured by a massasauga bite in 2013. There is still no mention of deaths, although my letter informed the paper of four deaths due to massasauga bite since the 1930s. Furthermore, I showed the Free Press letters editors a letter published by the Free Press in 1989 reporting the death of a girl from massasauga bite. The letter, from a Grosse Pointe Woods woman, was sent to the Free Press in response to “Snakebit!,” an article researched and written by me and published in the Detroit Free Press magazine on July 29, 1989.
Had the present-day Free Press reporter done a little research in his own newspaper archive, he would have discovered my article. He might also have seen a September 5, 2013 USA Today article, originated at the Free Press, reporting the illness of a child bitten by a massasauga rattlesnake and now alluded to in the “corrected” website version of the Free Press October 1, 2015 article.
Why not tell people that massasauga venom  is second only to the Mojave rattler in toxicity? Why not admit that drop for drop, massasauga venom is more toxic that that of the Western Diamondback?
I’m talking public safety and public health. People need to know that, if disrespected,  these little reptiles can do serious harm and may even cause death.
Instead of doing spin control for the massasauga, the Free Press would do better to serve the humans who are its readers with the truth.
Here is the letter I emailed to the Free Press on October 2:

An October 1 Free Press article on eastern massasauga rattlesnakes gives the erroneous impression that a bite by one of these reptiles poses minimal risk to humans. A naturalist quoted in the article claims incorrectly that no human has died of a massasauga bite in the last 100 years.

On July 29, 1989, the Detroit Free Press Magazine published a cover story, “Snakebit!,” written by me. I reported that a retired professor of microbiology and immunology at the Indiana University Medical School in Indianapolis and an authority on snake venom, Sherman Minton, had compiled a list of four human deaths attributed to massasauga bites in the mid-twentieth century.

Massasauga venom is the second most toxic of 21 rattlesnake species. Massasauga venom is more potent than that of the Western Diamondback rattlesnake. That more people have not died or been seriously injured by massasaugas can be attributed to their reclusive personalities and the fact that these small snakes don’t pack as much venom as larger rattlers.

A Grosse Pointe Woods woman responded to my article, reporting that her cousin died of massasauga bites in Georgian Bay on July 17, 1962. “For years,” she wrote,”park rangers have given the snake great PR without mentioning that a bite can be lethal to humans.”

My article described how physicians’ ignorance about massasaugas nearly caused the death of a man who was bitten accidentally. Another man thought a rattler was harmless, picked it up and was bitten. He was hospitalized with a serious injury.

Naturalists and the media need to recognize that the bite of a massasauga rattlesnake can lead to serious illness and even death.

Joel Thurtell

The writer is a retired Detroit Free Press reporter

Posted in future of newspapers, Joel's J School, Uncategorized, Wildlife | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Seize the bridge! (Again)

Posted on October 30, 2015 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

Finally, somebody in mainstream media gets it. Matty Moroun’s privately-owned bridge to Canada is falling apart, he’s corrupted Michigan politics in hopes of torpedoing a publicly-owned bridge in favor of his family’s monopoly, he’s filed innumerable stupid lawsuits costing taxpayers millions, so why don’t the governments of Canada, Ontario, the United States and Michigan declare the bridge a public nuisance and take it?

Thank you, Jack Lessenberry!

“Seize the bridge!” was the gist of Jack’s talk on Michigan Radio this week.

Now for a pop history quiz: What Michigan blogger has urged public officials since 2009 to take Matty’s toy away from him?

Hint: Try googling “shotgun totin’ goon.”

I started my campaign to push Matty back shortly after one of his thugs chased me out of Detroit’s Riverside Park on September 22, 2008. My first aim was to eject the billionaire scofflaw out of the park. Take back what belongs to the people. After 9/11, Matty conspired with the felon mayor of Detroit, Kwame “Jailbait” Kilpatrick to steal the part of the park that he needed for his proposed new bridge. That, by the way, is the portion of the park that Detroit’s currently unconvicted mayor, Mike Duggan, so brainlessly dealt away to Matty last summer. (It was a move that Detroit’s media enthusiastically endorsed as smart politics on Mike’s part.) The media luminaries forgot how hard the city had to fight for more than three years in court to eject Matty from that piece of public land that he converted from shady basketball courts to a dump for his construction debris.

Seven years ago, on September 25, 2008, I wrote: “Why go to court? Give Matty the bum’s rush: Send a city work crew with bulldozers and dump trucks to tear down the fences and clear out the construction crap. Assign a couple dozen Special Weapons And Tactics cops with heavy artillery to guard the workers. Open up the boat ramp and invite people to bring their boats.”

Remember, I was harassed into leaving that piece of the park by none other than Matty’s hireling, a shotgun-totin’ goon named Doug. I learned that jackboots like Doug doing Matty’s bidding had been ejecting other people, including city park officials, from Riverside park. The story I wrote after my ejection from Riverside Park was the first of dozens of articles I wrote in a campaign to alert local media that this billionaire sociopath was stealing public property with impunity.

When I tried to report the shotgun totin’ goon to Detroit police, a desk officer told me, “Take it up with Mr. Moroun.” The city cop seemed to think Matty owned Detroit.

So on September 25, 2008, I continued, “I’ll bring my boat. I’d be honored to launch the “Slick” at Riverside Park. Then assign police to keep an eye on the park. If Matty tries to retake it, to close the ramp, to bring his crud back, why, just send a SWAT team in to push his bully boys out. Believe me, Doug and his gunslinger pals would wilt at the first sign the city means business.”

Then on May 14, 2009, I upped the ante in an essay, “Playing Matty’s Game.” I didn’t just call for taking back the park. I demanded that government authorities seize Matty’s beloved Ambassador Bridge:

Remember what JOTR said when this whole story surfaced last September? Why not send a city work crew with bulldozers, backhoes and a SWAT team to Riverside Park?

Tear down Matty’s fence.

Tear down Matty’s fraudulent Homeland Security “no trespassing” signs.

Replace those basketball courts.

Re-sod the area Matty tore up.

Once started, why stop with taking back the park?

Turn Matty’s medicine back on him. Send that SWAT team in to seize the bridge itself.

Lots of chatter about whether Matty has the power of eminent domain.

Surely, the government has the power to condemn private property, including a privately-owned international bridge.

I understand 40 percent of the freight passing between Canada and the U.S. goes by way of the Ambassador bridge.

The people need to own the bridge.

Seize it!

If Matty sends out his private army of shave-domed, shotgun-slingin’ hooligans, why hey — I kinda think Detroit cops could sent em packin.

If there’s a problem, maybe Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans could lend a few deputies and even Gov. Jennifer Granholm could send in the National Guard.

Take the bridge. 

Wouldn’t that be great?

Number One thing a public owner would do? Have the bridge inspected for safety. That would be a first. That would lead, inevitably, to defusing the bomb under the bridge, i.e., dismantling those underground fuel storage tanks sitting under the bridge along with the 300,000 gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel that are the biggest security risk facing this bridge. (The fuel storage situation no longer exists.)

Number Two: According to law, no more hazardous material trucks on the bridge. That would be a first.

Number Three: Run the bridge as a public entity generating revenue for the public treasury. Another first.

Lastly, tell Matty if he wants his bridge back, he can sue.

Isn’t that kind of what Matty’s telling the city?

I just could not understand why government officials didn’t push Matty back. Why let him get away with his outlaw behavior? If I tried to steal a public park, I’d go to jail. So I said in a May 15, 2009 essay, “Who’s the Thug?” in which I again called for booting him from park land and seizing his bridge:

Was I promoting “thuggish” behavior by arguing that Detroit should run Matty Moroun out of a city park, part of which he seized illegally alongside his Ambassador Bridge?

I’ve suggested sending a city work crew with a SWAT team for protection in case there’s any resistance from his musclebound, shotgun totin’ goons.

A reader says I’m ignoring Matty’s right to due process.

It’s a twisted line of reasoning that turns Matty into the victim rather than the palpable perp that he is.

Let’s be clear about this: Manuel “Matty” Moroun, the billionaire trucking mogul who stole part of Detroit’s public Riverside Park, has no lease on the property he seized. He had no permission from the city to destroy backetball courts and play fields so he could store construction junk on city property.

He paid no rent over the several years that he illegally used the park.

Now, I ask you: If a few poor, homeless people set up a tent city in Riverside Park, how long would it take for the city of Detroit to send cops to bounce the interlopers and tear down their tents?

And if the tent people refused to leave, what do you think would happen?

They’d be arrested and tossed into jail.

They’d be charged with trespassing, obstructing justice, littering and a host of other infractions. If they destroyed city property, they’d be charged with malicious destruction of property.

Why not treat Matty the same way?

Squatters are squatters.

Oh, I know — Matty has legions of lawyers with nothing better to do than tie up government in long, drawn-out court battles.

Is that why he gets special treatment?

I say charge him with the same counts anybody else would face if they destroyed city property and used it illegally.

This could all be done through courts, and Matty would get more due process than he gave citizens like me who were chased out of Riverside Park by his thugs.

We had a right to be there.

Hey, I wonder if there are civil rights issues involved with Matty’s ouster of people peacefully and legitimately using a public park?

Why this case of Matty seizing park property is being pursued by the city as a landlord-tenant case baffles me.

He’s created a public nuisance. No need for eviction proceedings. Give him the bum’s rush.

Boot him, then condemn his beloved Ambassador Bridge under eminent domain laws. Pay him a fair price and convert it to a publicly-owned, operated and regulated bridge.

If his shave-headed guards put up resistance, send in a SWAT team from Detroit and let the Mounties take the Canadian side.

I wrote on September 22, 2009,” Send a SWAT team to run him off city property,  charge him and his minions with criminal trespass, declare the bridge a public nuisance due to the explosive automotive fuel he’s storing under it and seize it under eminent domain.”

I’ve been pushing this idea for a long time. Take the goddam bridge!

Don’t think Matty isn’t worried that someday a government will try to take his bridge. In an April 17, 2010 essay, “Faces of Matty,” I reported on a Metro Times story that quoted one of Moroun’s lawyers threatening to shoot city employees who might try to take back Riverside Park:

Echoing a sentiment expressed more than once on this blog, city attorney Eric Gaabo remarked that the government could stop being polite and abandon the court process, since it has the legal power to seize 23rd Street back from Matty.

According to the Metro Times, Matty’s lawyer, William Seikaly, had this to say about that:

It’s a good thing that didn’t happen, responded Seikaly, saying that if any city employees tried to tear down the fence they “would be met by armed guards. Probably somebody would be shot.”

Ain’t that sweet?

Probably somebody would be shot.

City workers trying to fence off city property would be attacked with firearms.

By Matty’s goons.

Which is to say, by Matty.

That doesn’t play well around me.

I was confronted by one of Matty’s goons on city property.

“Probably would be shot.”

Well, that goon had a shotgun.

When he tried to arrest me, I walked away.

When he tried to block my car with his pickup, I drove away.

Guess I’m lucky.

I’m lucky the goon didn’t shoot me.

That was the real face of Matty.

Sometime late in 2010, the Windsor Star urged governments to seize the Ambassador Bridge. My blog post report of the fact included a link to the Star editorial, but the connection no longer exists. But it happened — a print newspaper actually took up my cry. I reported the Star’s position on December 8, 2010: “Seize the bridge!”:

The Windsor Star has called on Canadian governments to nationalize the privately-owned Ambassador Bridge linking the U.S. and Canada.

About time somebody took this idea seriously.

Besides me.

Back on May 14, 2009, I argued that governments, using their power of eminent domain, simply condemn Matty Moroun’s beloved, lucrative and decrepit Ambassador Bridge. There’s not much leadership right now on the U.S. side, but if the Canadians took over that portion of the bridge that rests on their territory, it might build a fire under U.S. authorities. It might shame them into doing what’s right for the common good instead of playing the billionaire’s shoddy game.

One piece of advice I’d change. Instead of having the Canadian and U.S. governments operate the bridge, I’d suggest doing one of two things: 1) Tear it down as a public nuisance and replace it with the government-supported Detroit River International Crossing bridge; or 2) build the DRIC, but re-open the Ambassador as a theme park dedicated to the merits of PUBLIC transportation.

By December 11, 2010, Fox Channel 2 picked up the story. I received a visit from one of their news crews and in an essay, “Me & Matty & Fox 2,” I reported on their report:

Bill Gallagher of Fox 2 stopped by Plymouth a few days ago and we chatted about Matty Moroun alongside the city’s picturesque Kellogg Park.

Later in the day, Fox 2 aired parts of our interview:

I seemed to be butting heads with Dan Stamper, another Plymouth Township resident who’s president of the Detroit International Bridge Co., paper owner of the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit in the U.S. with Windsor in Canada.

We know who the REAL owner of the bridge is.

Manuel “Matty” Moroun.

Here, as best I can recall, are the details of what I told Bill Gallagher:

If you or I decided maybe we’d pitch our tent in a city park and live there, how long do you think it would take Detroit police to run us out?

What if I went down to Riverside Park and tore down city-owned basketball courts and shade trees so I could use the site for a new money-making bridge for me while meantime storing construction debris where kids used to play basketball?

What if I put up a chain link fence to keep the public out of a public park?

Just to add insult to my actions, what if I hung phony “Homeland Security” signs from my illegal fence?

What if I hired security guards — shotgun totin’ goons — and had them run citizens out of this public park just because I wanted the place for my own money-grubbing pursuits?

What if I stole city property to build a duty-free store and gas station?

How long do you think it would be before a SWAT team hauled me off in handcuffs while bulldozers tore down the fence, trashed the signs and leveled my store?

Pronto is how fast it would happen.

If it were you or me we’d be jailed on charges of criminal trespassing.

But the perp is Matty Moroun, and Matty Moroun gets away with it.

The city’s been in court more than two years trying to evict this miscreant from a public park.

They’re in court now trying to make him raze that store and build according to plan.

But he’s Matty Moroun.

He’s a billionaire

He gets away with behavior that would put you and me behind bars.

You know what? Matty used to claim his bridge was a “federal instrumentality” with the power to seize property under eminent domain. The courts told him that’s baloney.

But I know a REAL federal instrumentality invested with the power to seize private property like Matty’s prized bridge.

It’s called the “federal government.”

Memo to Barack:

Take the bridge!

 

 

Posted in Bad government, Joel's J School, Me & Matty | Leave a comment

WSU reporters and Duggan: the rest of the story

Posted on September 7, 2015 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

You would think from reading the August 18, 2015 Detroit Free Press article about two Wayne State University student reporters who were stonewalled by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s staff that the Free Press broke the story.

Thanks to Jack Lessenberry and Metro Times for noting the role of joelontheroad.

The story appeared here on May 22 – nearly three months before the Free Press published.

In my novel, CROSS PURPOSES, OR, IF NEWSPAPERS HAD COVERED THE CRUCIFIXION, a newshound opines that what newspapers refuse to print often is more interesting than what they publish.

I can’t explain why the Free Press chose not to report why WSU students Alexander Franzen and Timothy Carroll came to request records from the mayor. But I believe the story would have been more interesting if the newspaper had explained the background.

Why, for instance, did the students make two trips – May 12 and 14 – to the mayor’s office asking for the proposed Riverside Park land swap agreement between Duggan and Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel “Matty” Moroun?

Why, as the Free Press reported, did the student reporters not make their request for the agreement under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act instead of relying on a provision in the Michigan Penal Code few have heard of?

The student reporters were sent by me. I was their teacher. I am a retired Free Press reporter who has written extensively about Moroun since I left the paper eight years ago.

In May, I told the Free Press what happened to the WSU reporters. Later, I supplied their reporter the audio recording of the students’ encounter with Duggan’s staff that the Free Press published without attribution.

The Free Press noted that Duggan’s staffers told the reporters the agreement did not exist on paper and was merely “an idea.” The paper reported that the mayor’s staff lied to the students: the agreement did indeed exist and had been signed by the mayor. Those too were pieces of the story.

The Free Press chose not to explain why the students used the Penal Code instead of FOIA. And the paper didn’t mention that on May 22, the teacher – me — asked the Wayne County prosecutor to investigate this apparent violation of the Penal Code by Duggan’s staff and repeated the request on July 26. My request to the prosecutor contained a written request for an investigation written by the two reporters. The newspaper was aware that the prosecutor had declined to respond to my requests,but elected not to mention those facts. (There is still no response from the prosecutor.)

What was I thinking? Why did I send student reporters to Duggan’s office? Why use the Penal Code instead of FOIA?

Back in May, I was at Wayne State teaching a journalism class, Communications 5310. COM 5310 is unusual. Instead of having 15 weeks to study and produce, students have one week: eight-to-five Monday through Friday for 40 hours, plus five hours of homework equals 45 hours.

When your class is over in five days, May 11-15, the 15-day delay built into FOIA makes that law useless.

But there is the Michigan Penal Code. The Penal Code requires that public officials turn over records upon request during normal office hours. If the officials refuse to comply, they can be imprisoned for up to a year or fined $1,000.

The Penal Code — a disclosure law with teeth!

I have never encountered another journalist familiar with the penal code’s public record clause. But faced with five days to finish an investigation, it seemed worth trying.

When I agreed to teach COM 5310, I wondered what the class project should be. Whatever the topic, it needed to concern Wayne State or Detroit, and it needed to be compelling.

Then, on April 29, Mayor Duggan announced his land swap deal with Matty Moroun.

I first wrote about Riverside Park on September 22, 2008, when I reported Matty’s ambition of swapping land to acquire a piece of park he needs to build a replacement span for his Ambassador Bridge. Now here was Mike Duggan agreeing to make Matty’s dream real. The issue was controversial. It affects Detroit, the region and has international implications.

Thank you, Mike Duggan. We had our project.

I wrote in the COM 5310 syllabus:

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This one-week intensive class will focus on techniques and tactics of investigative reporting. Part classroom, part newsroom, students will work on a real investigative project with local, state, national and international overtones.

Forty hours of class time multiplied by seven students is 280 hours of time that we can use to conduct an investigation. The focus of the course will be Mayor Duggan’s recent proposal to swap land from Detroit’s Riverside Park to Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun in return for nearby land owned by Moroun.

Now that we had our focus, how would we get records? In the syllabus, I continued:

In a five-day class, there is no time to file Freedom of information Act requests that allow government officials 15 days to respond. Instead, our tools will be the Michigan Constitution, which requires that officials disclose financial records on demand; and the Michigan Penal Code, which makes it a crime for public officials to refuse to disclose public records.

Given that the Penal Code was largely unknown to journalists, our use of that law would test a novel use of a little-known law meant to help citizens get access to public records.

This is how I explained the class in an email to the Free Press’s Joe Guillen:

I envisioned the class use of the Penal Code as an experiment that would run parallel to our investigation of the park agreement. What would happen if we requested information through the Penal Code rather than through FOIA? If this were truly an experiment, we could not confuse matters by using two request formats. We needed to stick to the Penal Code alone if we wanted uncontaminated results.

Had we filed FOIA requests while invoking the Penal Code, we might not know which technique led to success or failure. Moreover, FOIA would give officials an escape route away from the threat of criminal action contained in the Penal Code.

It appears that Duggan’s people are retroactively trying to use that escape hatch by saying that no FOIA request was made. My response: no FOIA request was necessary. The students made their request under a different law, the Penal Code.

The results so far of this experiment have been fascinating. We have detected Duggan’s staff blowing off student reporters with the lie that the documents did not exist. Now the officials say the students should have filed a FOIA request for what were claimed to be non-existent records.

The Penal Code is a law separate from the Freedom of Information Act. It does not mention written requests. It does not mention deadlines and reasons why officials might procrastinate or stonewall. It simply says, turn the records over upon request, or face criminal action.

So far, the prosecutor has ignored my request for her to investigate. Her behavior shows the weakness of the Penal Code as a tool for obtaining documents. While FOIA provides document requesters a way to challenge officials in court, the Penal Code provides only criminal sanctions and thus relies on the good will of a county prosecutor to challenge a denial.

I told Joe Guillen:

The experiment continues: Does a state law requiring immediate disclosure of public records with criminal penalties for refusal have any meaning?

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Bad government, future of newspapers, Joel's J School, Me & Matty, People, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Waiting for Worthy

Posted on July 26, 2015 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

More than two months ago, I mailed a letter asking Kym Worthy, the Wayne County prosecuting attorney, to investigate Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s office for refusing to disclose his deal with Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun for a land swap at the city’s Riverside Park.

Two students from a Wayne State University investigative reporting class taught by me in mid-May were twice told by staffers in Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s office that the agreement Duggan announced April 29 between the city and Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel “Matty” Moroun was only “an idea” and did not exist as a record.

I mailed my request to Worthy because it reports criminal behavior — the refusal of the mayor’s staffers to provide records is a violation of the Michigan Penal Code, which makes it a crime for officials to withhold public records when requested by citizens during normal business hours. The punishment for violations is up to a year in prison or up to a $1,000 fine.

Reporters asked for the document on May 12 and again on May 14. When I finally received it — not from Duggan — the agreement turned out to be a lengthy document dated April 29 and notarized May 4. A mere “idea” indeed.

Meanwhile, the Detroit Free Press has reported the mayor and his minions have been using private email accounts exempt from public disclosure to deal with Moroun.

The law requires that officials release public records on request, not just when they feel like it.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Bad government, Joel's J School, Me & Matty, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Matty warranty

Posted on July 25, 2015 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

Detroit’s City Council is getting lots of pressure to approve Mayor Duggan’s deal to dice up Riverside Park for the billionaire Matty Moroun.

People with no stake in the outcome of this issue are urging council to trust Mayor Mike and Matty.

Council should trust their own judgment.

It is easy to say with the mayor and journalists that it doesn’t matter what Detroit does, because Canada will never allow Matty to build a new span.

Would those who make that prediction be willing to bet, say, their salary, or their house, or their pension that Matty will never get his way?

I have an idea. I call it the “Matty Warranty.”

According to the Matty Warranty, those politicians and journalists who predict that Matty will never build a new bridge would place the deed to their house in escrow. They would forfeit their home to the city if a second Moroun bridge is built.

I would go further: Those who claim Matty has turned over a new leaf would lose their homes if it turns out that he’s cheating on the swap deal and if he files new lawsuits aimed at killing the Gordie Howe Bridge.

How many  crystal ball gazers would stake their home on that fantasy?

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Bad government, Joel's J School, Me & Matty, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment