Much to do to end the culture of corruption in Detroit

Shady deals involving city contracts and Kilpatrick appointees extend beyond what was described in this weeks federal racketeering indictment of Kilpatrick and associates, Charlie LeDuff of FOX 2 Detroit reports.

“…[D]espite Mayor Dave Bing’s efforts,” he says, “the city is still a swamp of deception and ineptitude and those who blow the whistle continue to pay the price.”

Under the Kilpatrick administration the city’s Building Authority granted at least $7 million in no bid contracts for upgrades at firehouses, LeDuff says, yet the firehouses have deteriorated to the point that firefighters now resort to scrapping abandoned buildings for materials to keep their stations operable.

The Building Authority Commissioners who okayed those no-bid contracts are a who’s who in Kilpatrick cronyland: his former lover Christine Beatty and Derrick Miller, Kilpatrick’s right hand man who was also indicted Wednesday on federal racketeering charges to name but two.

I visited those firehouses that were supposed to receive work. I was shown mold, leaking pipes, exposed asbestos insulation, broken toilets, cracked floors and malfunctioning heating units and door-less frames. In one fire house the alarm bell is a jerry-rigged contraption of a door-hinge, a screw and an electrified pad.

LeDuff says he took his findings to the Fire Department Executive Commissioner James Mack Jr., Chief Charlene Graham and Second Deputy Commissioner Fred Wheeler, all of whom had high ranking positions during the Kilpatrick years were kept by Bing.

They could offer no explanation about the woeful state of their firehouses or what happened to the money to fix them, despite the fact that they too signed off on the work. City hall has yet to look into it. Maybe the U.S. Attorney will.