Council Members Face Recall Petitions
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About the same time Detroit City Council members were quizzing the chief judge of 36th District Court about her decision to not recuse her court from hearing the case against the mayor and his former chief of staff, a Detroit woman was filing recall petitions Wednesday against the five members who voted Tuesday to remove Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
The petitions were filed by Glenda Morgan against Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. and members Sheila Cockrel, Brenda Jones, Kwame Kenyatta and JoAnn Watson. All five voted Tuesday to remove Kilpatrick from office. The petitions cited abuse of power and negligence but offered no details.
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The Wayne County Election Commission tentatively scheduled a hearing for 9 a.m. May 30 to determine whether the petitions cite a course of conduct with enough specificity to proceed. A state election law expert said Morgan’s petitions are so vague they probably won’t pass commission muster.
“Based on the wording, there’s virtually no chance that something that vague would be approved,” said Bingham Farms lawyer Gene Farber.
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Email David Ashenfelter at dashenfelter@freepress.com.
(Posted on May 15, 2008)
Council Votes for Kilpatrick’s Ouster
Zachary Gorchow, Naomi R. Patton and Rochelle Riley, Free Press Staff Writers, May 13, 2008
The Detroit City Council voted today to launch a two-track effort to remove Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick from office by both beginning its own process and asking Gov. Jennifer Granholm to oust him.
The vote was 5-4 as the council made a historic move to topple a mayor. But almost immediately after the vote was completed and as the council meeting was breaking up, the swing vote, Councilwoman JoAnn Watson, announced that she had just received a note from Kilpatrick and would be reconsidering her votes in favor of seeking the mayor’s removal.
After talking to the mayor this afternoon, she stuck with her vote in favor of his removal.
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Both processes are expected to take months. The council set an initial public hearing for its removal hearings of June 13.
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The law giving Granholm the power to remove elected local officials does not give a timetable for action.
The last time a governor conducted removal hearings on a local official was 1982 – for a West Bloomfield Township official accused of public drunkenness. Gov. William Milliken ordered the official to quit drinking or be removed.
Comments
Since Fitzpatrick conspired to have a policeman who sued the city fired, this retaliation against the city council was a no-brainer.
Are all politicians so arrogant that they never see the writing on the wall when they get into trouble? Fitzpatrick probably has plenty of money. If I were he, I’d step down, retire to a nice beach house somewhere, buy a boat, and do a lot of fishing. Drinking beer and fishing every day sounds heaps better to me than trying to run a place like Detroit.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 7:22 PM on May 15
Why should we expect this black man to NOT screw up, after all there’s cases galore of police chiefs, other mayors and other politicians, patrol cops, businessmen, etc., who far exceed the white percentage of propensity for crime and malfeasance in office?
Every black run city in the country is having huge problems and few are run efficiently if any at all.
To find the reason for all of this we have only to look to the black run failures throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
Posted by Ranger at 8:32 PM on May 15
Michael C. Scott - Arrogant is a good word for it. Also, these blacks refuse to step down in the face of overwhelming evidence of incompetence. Eliot Spitzer got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and he resigned. Kwame refuses to go. There is a pattern here.
In Atlanta blacks ran the Clayton County school system into the ground and refused to step down. Blacks ran the Grady health system in Atlanta into the ground and refused to step aside.
I believe these blacks do not know that they are doing a bad job. You need a certain amount of intelligence to know that you are incompetent. The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. In other words, if you know very little its easy to think that you know everything. The more you learn the more you realize there is that you don’t know.
That wording may be hard to follow but the point is these blacks do not realize that they are incompetent. They actually do think that they are doing a good job. Amazing!
Realist in Atlanta
Posted by Realist in Atlanta at 4:55 AM on May 16
Sounds like something Robert Mugabe would do. Africans and democracy don’t mix, when one comes into power he develops the “head chief” attitude and abuses his position, followed by attacking anyone who questions his behaviour.
Posted by Cliff Yablonski at 8:41 AM on May 16
“Africans and democracy don’t mix”
I’m not one of the Africa haters. Not at all. But I was looking up some small country in Africa awhile back, and read, when their president stepped down, to be replaced by a newly elected one, it mentioned that’s the first time this event has ever taken place in Africa’s history. Peacefully at least. The event took place around 1994. Who knows, maybe that was the first and last time. The last time I searched for that reference, I found it had been removed.
Posted by the brainwashing wore off me too at 10:38 AM on May 16
Sheila is the sole white Detroit city council member and mother of Ken Cockrel Jr.
Posted by Jack Aubrey at 12:11 PM on May 16
The Detroit Mayor is a one-man marathon sitcom. It’s like watching a resurrection of the Amos n’ Andy show with Kwame Kilpatrick as the “Kingfish.”
Floozies, cronies, and lies - now that’s classic old-fashioned politics! - Brings a tear.
Posted by Gary at 12:54 PM on May 16
In a scientific study conducted in England, the more incompetent a person was, the higher they rated their own ability. By contrast, the highly competent underrated their
ability to a considerable degree.
Posted by ciccio at 8:18 PM on May 16