Wayne County rotten with cronyism

I once asked a retiring labor leader what he intended to do after leaving the union. "If nothing else turns up," he replied, "I'll see what Bob Ficano has for me."

Wayne County is the employer of last resort for washed-up Democratic politicians, labor bosses looking for a second career, the friends and family of the well-connected and anyone else who can soothe a key constituency.

It is more a fraternal society than a government. Once you gain membership, you're set up. Having the county on your resume opens the vault to public contracts that are making millionaires of ex-staffers.

As The Detroit News reported this week, County Executive Ficano has more discretionary appointees than any other elected official in Michigan, and he uses them to build a political machine that keeps him in office and its members in the clover.

Many of the 187 Ficano appointees have six-figure paychecks and extraordinarily fat benefit packages. And while Ficano contends they're all cracker-jack workers who serve the taxpayers well, some of the positions and their salaries are impossible to justify, especially considering the county's $160 million budget gap.

An example: Ficano has two former Redford Township supervisors on his staff: Miles Handy, who handles "labor issues" and Kevin Kelley, responsible for "senior services."

Neither position would seem critical in a nearly broke county, except in helping Ficano keep his job.

Ficano also has in his deck a number of executive assistant spots — re: clerk — to pass out to the relatives of his in-crowd, including one for his girlfriend's sister. They get paid $60,000 to $70,000, or about twice what the private sector pays clerks.

It adds up to a county government that serves a cabal of the connected at taxpayers' expense. And it isn't just Ficano.

Sheriff Benny Napoleon pays two pals, including one who hired his brother, $75,000 a year to stand in for him when he's too busy to attend community events. He's spinning like a top the contract for services other sheriffs do without. Give it up, Benny. There's no excuse for a county on the fast track to insolvency to be wasting money on a pair of well-placed glad-handers.

Ficano rightly contends that he's a piker compared to former County Executive Edward McNamara, who maintained nearly 400 appointees. Many of the McNamara gang are now with former Deputy County Executive Mike Duggan at the Detroit Medical Center, proving again the lasting benefits of club membership.

Yes, McNamara had 400. But L. Brooks Patterson has only 19 in Oakland County, and not one of them is there as a political pay-off.

"I couldn't hire someone for political reasons if I wanted to," Patterson says. "My appointees have to clear the corporation counsel and the county commission."

That's the difference between good government that delivers a dollar's worth of value for every dollar it collects from taxpayers, and one rotten with cronyism.

Wayne County voters enable the abuse of their tax money by rubber stamping whoever the Democratic Party anoints for office. If it's ever going to change, the voters will have to be the ones who change it.