Wayne County Executive schemed to cover up severance deals (Free Press)

[RandySF]

Former Deputy Wayne County Executive Azzam Elder is accusing County Executive Robert Ficano and another top aide of concocting a scheme to cover up controversial severance agreements -- including one with Elder worth $300,000.

Elder's allegations come in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Wayne County Circuit Court and obtained by the Free Press this morning. Elder was Ficano's highest ranking aide until he resigned last year after being suspended for his role in a $200,000 severance payment to former airport boss Turkia Mullin. Now he claims that he urged Ficano and assistant county executive Alan Helmkamp not to hide the severance agreements. Instead, he said they acted illegally, including failing to comply with Freedom of Information requests regarding the documents.

Elder said he refused to go along with them and urged Ficano to be transparent.

Instead, the lawsuit says, "Ficano told (Elder) that he could not afford to come clean because the timing was bad and it would hurt him politically."


http://www.freep.com/article/20120112/NEWS02/120112025/Azzam-Elder-Robert-Ficano-severance-agreements?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

[Festivito]

1. We are living in interesting times here in the Detroit area.

We got a Repub governor who decides he wants to redo city finances by not giving Detroit promised payments since we all pay taxes to the state, but in Detroit we run our own courts, police and such.

So, the Rescum decides Detroit must be in financial trouble (he created) and so he, himself, needs to start controlling Detroit's finances.

Our courts just put a Billionaire Detroiter in jail, and, sadly, it's about time.

Our county has secret meetings despite open meetings rules, promising hundreds of thousands of dollars to pretty women given cushy top jobs.

Our Attorney General, Mike Cox, (R-of course) squelches a trial transcript in a case that involves himself, for no good reason according to an attorney on TV -- once seen, then forgotten.

This stems back to an ALLEGED party, Cox was ALLEGED as attending, after witch a young woman, Tamara Greene, WAS killed in a hail of police bullets without anyone knowing who DONE it. It is thought that our ex-mayor and his wife are involved in the death, along with the police and politicians in the coverup.

But, then, FBI came in and shot a handcuffed Islamic Imam in Dearborn, city next door, and Dearborn's investigation of that questionable shooting suddenly fell through the cracks just after a judge in Detroit decided to not allow Tamara Greene's family any more discovery for their lawsuit against the city. A few weeks later, the family lawsuit was dismissed for lack of evidence. And, thus, Cox won't have to testify about his attendance, and the FBI won't have to answer to shooting an unarmed handcuffed man. (Think the FBI might still have files on people they way the used to have.)

Interesting times, I tells ya.