Cost of corruption

Detroit has a lot of problems, the biggest of which is that the city doesn't have nearly enough jobs or money. There's a lot else wrong too. But the city has one huge problem it badly needs to address, the very mention of which is widely regarded as taboo, especially from a white, middle-aged suburban dweller like me. But it needs to be said anyway.

Detroit is riddled with a culture of corruption.

I'm not talking about Mayor Dave Bing, who seems to be as honest as they come. And I am not talking about the mythical welfare queens, or some junkie who grabs a purse.

I am talking instead about so-called public servants; people with good elected or public service jobs who think this gives them some kind of entitlement to steal. Last week, for example, Mayor Bing fired Yvonne Anthony, director of the Department of Health and Wellness Promotion. Once allegations surfaced of misspending at the department, she began muttering about quitting, and the mayor prudently fired her and had her escorted from the building. Yes, nobody has charged her with anything. And it could be that she was only thinking about resigning to take care of her maiden aunt.

But I doubt it. Less than a week before that, the mayor suspended Shenetta Coleman, a Kwame Kilpatrick appointee who served as director of the Human Services Department. This came after the Detroit Free Press (hey, even the devil deserves praise for good works) revealed that the department spent more than $200,000 on fancy furniture last year, money that should have been spent helping a few of Detroit's thousands of desperately poor people.

Mayor Bing was so outraged he said he plans to recommend that Coleman and a number of her staffers get fired after the city finishes its investigation into what is assumed to be vast mismanagement of federal grant money.

Let's assume for a moment that the legal system works as it should, separates the guilty from the innocent and provides proper punishment for the bad guys. Regardless of that, the real question is: What were they thinking?

Why do so many Detroit officials, including the Monica Conyerses, Alonzo Bateses and, yes, Kwame Kilpatricks think selfish and corrupt behavior is OK?

Now I know that somebody is reading this and thinking, "Here's more thinly veiled racism from another phony white liberal in the suburbs." Some may say that even though some of these people were crooks, white folks outside Detroit have no right and no business criticizing them.

To all of which I say, bullshit. There have been many other cities and states that have had a culture of corruption, most notably perhaps Illinois, which has had three governors go to jail since the 1970s, plus Rod Blagojevich, who may wind up there yet. They also had a secretary of state named Paul Powell, who dropped dead in 1970, and whose house was found packed with vast sums of cash from a scam so effective that to this day, nobody is sure quite how he did it.

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